What resources did you use to learn when you were a complete beginner?

I'm talking about you knowing absolutely nothing about music theory, playing instruments, and creating beats. What resources did you use to learn to get to where you're at today?

 

You tube is your friend,
Don’t overload you mind, learn your hardware first (the manual is a good point to start from) then focus on things you don’t understand.

 

The Getting Started Tutorial (https://www.native-instruments.com/...NE_MK3_2.7.6_0518_Getting_Started_English.pdf) is an excellent way to start finding your way.

 

I used the one thing I had as a teenager in the 90s.... time and patience

There was no YouTube or google and internet was available only at the school library so it was a forced thing to sit and figure things out and make hundreds of crappy beats and tracks until after 20 years I started to figure some things out and am almost good enough to finish a full track. Hoping to make an album by 2035

 

For Music theory ,
Scales
learn the circle of 5ths and the patterns that co exist within it that will help you learn and remember all the major and the relative minor scales ,
I used this sheet , which I added too .
The arrows are the direction from c (top)down to Gb (bottom) in the circle of 5ths format
My tricks to remember
F-C-G at the top Gb at the bottom
Then bead backwards going clockwise and bead forward anti clockwise.

Then to remember the notes in each scale ,it’s best to remember what White keys aren’t in the scale and replace by black , either flattened ( backward 1/2 step ) or sharpen (forward half step)
C all white keys , then going anti clockwise , F -flatten the b key
Then continue round to Db at the bottom, spelling bead again. So after f it’s Bb so flatten the b and e , the next one flatten b,e,a ,then bead then beadg
Going forward(sharpen) from C is G , before C is F , in G you sharpen F ,
Then it’s D you sharpen F,C
Then A you sharpen F,C,G

And so on round to B , you will see a pattern , something like when you go forward you sharpen the key two scales back
With Gb at the bottom only the white keys B F with the all black keys
B and F are either always in/out the scale .
Going forward F is always out and B is alway in until the bottom (Gb)
Going backwards it’s the opposite, B out F in till Gb
To remember the relative minor of a major , it’s 4 half steps back on a keyboard



Chords , learn all 12 root chords
1-3-5
Then you either flatten or sharpen the second or third key or both , add notes which are numbered from their place in the scale
Add 2 or add 6 or 7
These are the c chords


Minus the inversions which is when you move the first note or the first two notes ( 1-3 ) an octave above

 

I’m not so sure about the post above me. It is pointless to memorize scales if you don’t have any clue on how to use them. It is important to first understand scale degrees and create a sense for it. Otherwise scales don’t make much sense.
I wd first train year ear and fool around on a keyboard. If you understand the fundamentals, learn a few easy scales like F major/ D minor, C minor, a few pentatonics etc, and some chords and inversions.

 

I learned pretty much everything I needed in Reason!

 

Whilst learning scales, circle of fifths etc can no doubt be useful, I would say especially at the beginning it's more important to just play around and start finding out what does what and what excites you most. As others have said there's some really useful stuff on YouTube once you start beginning to understand where you want to go with it.

 

Sure but before memorizing all modes, create a sense for the relationship between pitches. I think in the beginning the ability to figure out, by ear, in which key a song is that you are listening to, is much more helpful than memorizing all the scales like a monkey. You will learn them much faster if you know what you’re doing

 

All the scales are easy to remember if you master the circle of 5ths as is the use of those scales
And all chords are easy to remember once you’ve learnt the scales

 

Learning intervals is possibly the best thing you can do along that route but I think a lot of people get attracted to Maschine because it's a great way to play with ideas and experiment. Aridly learning anything like musical theory is only really useful IMHO when you start having something to use it with. I stopped learning scales because I just ended up sticking within them and didn't get the 'happy' accidents I got from not using them but that's 'right' for me and not necessarily anyone else. The main thing for anyone is finding out what's right for them and you only find that by just trying things.

