Stepping into music production
YOU’LL NEED THIS
WINDOWS 8.1, 10 OR 11 At least 4GB RAM, at least
4GB free disk space
OVER THE PAST DECADE, the way we listen to music has fundamentally changed. No longer tied to physical forms, such as vinyl discs, cassettes, or CDs, downloading and streaming services have taken music collections away from our shelves and placed them on our desktops.
The rise of digital audio is largely responsible for this change. Products such as the original Sony Walkman and the Apple iPod delivered music on the go, but these were eventually superseded by the smartphone, which can now deliver many thousands of music tracks all day, every day, from your rucksack or pocket, making music more accessible than ever.
The same can be said for music production. Whereas once you needed a band or an orchestra of musicians playing instruments, studio time, and expensive recording equipment, these days it is possible to produce a song, publish it, and listen to it from the comfort of your desktop. With a smartphone and software, you can even do this from the palm of your hand.
Here, we will take a look at how music production has changed over the years, the software you need to get started, and how you can compose your own musical masterpiece. –SAM LEWIS
1
THE DAWN OF THE DIGITAL AUDIO AGE
Before we go any further (well, backward technically) we first need to understand the fundamental elements of the digital audio workstation (DAW). Pretty much most music you hear these days will have been composed or produced in some way with the help of a DAW. Thanks to its ease of use, format, efficiency, and productivity, this technology has superseded most other traditional methods of music production. When it’s this easy to produce music, it just makes sense to go down the route of DAWs.
>> So then what is it? A DAW is a piece of software that lets you manipulate audio recordings in a multitude of different ways. A DAW lets you record audio, loop, compose, sample, edit, master, mix, and more. You can use it to create music, master audio for video production, commercials, YouTube videos, you name it [ Image A].
The possibilities are endless.
>> In its simplest form, a song is simply a layering of sounds in a specific order. A DAW lets you control the layering and allows you to choose the order of sounds.
A
>> To understand how DAWs came to be, we will take a step back to the mid-1970s. Newly formed, and later to be industry giants, Soundstream made a huge mark on the audio world. Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, the company was one of the first digital audio recorders in the USA. It played a massive role in developing digital audio recording, editing, and producing, despite competition from rival ‘audiophile’ companies.
>> The mark Soundstream left behind still influences audio production to this day. For producers of the time, the introduction to a more digital style of work was a huge technological change to their workflow and the whole industry. The tools that came with the shift to digital production were groundbreaking at the time and paved the way for audio production to come.
>> Soundstream was founded by Dr. Thomas G. Stockham Jr. in May 1975 at the University of Utah. Stockham wanted a solution to the issues he was having with analog audio at the time. He essentially wanted the ability to remove distortion, background noises, and general unwanted sounds that could creep into recordings, but in a more efficient way.
>> In 1962, Thomas, using a TX-0 computer and an ‘analog-todigital’ converter, began creating digital audio tape recordings whilst studying at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). As digital audio is binary data, when it’s transferred to tape it isn’t subject to the issues Thomas was facing with traditional analog audio, such as the distortion he was encountering.
>> By the late 1960s in Japan, engineers at the NHK television broadcasting network had created a fully working stereo recorder featuring two channels. This had a sampling rate of 32kHz and 13-bit resolution.
>> At the start of the 70s, Japanese audio company Denon had used this recorder to produce the song Something by Steve Marcus. This was the first digitally-recorded, commerciallyreleased track. Denon then created the DN-023R, an eightchannel recorder with the same 13-bit resolution but a larger sampling rate of 47.25kHz.
>> By 1975, Stockham had begun working on Soundstream’s first digital audio recorder prototype by designing the architecture for the device. His team consisted of electrical engineers and computer scientists that helped spark this idea into life. Jules Bloomenthal joined as a technician in September that year, and he helped build a computer interface for the machine. This would allow for the transfer of digital audio data in real-time between a computer and a recorder.
>> The machine contained an instrumentation tape drive by Honeywell that was commercially available at the time. There was also an analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog (‘A-D/D-A’) converter and tape encoding and decoding electronics inside too. A Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11/60 computer was used for the editing with this machine.
>> The digital audio was stored on two RP04 disk drives that were connected to this computer. The computer would then run Soundstream’s software called ‘DAP’, which stands for digital audio processor. This could perform basic edits, such as crossfades and splicing by using a text terminal. This machine was the precursor for modern DAWs and the principle has stayed true to this day, just with a bit more convenience.
>> The problem at the time, and for the ensuing years, was making this commercial. The process required large amounts of fast storage and, back then, this was quite the struggle.
>> By the end of the 1980s, the technology was evolving at a rapid rate and the popularity of home computers such as the Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, and Atari meant that storage concerns were less of an issue. Companies such as Digidesign and Macromedia began developing applications that could edit audio samples and perform two-track CD mastering.
>> In 1994, four-track editors came along, this saw companies such as Pro Tools, and the first Windowsbased DAWs come into life. By 1996, 32-track DAWs were readily available and year after year they continued to get more detailed, faster, and more capable, becoming the industry standard recording system [ Image B].
>> DAWs have given the ability to allow anyone to produce and create music and it’s thanks to the initial development from companies such as Soundstream that allowed this to happen.
2
THE COMPONENTS
Of course, you will need either a PC or a laptop to run your DAW and hook all of your equipment up. It isn’t necessary to have a crazy, powerful machine that runs ridiculous numbers, however, the faster the PC [ Image C], the more processing it will be able to handle. You will soon realize that your music composition projects can get pretty intensive.
