ANYONE can make electronic music

It's so easy even a classical pianist can do it...

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[kptamc]

I suffered a bad fall when I was a child that left me with impaired motor skills in my hands. I never could play sports like baseball, football or a musical instrument like the other kids. But I never let that stop me from playing ice hockey or electronic music. Electronic/ambient has been a way for me to participate in making music. Just recently got back into it after selling everything decades ago.

[Nobody-hcbo]

I've been making music in a DAW for about 15 years now, I actually really would've liked to see a well argued video about why anyone can make music now. I know it's often used as a derisive thing, but honestly this hobby is accessible to anyone who wants to participate and I think that's sort of amazing

[glennweber]

"Building your own canvass to paint on", I feel like that's the most accurate take on synth programming and how it leads to sounds, and subsequently songs. It's been my experience too.

[exston]

"electronic music is like building the canvas as you're painting it!" So crazy! I literally had the same thought last night!

[NegativeReferral]

An interesting thing about electronic music is that its focus on timbre is a clear departure from the idiom of especially classical music – which is that (1) melody, harmony, and rhythm are **what** you play, and (2) timbre is **how** you play it or expect someone to play it. This is why it seems to many that sound design is so removed from composition.

When in practice, there's a lot of sensory thought put into modular jams built around LFOs or sequencers outputting random notes. The timbre is a big part of the vibes we electronic fans listen to. At the other extreme, the patch you create or sample you choose is what you say, and the notes (if any) are how you say it.

And when you think of it... that's how speech works. "How you say" something has more to do with the volume and pitch of your voice than the timbres, which correspond with vowels (what you say). And just because someone sounds angry to you, doesn't mean they necessarily are (they could be on the spectrum or have a foreign accent that for some reason sounds aggressive)... just like how people are free to interpret whatever they find meaningful in the music.

Electronic music is such an open philosophy that you can't really generalize to a single set of techniques. Some people stereotype it as "just taking other people's beats and tunes and plagiarizing"... which is just a cynical way at looking at SOME electronic music, such as Daft Punk (though phrase sampling DOES take talent and can breathe new life into a stock loop or other popular song)... or "just random bleeps and bloops"... except DeadMau5 is very "composer-like" in his production, and there is sentiment that goes into the "Randomness", just as there's sentiment in the opera singer who doesn't plan out every vibrato undulation.

And a lot of it is performed – on MPCs, Kaoss pads, Launchpads, theramins, good old fashioned keyboards, voice-to-MIDI, etc. And if it isn't – Renoir only needed to paint each of his paintings once. It's a fine art, not a performing art.

[beatrixguitar]

I finished my masters in classical guitar 3 years ago and I just started out with electronic music. I feel so stupid, I never thought I’m gonna be a beginner in music ever again in my life. Thanks for this video!

[mikevenus]

I’m self taught when it comes to music theory and the chords progressions, scales, and drum patterns. Electric music is all about vibes and texture because people want to lose themselves in the music then trying to understand what we are doing. I hide my jazz chords under the synth sounds that I make. I feel it’s like the saying, “give them medicine in the candy.”

[LP_yt]

Good tip about separating out sound design and composition. I tend to do that myself. In practical terms it means spending some time at the start of a project creating a template for my piece, including named tracks and synth patches/effects/etc. Then when I start writing/recording I have my palette of sounds ready to go. It really can speed things up as I find myself inspired by the sounds I have crafted and can imagine the composition before touching a keyboard or mouse.

[yjjmtcn]

For me as a hobbyist, Music is a healing process and electronic music has been instrumental to express my deepest thoughts, emotions through musical vocabulary using natural given human creativity. I have also learned to appreciate honest musicians more who pave the road for the never ending journey and discovery through their musical expressions.

[dr.gregoryf.maassen]

I once went to a Kraftwerk concert in the early 1990s with an elite classic music student. He was completely shocked by the performance and basically walked away when the robots took over (those who have seen Kraftwerk live, they know what I am talking about). He declared that electronic music was basically evil and had nothing to do with creativity and art. I wish I could share your video with the student to educate him on the complementary aspects of both worlds. I cannot as I lost contact with the student.

[StefaanHimpe]

I've written choir pieces based on accidental harmonies I heard from a generative synthesizer patch. There's a lot of room for cross-pollination between sound design and traditional composition.

[melancholas]

I don't know how to describe it, but I could listen to you for hours.

The way you share your thought processes, changing old behaviors, how you yourself got inspired by electronic music, all this influenced me to start studying digital music production.

As someone who has beginner guitar skills but a passion for all kinds of music, especially classical and scores, your vids inspired me to dive deeper into the world of music theory, harmony. As you mentioned, combining classical music with electronical is like stepping into a unlimited world. Therefore I am starting to learn the piano in a few weeks, too.

I am so thankful to have found your channel and hope to learn more🤘👍.

[dodgingrain]

lol, its not only about the sound design and composition, its also about learning how to mix well which is yet another skill that takes a lot of years to do effectively. That skill lets you take sounds and make them fit together even if they seen like they don't.

[yfyrwbu]

I'm a classical musician to. And what you said about the difference between electronic and acoustic instruments, music. This is absolutely accurate. Electronic music has a different type of musical movement, composition. These things, which are different from academic music, can even be confusing, because it uses completely different instruments to make music. And it's just incredibly exciting. The new way. That's why you should stop being snobbish about it.

[BonasBuden]

That is an important notion to understand a holistic approach of composition. Sounds used can be simple or even boring by them selves but when layered they really make up something. sometimes it is hard to know without testing which sounds would fit together. You run into that same concept in mixing and mastering. Most of the time different sounds are spectrally and volumetrically sectioned and while you listen to them on solo they usually sound thin and weak but yet they sit in the mix perfectly.

[rodrigolaporte]

YES! Dividing days into sound design, creation, mixing, etc. That's what I started doing too, hopefully it'll help me to actually complete stuff

[Fairy_Tales_for_Adults]

establishing fluent workflow is 90% of the battle

[bricelory]

I also have found it really help to keep patches simple and layered. Each sound might actually be not particularly pretty on their own but are bespoke for their role within context.

I do love making my own presets for libraries of go to patches and sounds - often fairly basic but they seem to layer well. I highly recommend making your own sounds - not only will you sound unique because you are using sounds no one else has, but you will have an intimate understanding of how that sound works, which will help immensely in arranging and mixing.

[EricRaymondSF]

Super helpful perspective. The idea of where sounds sit in a mix may seem basic to more experienced music producers, but it's a lesson that takes a long time to really appreciate in electronic music. It's really easy to go patch-blind.

[Antara]

I am the perfect example, no music theory, not one instrument learned. All I do is improvise on a synth thinking i've created something worth listening to. But all that has caught up to me now.
And I realise now that in order to progress I have, I must learn music theory. That's why I start learning music theory with a privatie teacher this week.
I consider myself more a sounddesigner, soundscape-creator then a musician, to call myself that is an insult to people who studied for years to master an instrument or music in general.
That's why I love the music of Blade Runner. Vangelis is a master composer but also created atmospheres and feelings thru soundscapes. Yes, he created a lot of musical masterpieces but I focused more on the feeling you get when you hear a massive drone sound coming from a Yamaha CS80 with 8 seconds of reverb.

If you have created an interesting, epic sound, it can take you to a place of great inspiration and you don't need to know what chord you are in.

Anyway, great take on the subject.