I find establishing a routine is a great way to get your brain used to the idea of developing work and creating content. Let's say you can only devote 4 hours a day to music production - One hour in the morning, and three hours at night. Your schedule might go something like this:

7:00 AM - 8:00 AM - Wake up, bathroom, breakfast
8:00 AM - 9:00 AM - Listen to arrangements and mixdowns, since your ears are fresh. Make the bigger decisions now.
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM - Life Outside of Music :-(
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - General Research and Prepwork: Sound design experiments, writing drum loops, analyzing other artists' work, reading instruction manuals, and other stuff like that.
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM - Make Music. Don't critique yourself, don't worry about it being bad, change focus if you get too frustrated on any one thing. Do as much work as possible.
8:00 PM - 10:00 PM - Dinner and personal time. If you feel really inspired, let music making time bleed over (but don't forget to eat!). Otherwise, use the time constraints as a deadline and reward yourself during this time period. If you still wanna do music stuff, use this as beatport/soundcloud diving time, work on your DJ skills, or come onto TPF!
10:00 PM - 11:00 PM - Get ready for bed and go to sleep.


Obviously if you have more time to work with you can divide everything up differently, but having a structure can provide a new way to really focus and channel your workflow into something that should feel more productive than just flopping around without a plan.

I finished the free demo and it went over all stuff I already knew, but at the same time by the time i was done with that I was able to discern differences in sounds I was trying to recreate much better than I did before. I would say that there's probably nothing in it that you could not learn with enough youtube tutorials and experimentation (that's pretty much what everyone des), but this provides the benefit that any dedicated schooling on a particular subject gives: A guided methodology of learning with built-in reinforcement of concepts that all build upon previous foundations. It's repetitive and often seems boring, so if you're autodidactic and just experiment you'll learn the same stuff eventually - the difference is something like Syntorial or a synthesizer course at one of the music production schools (point blank, ICON, etc) helps to ensure there are no gaps in your knowledge, and overall just streamlines the time it takes to gain experience. It's no substitute for experience, however!

I'm probably gonna buy it because I learn best in structured, syllabus-driven learning environments. A hundred thirty bucks is a lot for something that isn't obligatory, however, so I couldn't recommend it for someone who is comfortable just listening to SeamlessR videos all day.

Go download Audio Hijack; it's free for any recordings of up to 10 minutes (beyond that it adds noise), which is more than enough for grabbing snippets from wherever you wanna borrow some vocals. Vine, Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, wherever.

Hope this helps,
~Zildy

Even though I understand all these concepts, it never clicks until someone else puts it into writing like this. Thank you!

1. Parallel compression (as I understand it) is the idea blending two versions of the same audio source: one compressed, one uncompressed, or one compressed heavily, the other compressed lightly, etc. The most common example I've seen is setting up a send bus where the signal from a completely dry drum mix is also being sent to an auxiliary or return track that has a compressor processing it, then blending the two signals on your mixer to achieve a balance between a full, loud signal and a preservation of dynamics.

2. Because you think the sound needs it! Compression of any sort is like any other type of post-processing: It's not something that is applied as a general rule, but as an effect to enhance or repair a sound based on what it needs.

The best place to start is the instruction manuals. Read the Reason manual from start to finish before going anywhere else. Glance through the other manuals, but don't really worry about it - you're looking for questions you might want to ask. From there, spend a few weeks just clicking around your DAW, seeing what everything does. Find the native plugins that are interesting or cool, and go back to the instruction manual to read up on them. Then look for any quick start guides or "getting started" (I think reaktor has one) guides and follow along with it. Then just putz around while reading the normal manuals. By the time you've finished all of that, you can drag a song that really inspires you, chop it up to get the arrangement, and see how well you can match them. Don't try to beat them, and be okay with something that sounds like crap, but try to hammer it out.

And there you go! You're on your way to making music.

Most DAWs have an FM synth of some sort. Set your output operator a few octaves (I usually go 3). Make an X bar long midi note for your buildup. Turn on another operator and route it into the first one. Set two automations: One for the amplitude of the modulating operator, the other for the ratio or frequency of the modulating operator (I've seen this work best with ones that have a single numbered ratio/Hz option like Sytrus and FM8, it's possible but takes some extra work with Operator) in one of the finer increments (hundredths, thousands, ten thousandths). Then increase both over the length of the bar. Mess with the curves and times and you've got yourself a pretty trippy riser!