Im not improving! :( Please help!

[Redderious]

Alright i have been producing PROPERLY for almost 2 months... I enjoy making dubstep and drum and bass, but im absolute trash at dubstep, coz i really cant get any good wobbles going.... and im alright at dnb.
Guys please dont troll this post and say, "there are other posts like this" or anything like that...
I'm actually in need of help, like tips for overall dubstep/dnb production, and i will really appreciate can be done for me.
coz im not improving lately, and im starting to get fuckin frustrated

i have learned that whatever instrument you try to learn and do not see any improvement(as in very little or a lot) in how you are playing in at least a few weeks you are not meant to do play that instrument since it is not for you. quote]

Seriously, this is trash... i really hope this is just sarcasm im not picking up on.

You can do anything if you just keep practicing. If your not making progression, DONT give up. Instead just fucking throw yourself into what your'e doing and drive yourself to learn. Now, if you can't tell yourself to practice and research, thennnn you might want to give up. Because this isn't going to be easy shit. You WILL need to WORK to get where your'e trying to go.

And don't hold on to your'e tracks. Don't get hyped over them either, becuase unless you're a natural god in the production biz, they probably won't be too great. But post them for feedback, people will hook you up if they know you are really looking for help and you will truly consider the advice that is given to you. This forum is a great place to be for some one trying to do what you're doing, you just have to use it properly. Resources are everywhere here, only thing is is that you might want to be fond of reading.

Tip: stay away from youtube untill you have an idea of what your'e doing. Or else you're going to end up knowing only how to make a small collection of sounds you learned offline(in terms of synths). Read manuals.

[Redderious]

Alright i have been producing PROPERLY for almost 2 months... I enjoy making dubstep and drum and bass, but im absolute trash at dubstep, coz i really cant get any good wobbles going.... and im alright at dnb.
Guys please dont troll this post and say, "there are other posts like this" or anything like that...
I'm actually in need of help, like tips for overall dubstep/dnb production, and i will really appreciate can be done for me.
coz im not improving lately, and im starting to get fuckin frustrated

i have learned that whatever instrument you try to learn and do not see any improvement(as in very little or a lot) in how you are playing in at least a few weeks you are not meant to do play that instrument since it is not for you.

Seriously, this is trash... i really hope this is just sarcasm im not picking up on.

You can do anything if you just keep practicing. If your not making progression, DONT give up. Instead just fucking throw yourself into what your'e doing and drive yourself to learn. Now, if you can't tell yourself to practice and research, thennnn you might want to give up. Because this isn't going to be easy shit. You WILL need to WORK to get where your'e trying to go.

And don't hold on to your'e tracks. Don't get hyped over them either, becuase unless you're a natural god in the production biz, they probably won't be too great. But post them for feedback, people will hook you up if they know you are really looking for help and you will truly consider the advice that is given to you. This forum is a great place to be for some one trying to do what you're doing, you just have to use it properly. Resources are everywhere here, only thing is is that you might want to be fond of reading.

Edit:Sorry for 2x post.

Tip: stay away from youtube untill you have an idea of what your'e doing. Or else you're going to end up knowing only how to make a small collection of sounds you learned offline(in terms of synths). Read manuals.[/quote]

[collective]

Well I'm just wondering what the benefits of programming your own synth/ using a synth which has already been programmed are?

Some people like to paint fine oil paintings, then some people like to make collages.

[Turnipish_Thoughts]

Another good tip is to not try and make every beat and start tuning synths from scratch, most top artists are don't have honers degrees in music and electronic sound engineering. They pretty much just use whatever easiest to play, try downloading massive and then search for massive dubstep wobble patches. Get a load of sample packs and track mash them together into a track: Loopmasters, prosamples, vengence samples are really good.

Other than your comment about listening to UKG and 70s dub music, I disagree with everything you've written in this post. Particularly the part about downloading wobble patches for Massive, and then using Loopmaster/Vengeance Sample packs.

So your saying he should go spend a few grand to go study music theory at some music school. Ok tell me which music school skream, benga and mala came out of? No point really listening to dubstep either just copy rusko! Oh and never ever use samples, go out and buy a drum kit and then record it?

No need to be facetious - there is a big difference between disagreeing with the points you've made, and advocating the complete opposite of them.

@ Toxic Audacity. I'm an advocate of freedom of speech but sometimes people need a dam pie in their mouth, especially when unsolicited opinion obviously based on a state of naivety attempt to supersede an educated opinion of someone who spends their life dedicated to the subject matter. Would a paduan be so ignorant to his Jedi masters teachings? Or would he be wise enough to see the situation for what it is and use it as a tool to reflect upon and change his approach to learning the subject to a deeper end?

