I’m a musician and have been a musician for over 10 years. Only recently in the past 4 or 5 years have I really gotten into recording myself on a DAW and if I’m being honest, I’ve gotten to a point where I can really make some stuff I enjoy. It’s not always easy, but I can get some pretty banging tracks going.
this sub-lemmy is the only music related community I’ve seen so far, but I’m curious how many Lemmy users are also music makers? I produce in Ableton and Bitwig, and do everything from Alternative rock to ambiance, film scores, electronic synth stuff. Not going to share any links though because I don’t want this to come off as a self promotional post
Really just curious if maybe theres enough of us to warrant some sort of sub-community for music creation chat.
Software: Garage Band is great of you have a Mac. Audacity is… worse, but free. Or if you’re just making music for yourself, you could probably get away with pirating FL Studio… (of course if you’re willing to spend a lot of money, there are much better/more “ethical” options).
For learning resources, it’s very genre dependent. YouTube is great, and you’ll find a lot of really general advice on how to use the software, how to make things sound good, etc.
But I feel like the best advice I could give is to actively listen to whatever music you enjoy, try to figure out what it is that you like about it, and see if you can replicate it. Imo the best way to learn is by copying.
I am on windows, piracy is not a problem for me but there is this software cakewalk which is free but I don’t know if it is good or shady.
Looking at Cakewalk right now, I would definitely recommend it over Audacity (which is pretty bare bones). Cakewalk looks a lot more like a full featured DAW with more capability. Doesn’t seem shady to me, and if it’s free it can’t hurt to try it