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Are there any experimental/electronic producers on here?
Hey guys, just wondering if anyone on here produces music themselves, particularly electronic music. I make pretty experimental stuff so its kind of hard to find people who make similar stuff and it sucks having no one to talk to about it or share work with. If you make any type of music other than electronic thats cool as well.
Hi there! I produce some electronic stuff, haven't released anything aside from jams and loops so far though, still putting material together to actually start releasing.
I just bought Valhalla VintageVerb over the weekend, and holy cow is that an amazing plugin. I put it off for a while thinking I could learn more about reverb by forcing myself to use Ableton's stock reverb, but I realized that I just came to hate using it so much I would do weird tricks like 0.1ms 80% feedback delays to avoid having to use reverb. That was when I broke down and was like "there has to be a better way," lol.
I'd love to have more regular discussion about production with like-minded individuals. Most of the places I've seen with sufficient population tend to be rather lacking in community feedback, (usually just a RATE MY TRACK post from everyone) or in some cases are led by complete assbags. Neither scenario breeds an atmosphere of creativity or positivity in my mind.
On a side note, is it just me or is SoundCloud's automatic genre tagging thing really far off the mark? It might just be the way I mix my tracks so far, but it seems like anything with 4-on-the-floor gets tagged "microhouse" and anything with a breakbeat becomes "hip-hop" or "trip-hop" (wtf is that even?) I haven't tried their auto-mastering either, but I've heard it's pretty awful. I've been trying to get involved with other communities like Audius, Bandcamp, and Matter, to try to promote better competition in that realm, but unlike SoundCloud none of those platforms really cater to the "listener," they're all arguably platforms geared more towards artists. Perhaps that's just a matter of reaching a "critical mass" of popularity where enough artists exist on the platform to drive listeners? But either way, just trying to do my part to keep SoundCloud from absolutely dominating everything.
Totally agree re Ableton's default reverb plugin. You can still get some interesting spring-like sounds from it with the quality set to low and the room size all the way down, although for anything like the 'conventional' use of reverb, I find Max for Live's Convolution Reverb is way better.
Likewise, most of my experiences with 'rate my track' forums have been people only offering cursory feedback because they want you to review their own stuff. It always leads to a vicious circle of surface-level, unhelpful feedback on everybody's stuff. Maybe Tildes' specific emphasis on thoughtful discussion would help alleviate that?
It seems like it might be hard if we all like different kinds of music? I listen to most things in r/accordion, but I kind of have to be presold on it just to listen to other people's stuff in a genre that's not something I'm studying.
I'm not spending much time listening to what random other people are doing in VCV Rack because I'm not sure how much we have in common, musically.
Maybe some kind of show-and-tell would work?
It would be easier if its all one genre though, if everyone in that community likes the same music then I think it wouldn't be an issue. The problem lies in the fact that a lot of those singular genre communities are mostly for consumers rather than artists.
I feel like this could still be accomplished with a Tildes-like layout. The "main thread" can be the "weekly/monthly/whateverly music production discussion thread and track review" thread, and genres can be top-level posts underneath? That way it's all going in the same area, but still able to sub-divide and cross-pollenate?
I would like to believe that Tildes' tendency towards long-form discussion may help contribute to more meaningful feedback than you would see in most Discord environments. Then again, my experiences in those types of environments has led me to believe that anywhere with a "post your track for feedback" invitation will attract people putting in the minimal effort in review just to post their tracks. And without trying to enforce some kind of arbitrary contribution requirement to post, you end up with a graveyard of soundcloud links with no plays or comments. Maybe we can do better, but maybe not. I'd like to find out, personally.
I agree, one of the reasons why I like Tildes so much compared to places like Reddit or Discord is because there is always genuine discussion, so maybe it would work on here.
I've heard good things about VintageVerb, for the most part I just use stock Ableton plug ins though lol. I recently switched from Logic to Ableton about a week or so ago and man, its so much better for the type of stuff I like to make, mostly Jungle and other experimental club music. I think sometimes stock plug ins get a bad rep but I honestly I think they're fine.
Yeah I really want to have regular discussions with like-minded people too, it sucks that I don't know anyone personally who is into similar music and even online its like you said, any community that is more geared towards people sharing their work ends up becoming yet another place for people to just dump their songs with no actual discussion. I've tried using Discord but I really hate the chat layout of it, I really miss back in the day when forums were still fairly popular, I feel like Discord kind of killed that. I even tried using Twitter but that only lasted a year before I got sick of it.