 

Exactly. So to get the most out of Maschine’s “scale lock” and chord sets, learn the fundamentals like scale degrees.
I yhink for a “complete beginner” memorizing scales is pointless

 

Youtube, definitively, I wish it was a thing in the late 90's too. There's a lot of dope producers with youtube channels nowadays, even big-name producers are starting to have Twitch channels and make music live but to keep up you need to go thru a bunch of beguiners tutorials and guides first.

I wouldn't start with music theory either, it's very overwhelming if you have zero knowledge and dont understand MIDI basics, plugins, samplers, etc...

If you're in the "Beats" world I would focus on learning just the basics of a Sampler first, Drums and Sample manipulation, basic patterns, how time divisions work and sounds, how things look on the Piano Roll, basic MIDI, etc... Composition only.
Then move on to Plugins, instruments and basic music theory so your Beats arent just a Sample and a Drumbeat, study your music genre and the nuances that make it sound like it does, this is pretty important.
Then move on the Mixing, Sound design, Arranging and possibly more advanced music theory.

 

Personally, I was trained by this awesome german guy I met on soulseek (old p2p network) who spent 100s of hours with me in ICQ, taking me step by step by step until I could make a track on my own. He explained mixing theories to me, explained compression, showed me all the routing and defined all the terminology for me so I would understand much more than just what he trained me on. He trained me in cubase sx2, and then I took off with it and easily learned other software after the brutal crash-course in cubase, lol. That guy was a gem!!!! His screen name was gr00vex and I wish I had stayed in touch...

I highly recommend my german friend.
(sorry had a few beers tonight)

But seriously, after that guy helped me, youtube and/or forums. KVR audio is great. I have spent 30 years administering networks and systems anyway, so these systems are natural to me even when they are annoying and unintuitive.

I am STILL struggling with chords, but CHORDS! Ive been able to find chords and progressions on my own, but now that I use the chord mode on the MK3 (and have chord cheat-sheets), I really wish that I could play them all with no cheat sheets or chord modes.

For beats, check out samplers like kontakt and halion, and cool stuff like reason's DrRex/OctoRex (or whatever the new one is called), and get you some StutterEdit!!!!! =P

Learn about what an arpeggiator does! Arp + good chord knowledge = very good stuff. I could go on all night, but Im probably not as helpful as others.

 

Depends on what you want to accomplish but PRACTICE is the most important thing to master. Building great practice habits and commitment to excellence is the best advice I could give a complete noob to music production. If you actually have the ability to be good, it will shine through with dedicated time focused on defining what you want to accomplish, then putting in the hours.

 

If you have a Maschine then read the (full) bloody manual! Or be forever ignorant!

 

Youtube, and online in general are the best ways to learn. I would learn basic music theory first.This will make you more versatile when it comes to producing down the line, and not just depend on sampling all the time. Key is to balance both. You will thank yourself later when you start playing your own chord progressions, and melodies. You can watch Jeff Gibbons to start out-.

For online piano lessons you can try https://www.skoove.com/en or https://www.playgroundsessions.com/?ari=25.

 

it was 1992 for me, resources were pretty much zero for info, we had mags and if you were really lucky on some kit you acquired a manual or part of one was included as all gear i got was 2nd hand as **** was very expensive - lot of the time we didn't have a manual so it was trial and error and word of mouth, getting info at studios and dragging a piece of gear along with you to get some help, favours were called in all the time and thankfully back then there was real community spirit in the acid and rave scene

mid to late 90s things got so much easier, experience, contacts, and gear became way more popular due to low costs and the rise of the web, data was easy to find and buying and selling was magnitudes better as an experience

turn of the century and the internet blows up - knowledge is free and everywhere, life is easy now for people picking it up - be thankful for YT etc you don't know how lucky you are, then again the adventure was always not knowing and seeing where we ended up, try leaning the early akai and emu with no manual for example

 

There is a lot of stuff online.
Check these out:
http://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/MusicTheory.html
https://www.musictheory.net/
https://www.piano-composer-teacher-london.co.uk/

 

All of Jeff's vids are must see IMO