I am also in the tutorial phase, but I have been playing guitar and piano for 18 years, so I am not new to music.

You must be past learning the DAW phase, but what I plan to do is to start by remixing or recreating songs from video games, movies, etc.
This will tech me about song structure, and how to recreate a sound, improve my ear, and have a clear goal to work towards. Just like when you learn to play an instrument, you don't typically start off being a composer. You learn your favorite songs and re-create or remix them.

Do the same with music production and I bet you will gain more confidence and you will be able to re-create song structure. Just drag that WAV or MP3 file into your DAW, and start trying to recreate it or remix it.

 

Last edited: Nov 28, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVQ8c19unnM
Here is a lovely tutorial for you to help end your endless procrastination[!]
It covers separating your workflow into creation or productiion sessions, how to organise your time to work productively, getting into the flow etc. the rest are behind a paywall but resist the temptation!

Subtractive arrangement is also a very useful technique for turning ideas into full tracks:
Basically make an eightbar loop and pack it out with as many drums, loops, vsts, samples etc.
Really fill out the audio spectrum and have some fun!
Then spread the bits out into an arrangement, say 4 mins, drums and bass first, you will find that the ideas that worked in your loop can be varied, eqd better etc but you at least have a number of ideas all in one place and you will have taught yourself something rather than learned it from someone else.....
It then will hopefully become more intuitive to trust your ears and own judgement on what works for your music.

Also, getting into one genre and working really hard at it to match pro quality stuff is a great exercise in improving your skills. The best artists making psy trance, neurofunk d+b, glitch hop, dubstep, all have some really interesting sound mangling, arrangement, mixing, mastering techniques which will teach you something about the tools you want to use.
So if you must tutorial constantly, then find a good one and learn that one technique inside out! Make it the focus of your tune but go all out to finish it.....
Another idea is reading a manual for a synth for example...
pick a time of day when your brain is fresh....try what you learned from the manual.find an interesting feature to play with to inspire your tune....

And scour your collection or soundcloud for some music to really inspire you, get high, really listen properly, and imitate and learn.....
You just spent 3 years in music school....time to put those book smarts into action.....

Hope this helps, hurry up and post us a tune........


I guess the way to be creative is to get to it right now....bye

 

Made an account just to reply. When I started making beats, I knew ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about making music. Couldn't even stay on beat. Once I learned how to stay on beat I was just pressing random keys. That didn't sound right. So I learned that certain keys inside a scale sound good together. BAM THAT'S ALL I THOUGHT I NEEDED TO MAKE A BEAT. So I took that simple theory to FL Studio, cut up some mario and yoshi sounds, had a simple drum pattern, with one melody in the c major scale and created a beat that I put on youtube and within 3 months it had around 2500 views. I took like a 5 year layoff from making beats just wasn't really liking my sound and didn't have the passion to sit down and learn the theories behind it to get better. Well after them 5 years I got on youtube to just check that beat out and it had almost 100k views and everyone loved it. I started to learn more now. Just as a hobby. Knowing what I know now, I go back and listen to that beat and I just get disgusted over the lack of talent and knowledge in it. It's my least favorite beat BY FAR!!

In regards to your situation, I want to say you're not alone. I was going through that stage for over a year and I'm just starting to make my own sound. I would have about 100 internet tabs open while trying to make one beat. A beat that I would be working on for hours. Then I started to use the helper scale tools found on MOST DAWs to create different chords and melodies. That lead to another problem. I would love the sound on one melody and I'd go to make a chord progression that sounded really nice but didn't go with my melody. So I would create a new project. Now I have a folder of 100 non finished projects. My solution to this problem was to STOP DOWNLOADING NEW PLUGINS AND PRESET BANKS! I went through all of my plugins/presets/banks and used the same melody and chords throughout this process and listed all of my favorite sounds. Now I've slimmed down my library and found my sound that I like.

Now I'm in that folder with 100 projects and knocking them out by one. Funny thing is, I know there's the mastering part that I haven't even dug into yet. I will tho. Just taking it ONE STEP AT A TIME. Patience is key my friend. Good post. i wish you well.

 

Wow guys
Thanks so much for all the people that took their time and reply here and share their opinions about this issue.