>> For FL Studio, the minimum requirements for the Windows application are; Windows 8.1 and above, at least 4GB of free disk space, and 4GB of RAM. On the FL Studio website, it states that ‘the more powerful your CPU, the more instruments and effects you can use— and they aren’t wrong.
DAW
We have already spoken about DAWs, but choosing a good one is essential to you feeling confident when producing music or any form of audio. So what is the best DAW to choose to start with? It’s hard to give a definitive answer to this question, as with many applications, it takes some trial and error to find the one you like.
>> All DAWs will provide you with enough tools to create a similar end goal [ Image D]. The good thing about the majority of them is that they will provide you with either a demo or a free trial to test them out. We recommend picking one with a clean interface as heading into a new piece of software can be pretty overwhelming. Also, this is where the real estate from a dual monitor setup or an ultra-widescreen will come in handy.
>> To make life a little easier when starting and to keep organized, you want as little clutter as possible. Interface-wise, we recommend trying FL Studio to get into the world of audio production. It has a colorful, clean, and intuitive UI that should help inspire some creativity.
STUDIO REFERENCE HEADPHONES/MONITORS
Hearing the most accurate and purest version of your project is the best way to get the most honest result. Using studio reference devices can allow you to distinguish details that other peripherals may not pick up, so you can tweak to even deeper depths.
>> Although the term ‘studio’ is often thrown around lightly, true studio headphones or speakers still hold value. They are created with the intention of being used in the recording studio or your home office. We recommend opting for headphones first as they are often the more affordable option [ Image E].
>> True studio headphones shouldn’t leak sound when recording. If you are singing/playing an instrument whilst listening to a guide to follow along with, the last thing you want is for the microphone to pick up any headphone leakage. These will most likely be a closedback design.
>> Of course, you also want them to be comfortable and durable if you are using them for long periods. However, the most important factor here is the sound quality. Studio headphones are designed to reveal flaws in your recordings and generally deliver a more neutral flat soundscape for this reason.
MIDI CONTROLLER
MIDI stands for musical instrument digital interface and a MIDI controller [ Image F] essentially connects physical hardware to the software. This can be used to virtually play instruments and sequence audio files on your DAW.
>> You can use this device for pretty much anything, it works as a universal controller that will play whatever you tell the DAW to play. For instance, you could load one button or key on the MIDI to play a specific drumbeat.
>> A MIDI makes workflow incredibly efficient because of how flexible it is. Typically, they feature keys, a drum pad, and some dials.
>> If you decide to purchase a MIDI controller, AKAI produces some great introductory mini-models that should get your creative juices flowing.
PIANO ROLL
In this section, you can take the channel notes and go into a lot more detail. Here, you can compose and edit MIDI notes from a channel. MIDI is a software language that allows your computer, a MIDI controller, and other instruments to communicate with each other. When creating audio on a MIDI controller, it can be easily manipulated at a later date if you make a mistake. Whereas if you hit the wrong string on a guitar whilst recording, chances are you may have to re-record a whole piece of the music.
>> To open up the piano roll, right-click on any channel name in the channel rack and click ‘piano roll’ from the list. Now we can create melodies by left-clicking to add notes and right-clicking to remove them. To change the duration of the notes, drag on the edge to shorten or lengthen [ Image I].
>> You can also drag notes around to put them precisely in place. Keep pressing the spacebar to play through the pattern you have created, it should loop this sequence.
>> At the top, there are tools such as the slice tool to chop up notes, the mute tool, and the rectangle tool that allows you to select multiple notes at once. At this stage, try experimenting and see if you can come up with a fun little MIDI sequence of your own to create a melody.
PLAYLIST WINDOW
Hopefully, at this stage, we now know how to create basic drum patterns in the channel rack and MIDI melodies in the piano roll. The playlist window [ Image J] is where you bring the elements together to create a complete
track. This is where the layering of the patterns you create will be orchestrated.
>> To listen to what this window sounds like, we need to head back up to the top and select the ‘song’ button instead of the ‘pat’ button next to the play and stop function. So now we will be taking what we have created and applying it to the playlist window, similar to how we created layers in the piano roll.
>> Click in the track 1 row and draw out the pattern four times. Then to listen, hit the spacebar to hear this sequence. We were testing too, don’t slate us for our purely experimental patterns. To help with organization and pattern naming, in the channel rack press the F2 key to rename a pattern. This will help you when things start to get messy.
>> As we mentioned earlier, songs are made of layers. We have our drums (kind of) so to add a new layer, press the
‘+’ icon next to where your pattern name is in the top window bar. This will create a blank new pattern and you will notice that the channel rack is now empty.
>> Here we can add in a new ‘sound’, for example, a guitar riff or piano keys. This is where you will start to layer your song. You can also drag audio files straight from the browser to the playlist window to add them directly if no tweaking is needed.
>> The arrangement will be done in the playlist window, but the construction of the riffs and melodies is created in the channel rack and piano roll. Music production certainly isn’t a quick and easy thing to do.
>> The key is to have fun with what you are doing and to keep practicing over and over again—experimenting with layering different sounds together, mixing samples, and splicing instruments together until you have some form of song at the end.
>> This guide might not help you become a successful music producer overnight, it’s simply a basic overview of how the main sections of a DAW work, in this case, FL Studio 20. If you are serious about learning to compose digital music, you could do some research on music theory before diving right in to get an understanding of how songs are written. There are a plethora of videos and tutorials online about how to construct basic melodies and rhythms, and piece together all the elements to create a track.
>> Once you get used to how these applications work, with some practice and a bit of patience, you should be able to compose a basic tune.
ANOTHER
MUSIC TUTORIAL NEXT MONTH