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Comment by labarilem | Hacker News Reader

Music. Besides learning it, you could also play it.

Good one! Like software, music is "castles in the sky." You can always learn and always create something new. Truly an endless pursuit. (I'm into synths, personally.)

I used to play guitar and recently I've started producing EDM and rap beats. Can't agree more with you.

I’ve thought about this a lot, but music theory seems so foreign.

Last HN discussion I saw on the topic earned software engineers not to test music and music theory like say learning a programming language.

I ask don’t think I have the talent for it. One night over the holidays him and I were up late screwing around with GarageBand and he was composing interested tracks while I struggled to do anything. Granted he played the trump years ago but that can’t give him that much of an advantage?

You don't actually need a lot of music theory to get started and make something. I also used to play an instrument (guitar, classic and electric) before producing music with a DAW. While that helped me learn faster, I also realized you just need some basics to produce music that sounds good enough. Here the most important factor, imo, is practice.

I guess part of my problem is I have very strong music opinions on what I like and don’t like. It’s easy for me to listen to something and break down (albeit mostly in laymans terms) what exactly I like about the combination song/genre/era. But for some reason when I sit in front a DAW I’m complete lost at how to compose sounds into something I like. And there’s all sorts of strange knobs controlling something(decay, gain, idk it differs between instruments) and I have no clue how to use it all without brute forcing.

I have a similar issues with front end web design. I can have everything pictured in my head and even and idea of how to achieve it but somehow it never ends up looking like what my brain envisioned.

I think it's definitely ok to feel like that when you first open a DAW. Some things that worked for me to go over the first overwhelming phase:

- Watching tutorials/following courses on a musical genre you like

- Picking a reference track before you start composing

- Using sample packs, then maybe replacing/recreating sounds you don't particularly like

I come from a music background but what are some good music resources either for those who aren't into music or those of us which are stuck in the "same old" universe??

I'm following a course on EDM production. It's a paid course and so far I'm really happy with it. You can check it out here: https://www.edmprod.com/edm-foundations/ (let me know if this is not allowed on HN so I can remove the link).

If you prefer free resources, youtube has a lot to offer if you're starting out with DAWs and music production. Just do a quick search about your favorite genre and you'll find some good youtubers explaining how to get started with it.

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