(Electronic) Music Production

crystal castle

Guys can you recommend any good music part-time music production courses? Prices, schools, locations would all be very helpful.

I'm not trained in music or theory but I've played in bands in the past, and haven't been writing songs for a long time.

I'd propbably prefer a course elctronic production. I have ableton live, and have made a few tunes. They're ok but i feel they could be a lot better if I actually knew the programme to its full extent. I'd also like to delve into cubase as well. Anything else is just a bonus. I can make the kind of music i want to make - alternative/electronic/down-tempo/minimal (not all at the one time of course) but i feel it would be better with some short training course and see how it goes.

I also record songs on a 16 track so if a course contains additional scope in this regard it would be a benefit but not a requirement as electronic would be my main focus.

I don't have any desire to work in the music industry, or do sound engineering or anything like that. Its more for hobby with my friends, but i've time on my hands and music is all i've ever wanted to do, albeit now after 5 years of college.

I'd be grateful for any advice any of you could give me.

BTW- I know, Crystal castles are gay.

jimi_t

Without sounding like a complete pedant/prat

www.google.com

www.youtube.com

Start watching Ableton tutorials/Fruity Loop tutorials and go on from there, stuff like

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBZal5xa0wc&feature=channel_page

is in abundance and will really get ideas going. Also, check out the Wikipedia pages for anything you don't understand - PM with your eMail address and I'll send you some of my 'library' (text files and PDFs).

Anima

I think Jimi was trying to say that theres so much information and tutorials/guides out there that you don't really need a course to learn to make electronic music. In fact I'd say you'd be better off spending the money on some equpment instead.

jimi_t

Anima wrote: »

I think Jimi was trying to say that theres so much information and tutorials/guides out there that you don't really need a course to learn to make electronic music. In fact I'd say you'd be better off spending the money on some equpment instead.

Exactly - if you have any sort of a controller (keyboard or otherwise) your next purchase should definitely be a decent set of monitors; they'll do more to improve your skills over the months than anything else you could possibly buy.

(Also, the courses in Dublin, while comprehensive in some cases, are fairly expensive for what they are and are mainly focused around getting that useless city and guilds qualification or are pro-tools focused. Money should definitely be sent on gear and software - for a great source of top notch cheap VSTs you can't do much better than http://www.audiodamage.com/ (used by the Prodigy in their live rig amongst others). D16.pl do absolutely epic stuff for the price as well - likes of Chris Liebing and Richie Hawtin use them extensively; best 303/808/909 emulations out there)

crystal castle

I think you've kinda misunderstood. I've time on my hands, and i'd just like to get hold of the workings of the programme better. Its not to improve my music as more to improve myself on ableton live...if that makes sense.

jimi_t

crystal castle wrote: »

I think you've kinda misunderstood. I've time on my hands, and i'd just like to get hold of the workings of the programme better. Its not to improve my music as more to improve myself on ableton live...if that makes sense.

I understand completely, I just think that spending money on gear and learning from the web is a better way to do it than to pay a couple of grand for some evening course. There's a plethora of information out there, if you can read then you're pretty much sorted.

A really good idea would be to register for a forum for producing for a genre you like - 99% of them have a listening lounge where people put up their tracks for critique; find one you like and ask the poster a few questions about how he put it together, I've never seen one who hasn't gone on in massive detail about every aspect of the track and their workflow at the slightest provocation.

Between this and youtube videos you'll have hundreds of new tricks to practice within a week, spend a while incorporating them into your own tracks till you're confident with them and then repeat. Give it a few months and people will start asking you questions about the tracks you put up

old gregg

if it's any help crystal castle ....

After using a bunch of progs for years to create/record electronic music I last year decided to go back into doing live work on a regular basis and found myself looking at Ableton as a way forward.

As a starting point I spent some time working through the cool little free video tutorials by Tom Cosm ( http://www.cosm.co.nz ) who also gives away most of his Ableton live sets for free so I could sit down with some pretty advanced sets and slowly work out how they were done. It's mostly Australian/New Zealand style psytrance/techno so is fun to work with (for me).

After that I was lucky to find that the FETAC level 5 sound engineering evening course (cost €300 for 20 weeks) closest to me is based around Ableton which allowed me to explore all the stuff I already know about music production and a whole bunch of new things all within the context of Ableton.

Anyway, that's how I approached a not disimilar dilema to yourself, faced death and lived to tell the tale and wrote the great American novel, all at once, which is nice.

Rockshamrover

[QUOTE).
Anyway, that's how I approached a not disimilar dilema to yourself, faced death and lived to tell the tale and wrote the great American novel, all at once, which is nice.
[/QUOTE]


So now all you have to do to have the perfect dream life is have your novel made into a film and have the director insist that you compose the soundtrack in Abbey Road using a full orchestra.:)

old gregg

Rockshamrover wrote: »

[QUOTE).
Anyway, that's how I approached a not disimilar dilema to yourself, faced death and lived to tell the tale and wrote the great American novel, all at once, which is nice.

So now all you have to do to have the perfect dream life is have your novel made into a film and have the director insist that you compose the soundtrack in Abbey Road using a full orchestra.:)[/quote]

add in Jonny Grenwood to do the donkey work, Kate Beckinsale to mop my brow and hand me a cold beer every so often, some post production stress release time in Noosa, Australia and my perfect dream life would be just about complete

Rockshamrover

old gregg wrote: »

if it's any help crystal castle ....

After using a bunch of progs for years to create/record electronic music I last year decided to go back into doing live work on a regular basis and found myself looking at Ableton as a way forward.

As a starting point I spent some time working through the cool little free video tutorials by Tom Cosm ( http://www.cosm.co.nz ) who also gives away most of his Ableton live sets for free so I could sit down with some pretty advanced sets and slowly work out how they were done. It's mostly Australian/New Zealand style psytrance/techno so is fun to work with (for me).

After that I was lucky to find that the FETAC level 5 sound engineering evening course (cost €300 for 20 weeks) closest to me is based around Ableton which allowed me to explore all the stuff I already know about music production and a whole bunch of new things all within the context of Ableton.

Anyway, that's how I approached a not disimilar dilema to yourself, faced death and lived to tell the tale and wrote the great American novel, all at once, which is nice.

old gregg wrote: »

So now all you have to do to have the perfect dream life is have your novel made into a film and have the director insist that you compose the soundtrack in Abbey Road using a full orchestra.:)

add in Jonny Grenwood to do the donkey work, Kate Beckinsale to mop my brow and hand me a cold beer every so often, some post production stress release time in Noosa, Australia and my perfect dream life would be just about complete [/QUOTE]

Sounds wonderful.

Let me know if you need an assistant.:)

studiorat

New courses in Ableton beginner and advanced levels, starting on 25th April. (€349 + VAT) Just in case you haven't been talked out of it yet.
Covers the use of the application plus tips and techniques for programming and mixing.

Time in a studio with an experienced producer showing you exactly what you want know and need to know, is better than watching a you-tube video IMO. http://www.myspace.com/virtustudios

seannash

crystal castle wrote: »

I think you've kinda misunderstood. I've time on my hands, and i'd just like to get hold of the workings of the programme better. Its not to improve my music as more to improve myself on ableton live...if that makes sense.

if you have time on your hands then teach yourself.ableton is an absolute piece of piss to understand(still a **** daw though)
courses wouldnt be a way to do it,learn the basics otherwise youll have someone teaching you how to copy and paste audio at a very unreasonable rate