I actually had no idea that Soundcloud even had an automatic genre tag system, not sure how I missed it lol. The auto mastering is terrible, I tried it once when I had the Pro free trial and it wasn't worth it. Not sure if you remember not too long ago when the whole "soundcloud is anti-artist" thing was going on with all their restrictions that they were gonna put in place, but that was when I discovered Audius and Matter and honestly they don't really have much to offer, at least as of right now. I would love to use Matter more but its currently populated by nothing but anime-trap producers and thats not really my scene. I use Bandcamp as well and its probably the best site other than Soundcloud to post music, the only thing that sucks is that theres no social aspect to it. Also trip-hop is actually a pretty cool genre if you want to look into it.
Checkout Lines if you’re interested in a forum dedicated to discussion about music production that’s on the “experimental” side of things.
Thanks, i'll check it out!
Me! I've been tinkering away off and on in Ableton for almost a decade now. I've always been happy to produce stuff for my friends, but hesitant to put my own stuff out there. I guess my confidence in my own music has gotten better, and I'm now seriously working on my first project. It's exciting and I feel stupid for holding myself back for years.
Its good that your gaining that confidence! I think my issue is more of not knowing anyone to share it with rather than not wanting to share it, but I still understand that feeling of not thinking your music is good enough.
I've been making electronic music on and off for the last 8 or 9 years, and similar to yourself I've put very little of it out there - I just don't know anyone in real life who enjoys this kind of music. So I've been pretty happy just making and consuming it myself.
Do you have a Soundcloud or anything you'd be willing to share?
Wow, thats a lot longer than me, I've only been making music for 2 years lol. I don't mind only sharing stuff online but I just wish that I was part of a community of similar people, kinda sucks posting in places where people just want to get their stuff heard.
Heres my Soundcloud and Bandcamp pages if you wanna check it out.
https://soundcloud.com/omnys
https://omnys.bandcamp.com/
Listening to "soul_hacker_" right now. Those choral sounds are nice! The stock Ableton voices? Nice progression. Wish I had the patience to put together an interesting drum and bass beat like you did, here. My drum parts tend to be pretty damn static, which is something I definitely need to work on.
Thanks! I used a combination of pitched up/down samples and stock Ableton audio effects. Making the drums is always the most fun part for me, I really love chopping up breaks and just going crazy with them.
I'm going to do the thing and say I'm not a music producer, but always had a casual interest in it, and was curious on how to start.
This is a great time to get into it, since nowadays there's so much free software you can use to try it out on Windows or macOS. If you want to start, your going to need a DAW, which stands for Digital Audio Workstation. If you have an Apple device, you can just use Garageband and just mess around with the built in sounds. There's also free trials for the vast majority of the most popular DAWs out there (Logic Pro, Ableton, FL Studio, etc). There's a bunch of tutorials on Youtube you can watch to get you started as well.
You definitely should try it, its so much fun and very satisfying!
Not much, but I have fun messing around in VCV Rack sometimes. I also play accordion. I would like to figure out how to create a good synthesized accordion sound someday.
Interesting, I don't know anything about accordions but they seem pretty cool. Theres probably some sampled accordion sounds out there that you can mess with in a DAW.
Yeah, I should try that. I would rather be doing something that doesn't use samples like physical modelling, but it seems that's a research project.
I think I may qualify?
Here are a few tracks I’ve worked on (which I wouldn’t necessarily consider finished):
what happens
conditioned air
melatonin
while there is dew
I have a couple of collections of finished stuff that is more experimental/sound-scapey, too, that I’ll share (if you’re interested).
Damn, thats really good, especially those first two!
I would love to hear your other stuff, I wish people made more stuff like this :)
Hey, thanks! Here are a couple that ought to be up your alley (I hope...):
(also, they're meant to be played front-to-back, for what it's worth)
Sounds Founds (I consider Well, then a stinker (with some interesting sounds, though) and If this is it, this is it not the best. Besides that, I rather like this collection)
— (Em dash) (a tighter collection. I'm particularly fond of Shirt hanging-- and Tawny nights.)
Lately, I've kinda swung the other way, with regards to music making. Been focusing on solo jazz guitar arrangements with very little in the way of sound manipulation. But maybe having nice discussion about this kind of music will put me back in weirdo-electronic-music-producer mode! I'd actually like to reconcile the idea of electronic music with jazz guitar at some point. Not, like, EDM-dance-beats-electronic music meets cheesy-smooth-jazz-"bebop" but... I dunno.. ambient soundscapes meets Frisell-esque guitar? Anyhow, I'd like to get a MIDI keyboard, first (gave my previous one to a friend to aid in his music production (I don't think he's done anything with it...)).
Definitely up my alley, your music really good!
