Years back, I learned some basic carpentry. One aspect of the process that stuck with me was this: first we learned to do everything by hand and only then, once we understood what a machine was doing for us, would we use the machines and powertools. The core tools were saws, planes, chisels, amongst others. What I want to describe here is an analogous philosophy for learning music production. Now I wish I could practise what I preach better: the approach I give here is how I would advise others to do it, based on hindsight from my own journey. But just as powertools are an addictive drug to the enthusiastic DIY'er, and something hard to put down once one is used to the convenience of driving in screws with an impact driver, so there are many software conveniences for the producer which, once used, are hard to put down.
Now I have nothing against using things like chord generators, or even the infamous 'midi chord pack', for speeding up a production workflow. But using a midi pack will teach you nothing about why the midi notes in a clip are placed where they are.
Audio Hand Tools
So I want to suggest an analogy to carpentry's hand tools: manually arranging audio. If you want to use a synthesiser, render it to a clip early, and then work with the audio. Just as Delia Derbyshire created the famous Doctor Who theme by recording things like test oscillators, and then slicing, dicing, and mixing bits of tape, so we want to do something analogous. My goto DAW for this sort of thing is Reaper, but you can do the same in essentially any DAW.
Why? When learning, you want to train your mind to think music, so be deliberate, and to know in your head what you are doing, rather than randomly mashing things around with the mouse. The thing is, once you've learned to do things the slow, longhand way, to the point that it is second nature, when you use shortcuts to speed things up, you understand what those shortcuts are doing for you, rather than those shortcuts and tools being like magic toys to an infant.
- When arranging tracks, bounce early, bounce often, and proceed primarily by slicing and dicing audio. Try to be deliberate, and plan ahead. Moreover, drill things in by repetition until they are second nature.
- When using synthesisers, always start with an init patch,
and create every patch you use from scratch. Later on
you can use presets to streamline this process by avoiding
repeating the same steps: have a patch for three oscillators
and one filter, for example.
- Start simple: one oscillator only; one oscillator and one filter; then learn things like envelopes and LFO's with nothing more complex.
- Pretend that one oscillator and filter is all you have: back in the day, those electronic musical greats produced wonders with nothing more than an expensive hardware synth that had two oscillators, one filter, and no capacity to store presets.
- When learning synthesis, consider also learning something like VCV where you have to lay out and connect modules manually.
- When learning in general: what you repeat, you remember; what you don't, you forget. So make sure to repeat things you wish to learn many times.
- When actually producing for real using techniques you have learned, it is then the complete opposite: use samples, loops, presets, and so on, to speed up your workflow. But: if you want to sound different, then you must make your own loops and presets; if you want to sound like everybody else, then use the same synths, samples, and presets as everyody else.