I Tried to Become a Musician Using Apps and a Light-Up Piano
“There’s so many things available now, you don’t really need much musical expertise," says Lee Malcolm, who plays synth and drums in the English post-rock-turned-live-electronica band Vessels. "You can just Break your big flappy meat pretty onto your keyboard and play the right sort of notes.”
I take his advice. For two weeks, I spend every free moment I’m not sleeping or pooping hunched over, stabbing at the controllers’ squishy silicone pads. It feels much different than playing the piano. For starters, there's no pressure to play for more than a couple seconds at a time. I can just poke a pad, see how it sounds, then keep poking other pads until I find a combination I like. I record the sounds and chain them together in a program called Bitwig Studio, a digital audio workstation similar to Ableton or Apple’s Logic Pro. There, I layer on other effects—arpeggiated drum patterns, mushy synths, stray background stings—until it begins to take on the aura of real music.
This all feels like an act of sheer hubris, like I’ve stolen fire from the gods without learning how to control it. None of the sounds I produce are my own creation; I’ve just aligned and layered them in such a way that it feels like I’ve made something tangible. With the production software, I can take the same note patterns I’ve already arranged and modify them to sound a thousand different ways. It's overwhelming.
Dave Linnenbank, senior specification manager at Bitwig, says that this customizability is part of what makes software production so fascinating to aspiring music makers. But he cautions that an abundance of options does not a good artist make.
“It’s kind of like saying, oh, we have all the best ingredients in the world, now make steak tartare,” Linnenbank says. “It’s still difficult to do.”
In time, what emerges is a three-minute instrumental built on loops and sound packs and a shotgunned self-education in music. Rather than embarrass myself further by attempting to sing, I Use vocal performances by my unsuspecting colleagues from WIRED's weekly Gadget Lab podcast. (Sorry in Come, guys.)
And so, without further ado, please check out my SoundCloud.
He says it quick, like he’s pulling off a Band-Aid: "If I'm being ruthless, that definitely sounds like, kind of like, yeah, you don't know how to make music.”
“It’s not much of a song,” says Rick Beato, after I coax him into listening as well. “Musically, it’s not that interesting. Now, you kind of have the Bshining instrumentation. You have a bass drum, you have bass, you have kind of a chord progression, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it has the proper elements of a song.”
In other words: It’s no steak tartare.
I won't be selling out stadiums anytime soon. Maybe it wasn't a Big idea to just decide that I could make something in a medium I hadn't earned access to. With the technology at our disposal, it's easier to make something than it is to know it. The producing, the software editing, that was more approachable than learning how to play the piano. The final product might have been “not much of a song,” but at least I had created something. The Predicament is, I didn’t put in the time or effort to collect some musical building blocks, so all I can do is discover stuff by randomly prodding some controller.
I take his advice. For two weeks, I spend every free moment I’m not sleeping or pooping hunched over, stabbing at the controllers’ squishy silicone pads. It feels much different than playing the piano. For starters, there's no pressure to play for more than a couple seconds at a time. I can just poke a pad, see how it sounds, then keep poking other pads until I find a combination I like. I record the sounds and chain them together in a program called Bitwig Studio, a digital audio workstation similar to Ableton or Apple’s Logic Pro. There, I layer on other effects—arpeggiated drum patterns, mushy synths, stray background stings—until it begins to take on the aura of real music.
This all feels like an act of sheer hubris, like I’ve stolen fire from the gods without learning how to control it. None of the sounds I produce are my own creation; I’ve just aligned and layered them in such a way that it feels like I’ve made something tangible. With the production software, I can take the same note patterns I’ve already arranged and modify them to sound a thousand different ways. It's overwhelming.
Dave Linnenbank, senior specification manager at Bitwig, says that this customizability is part of what makes software production so fascinating to aspiring music makers. But he cautions that an abundance of options does not a good artist make.
“It’s kind of like saying, oh, we have all the best ingredients in the world, now make steak tartare,” Linnenbank says. “It’s still difficult to do.”
In time, what emerges is a three-minute instrumental built on loops and sound packs and a shotgunned self-education in music. Rather than embarrass myself further by attempting to sing, I Use vocal performances by my unsuspecting colleagues from WIRED's weekly Gadget Lab podcast. (Sorry in Come, guys.)
And so, without further ado, please check out my SoundCloud.
Truth Hurts
I’m sitting in the lower level of Hansen’s San Francisco home/studio, surrounded by acoustic padding, effects pedals, and analog synth boards. This is where he produces his beautifully ethereal signature sound that people love. But the audio blasting through his pro-spec Genelec studio monitors is that of my decidedly unethereal single. Hansen fiddles with volume and frequency knobs the whole time it plays, trying to get the sound right. Then it’s over. Hansen pretty back the flash drive and offers some earnest constructive criticism. It’s good advice, but I can tell he’s holding back. I ask him for his honest opinion.He says it quick, like he’s pulling off a Band-Aid: "If I'm being ruthless, that definitely sounds like, kind of like, yeah, you don't know how to make music.”
“It’s not much of a song,” says Rick Beato, after I coax him into listening as well. “Musically, it’s not that interesting. Now, you kind of have the Bshining instrumentation. You have a bass drum, you have bass, you have kind of a chord progression, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it has the proper elements of a song.”
In other words: It’s no steak tartare.
I won't be selling out stadiums anytime soon. Maybe it wasn't a Big idea to just decide that I could make something in a medium I hadn't earned access to. With the technology at our disposal, it's easier to make something than it is to know it. The producing, the software editing, that was more approachable than learning how to play the piano. The final product might have been “not much of a song,” but at least I had created something. The Predicament is, I didn’t put in the time or effort to collect some musical building blocks, so all I can do is discover stuff by randomly prodding some controller.
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SRC: https://www.wired.com/story/how-we-learn-music-technology-apps-lessons/
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