I think the idea of putting jazz guitar with experimental soundscapes sounds super interesting, maybe take back your keyboard from your friend since he isn't using it lol. I've actually used a jazz sample in one of my ambient songs, it came out alright I guess. Sometimes I think about getting back into playing actual instruments like I used to when I was a kid. I played guitar and a little bit of piano but I just couldn't get that into it, especially since making electronic music is so much more fun and interesting. I do think it could potentially add more to my music though, so I'm still considering it.
I am, on and off for the past 12 years or so. The artists that really got me going down this path were Animal Collective and Oneohtrix Point Never and it went downhill from there. I also discovered this guy Stephan Moore who calls himself a "sound artist" and I really look up to him, since he's a programmer too. He makes sound installations.
https://oddnoise.com/gallery.html
Anyway, so now I like calling myself a sound artist. Just opening up the DAW and just playing with sound can be so wonderful.
I've been really into sound collages and noise music in the past year or so, I actually recently started a series on my Bandcamp page where I release sound experiments in volumes. I heard of Oneohtrix Point Never but never really listened to much of his stuff except a couple of tracks on his R Plus Seven album, I should revisit him. I really like Animal Collective's songs "Summertime Clothes" and "Applesauce" but thats all I know from them.
Stephan Moore's stuff sounds really interesting. I'm a programmer as well so thats cool lol. I go through these phases where sometimes I just want to make exclusively weird noise/ambient influenced super experimental soundscapes and then other times I just want to make more classic old school club music. I agree that there are little things more fun to me then just messing around with sounds in a DAW and creating things that you would never expect.
Have you released any music yourself? I would love to hear it if you have.
Oh, hell yea! The collections (especially the first) that I posted in this thread were heavily inspired (read: "ripped off") by Oneohtrix Point Never, particularly R Plus Seven. If you're not already turned on to him, you should check out Steve Hauschildt, too!
Sure, e.g. https://soundcloud.com/bouzeux/signal10
I used to produce a weird repetitive funk/jazz/nu-disco electronica blend a few years ago. I don't think any of it was ever all that good, but there was some good fun thrown in there. I play the trumpet so I threw quite a bit of that into it as well. That song I linked is one of my favourite I ever produced and often listen to it as if it was made by someone else.
I probably work on and make about a song a year whenever I get around to it. I've tried all the major (and lesser) known DAWs and will still prefer Ableton Live 9 over anything else.
Interesting song! Sometimes I listen to my own songs as well :)
As someone who recently switched to Ableton Live 10, I'm really loving it so far, wish I had used it sooner. Is there a reason why you prefer 9 over 10, or have you just not used 10 yet?
No particular reason! I originally used Ableton Live 7, then 8 (which was abysmal), and by the time they reached 9 it was just a far better 8 that rarely ever crashed (and I believe re-introduced dual monitor support - but I could be wrong!).
My first DAW was FruityLoops (back when it was it was called so), moving onwards through a chiptune phase so used a lot of old school midi applications, and then I believe Reaper? and finally settled on and fell in love with Ableton. Dabbled with a few of the FOSS applications over the year as well.
I haven't used 10 all that much, I've got an install usb for A9 and just plug that in whenever I want to use it.
I am too https://soundcloud.com/failuremode
I work mostly in ableton, although I play around in renoise and TidalCycles.
Just checked out your Soundcloud, I really like your soundscapes. I considered using Renoise but I honestly think that Ableton has all my musical needs.
Thank you so much! And yeah, renoise has honestly just been to push me to think a little differently. Ableton is still home.
I'd say I'm an experimental musician, but frankly don't think I'm far enough out there to really count. I guess you can check my soundcloud for my bonafides. For me it's all about trying to scratch that creative itch, whether I want to make a jungle track (the one track I have in this genre, uploaded, is for a friendly Facebook competition group) or simply see what sort of funky combiations I can get by building a set of random patterns in Renoise and running it for four minutes. If I get something more far out, I typically wind up beating my head against it for an hour trying to develop it, and leave it alone hoping to pick at it later.
I've got stuff I sort of keep to myself, as I don't want to put it out, but I often go through the stuff I've done, and find some gems, which is sort of what it's all about for me.
The majority of the tracks on my page are created in Renoise, using synths I custom-built in Renoise's sampler when 3.0 hit. There's something sort of chintzy about them, but I like the sound, and I can squeeze good, fat Moogy analog out of Renoise than I can any other software I've used. I also use TidalCycles for some stuff, and have some hardware in the way of an OP-1 on a few of those tracks (a couple of them are rough), Polyend Tracker (which I haven't worked with much), and Game Boy with a TeensyBoy (midi interface).