Just to be clear my “thread title “ was “help , need help “ lol. Not “how to start making music “
So someone change it which is totally fine and maybe it make more sense.. anyway I think what I meant by this thread is that inside my head I kinda know how make music , I’m not new to it , doing this for 10 years.
The problem is that I’m too much dependent on the tutorial and it prevents me from actually making music.

Andrew said here to remove the all 100 gb of the material , well I try yesterday but only remove 20 and stay with 80.
A lot of this tutorial is about Ableton , because a few months ago I move to Ableton from Cubase so I downloaded a lot of videos about it to keep me going with Ableton.
I will try later to go trough the folder of the tutorial and see what is really essential for me and keep it and even categorize the tutorial to a different folder and the rest just delete!!!

Again thanks for all the people who help and share their opinions!!

I will maybe upload sometime soon a track that I’m working on it now to see what you guys think about it.

Have a nice weekend
Phil

 

If this is only your hobby, than it really doesn't matter that much, does it, you are basically doing the thing you enjoy, just like someone who is making noises whole day on modular, that's the actual adventure, not reaching some destination, if nobody is waiting for your work to be handed, than you don't really have a problem, enjoy your hobby.

There was point when I stopped messing around and worked on deadlines even when I didn't had any deadlines, prepared myself for client work even when I didn't had any clients, prepared myself for most of the situations even before I had them in nutshell, because that was my goal, my destination.

So decide what is yours ultimately and act on it, nothing wrong with messing around, if that makes you happy, but if your goal is to work fast on pressure with clients, definitely change your mindset and workflow.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Nov 30, 2018

You know your problem and weaknesses, so you know what you need to change, I will tell you this, tutorials on the web are going to get you from point A to B, but you need to get yourself with hard work to point C and D, there's no tutorial out there to show you how to reach to point C, it's you, you need to put all that knowledge in practical use and start using that knowledge further, start solving problems on your own and getting experience from real world material, your material.

So right now, you need to challenge yourself, most obvious one is to stop watching tutorials from now on and let yourself into unknown and probably suck, but that's you, try to really see what you actually learned from all those tutorials, leave the space for you, to come up with your own music and result, solutions for problems and to actually stumble upon problems.

There's plenty of producer challenges you can take, depends on what you want to improve on, but overall, get to know your weaknesses and improve on those weaknesses, one by one, start from the core now, don't skip stuff, if you are lacking musical theory knowledge, stop watching DAW tutorials, work on that, play keyboard 3 hours a day, get into Synthesia and so on, work on basic song structure, get the grip on whole songwriting/composing side of thing before you move on to another step.

 

Step one: Stop beating yourself up for not completing something. Every person on the planet when their time is up, their inbox won't be empty.
Step two: There is a lot of positive advice which I won't repeat already on this thread. They are easy to pick, they lack cynicism and sarcasm. Personally message those people. Not me, I am hardly here anymore, it could be up to a month for a reply so I am being courteous.
Step three: Write down whatever you have composed, whether on a piece of paper with a pencil in a way that you know you will remember it. Whether this is a score, or if you do not read music with a pencil and paper in a way that will trigger your memory, and create a "songs" folder. That way, you can visit it at your leisure and it also provides a subliminal "Work in progress(W.I.P) rather than "I cannot finish this". The physical act of writing it down with a pencil rather than with a computer, is like a mental reinforcement anyway which in this computer age a lot of people may or may not be aware of. It is like re-reading a passage you have just read in a book to lock it into memory so it is a good habit anyway.
- Can't and cannot are negative mental prompts. You can achieve anything you set your mind to. Persistence is the mother of creation.

Seeing you are researching and reading, then if you look at songwriters worldwide, they have off days. Some days they can write three songs in an hour then get a blank for days. Sometimes they get the perfect chorus but cannot find a verse or a bridge, or they get a hook and cannot find the chords that make it sing - so on and so forth.
The whole world is with you even if only in part, so do whatever it is that you need to do to feel better about what you are composing or writing and never give up.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Dec 1, 2018

Making Music by Dennis DeSantis
any help to you ?

besides .. just tinker on the ivories of your keyboard and note what sounds nice or catches your attention( and hopefully you will know why)

tutorials are just ideas about how to take the idea in your head and put it into your DAW.

HTH..