Music Production Course

[blindreper1179]

Add me to the skype group too!

blindreper of course.

Starting assignments on Monday!

[hi19hi19]

Originally Posted by Poison-

Lol I don't even have enough experience to take an introductory course. gg

join the club bro


I might have to visit a certain site on the internet and "acquire" a DAW. Been wanting to learn how to make all the random MIDI compositions I make not sound like shit but I haven't actually gotten off my ass and done it...

[Ohaider]

woop skype plz

[Nick Skyline]

bumping because week 2's material is up

Looks like we're going to be looking at recording audio files into our DAW.

In short, it's the basics of creating a project (or starting a song), but it's more focused on working with audio recordings than synthesis work. There's also some information about MIDI at the end.

[Nick Skyline]

bumping again.

Well, I just lost interest. Turns out most of the stuff we're learning...I already know, sort of.

[bmah]

Did the course give you actual lecture notes or something? If possible...I'm interested in any notes you may have.

[Nick Skyline]

Originally Posted by bmah

Did the course give you actual lecture notes or something? If possible...I'm interested in any notes you may have.

All right, here comes what may possible be my longest post yet on this site.

We didn't get notes, instead we got a series of videos that we could watch on our own time and we can take down our own notes as we see fit. Each week, we're given an assignment to re-teach a piece of the material we've learned; it can either be in the form of a short Youtube video or a sub-1,000 word PDF file. After all the assignments are passed in, we're then given a few days to watch and review four other assignments sent in by people from all over the world. I thought this class was going to have a few hundred people, but I was surprised at how many people were attending the class. I knew Online courses were just starting to become mainstream, but when I found out I was taking the course with over 50,000 people worldwide I knew Online courses had become well-known. So I figured, when CBR had found out about this course a day before classes start, I said to myself, "What the hell? I want to learn how to make some cool music, too. How bad can this be? I'm taking this with him."

Week 1 was a look at the basics of audio. Specifically, I had a look at amplitude (which was how loud a particular sound was playing), frequency (it's pitch), timbre (or tone…they may or may not be the same thing, please correct me on this one), and propagation (which isn't that important, but I guess you could call where the sound is coming from). It was nice to learn all about the sorts of audio cables that I can work with (for example, a guitar, bass, or keyboard amplifier comes with XLR cables, which I often call "amp plugs").

Week 2 was basic DAW functions, such as trimming a piece of audio, slicing, and learning how to navigate throughout the interface. My problem was that it assumed I had a recording studio (which I don't, unfortunately), and focused more on audio recording, which I can do but don't have the time or money to do it. But it was nice to find out how to get rid of little 1/44,100 second long clicks in audio without using Audacity. But I don't have any idea how, in some recordings, you've gotten rid of all of the little clicks in your recording, and then you go to render it as a WAV file...and then another click sneaks in and you have to get it out again (Has anyone had this problem at all?).

In the week I'm currently at, I'm looking at the mixer. I already knew what the channel strip was, thanks to FL Studio's built-in mixer. I got to learn what Pre-Fader Sends and Post-Fader Sends are, as well as a Submix, Sends, and I guess I knew a few things about automation (which is a necessity when making Dubstep).

Since I'm most likely dropping this course, I can tell you that in Week 5, I'll be looking at delay and filters. I can also tell you that delay is used to create the sound of a decaying echo that gets softer and softer over a set period of time. You can use it to "enhance" one of the mixer channels in your song, I guess...or you can make yourself sound like a monotone robot if you're just fucking around.

I most likely believe that a small amount of Delay and Reverb is necessary in every vocal track in a song (unless it's at the very end of the song and they're going by themselves, like what you heard in "Turn On"). But it's not like effects are necessary on everything, is it?

Now what other effects can I mention? There are choruses, flangers, phasers, crushers, scratches, vinyl effects, stutters, stretches and a possible tonal delay...to name about half of what you can do.

Week 6 deals with the Synthesizer...which I guess is going to involve a lot of MIDI work. Maybe I might learn more about VST plugins, different kinds of plugins and synth presets that my DAW comes with, as well as all the different presets that each plugin comes with.

I was also a little pleased that there hasn't been a video that talks about the vocoder yet, because I would rather hear someone's natural singing ability than put it through an Autotune filter, refulting in the person's voice sounding ridiculously unnatural. I guess if there was a video that did talk about vocoders/Autotune, there would be a section that explains when would be a good time to use them, and when (or, how) not to use them.

This is one hell of a ride so far. I'm surprised at how much shit is going on when I do anything inside the DAW, the audio interface, the direct box (if you're using one), and everything that's connected between them.

In short, it was a nice, although short experience. It was very impressive to see everything that went into every song I make, and every piece of audio that I record, and every edit that I make, whether in the playlist or the piano roll...I might see this through to the end, but given the opportunity, I'd love to go through something like this again.

[bmah]

That's very interesting to hear, Nick. Thanks for sharing that with us. I personally would hope you go through the whole thing, although I'm sure there are other time commitments that makes it difficult to finish the course.