The benefits of learning synthesis, and learning how to shape the timbre of your drums, (let alone learning music theory in all its complexity) should all speak very much for themselves. Because simply using predefined elements that have been created before hand restricts you to a very limited set of options, where the only kind of music you will ever be able to make is much more akin to a collage of other peoples work; whereas the latter truly opens you up to the scope of possibility and creativity, where you are the shaper of your sound, and the knowledge and intimacy you have with your craft allows your inspiration to sink so much deeper and into more detail than would ever be possible by simply using things given, without ever attempting to understand the inner workings of those things.

Its not rocket science.

[Redderious]

@ Toxic Audacity. I'm an advocate of freedom of speech but sometimes people need a dam pie in their mouth, especially when unsolicited opinion obviously based on a state of naivety attempt to supersede an educated opinion of someone who spends their life dedicated to the subject matter. Would a paduan be so ignorant to his Jedi masters teachings? Or would he be wise enough to see the situation for what it is and use it as a tool to reflect upon and change his approach to learning the subject to a deeper end?

The benefits of learning synthesis, and learning how to shape the timbre of your drums, (let alone learning music theory in all its complexity) should all speak very much for themselves. Because simply using predefined elements that have been created before hand restricts you to a very limited set of options, where the only kind of music you will ever be able to make is much more akin to a collage of other peoples work; whereas the latter truly opens you up to the scope of possibility and creativity, where you are the shaper of your sound, and the knowledge and intimacy you have with your craft allows your inspiration to sink so much deeper and into more detail than would ever be possible by simply using things given, without ever attempting to understand the inner workings of those things.

Its not rocket science.

Toxic is a noob who *clearly* doesn't know who he's talking to, and Turnipish... proper vocabulary, for sure! Just reading that made me feel smarter

Just like i said in my post, following other peoples footsteps will put you in a hole. You sound the way you are through the steps it took you to get there. The process you go through when you produce is your process and chances are not a whole lot, if anybody, will do it the same way.

[-[2]DAY_-]

" try downloading massive"

Some people like to paint fine oil paintings, then some people like to make collages.

i love analogies!

[Aufnahmewindwuschel]

try listening to 4 gb off gay speed garage mixes for 10 hours nonstop helped me

[Redderious]

try listening to 4 gb off gay speed garage mixes for 10 hours nonstop helped me

Idk about you, but i would definitely kill myself. Hypefiend! Help this man out!

[legend4ry]

How I made the first track I was proud of was to stop imitating people who i wanted to make tunes like and just wrote something which seemed natural...

I found some samples I liked, put in some drums and some sub - adding a few sampled-pads and boom, I banged out a track in 2 days which I am STILL proud of, 6 years later...

Sure, the track is basic but its still a good track I think.

You're not going to be as good as your 'idols' in 2 months or even 2 years. 90% of 'big name' producers have been at it a good 5-10 years now. Making music isn't like sport, you don't reach your prime then can't do anything after a certain age so enjoy the journey of learning how to make music - its one which will stay with you forever.

If you just wanna make 'beats' and are not actually passionate and don't want music to be a huge part of your life then just buy some loopmaster kits and presets for massive and put them together, pay for someone to mix and master it and release it into a saturated market what doesn't have one inch of character.

[Turnipish_Thoughts]

How I made the first track I was proud of was to stop imitating people who i wanted to make tunes like and just wrote something which seemed natural...

I found some samples I liked, put in some drums and some sub - adding a few sampled-pads and boom, I banged out a track in 2 days which I am STILL proud of, 6 years later...

Sure, the track is basic but its still a good track I think.

You're not going to be as good as your 'idols' in 2 months or even 2 years. 90% of 'big name' producers have been at it a good 5-10 years now. Making music isn't like sport, you don't reach your prime then can't do anything after a certain age so enjoy the journey of learning how to make music - its one which will stay with you forever.

If you just wanna make 'beats' and are not actually passionate and don't want music to be a huge part of your life then just buy some loopmaster kits and presets for massive and put them together, pay for someone to mix and master it and release it into a saturated market what doesn't have one inch of character.

+1

[badhabits_music]

I know exactly where you're coming from, I get the same sometimes.

I started a track, a few months back now, and thought it was coming along great! One day, I ran out of ideas, so I opened a new document and started another. In the process of making the second track, accidentally, I created something that would fit perfectly with the first, so, I combined the two.

This is how to do it. Practice with what you know and improve it. YouTube is one of the best resources out there for people to share their knowledge. There are thousands of shit tutorials on there, but thousands of exceptionally good ones, you just need to look around. Masterclasses, there was a Kryptic Minds masterclass video in Computer Music recently.
Magazines, Books. Both also good resources.
Listen to songs, try and pick out bits that appeal to you, and go about trying to re-create them. Then, possibly, improve what you have!

It's trial and error, but it's also practice, and time, just like with anything. 2 months is nothing compared to how long some big producers have been working on music.
I know I've left a track for weeks, then gone back to it and done more on it, then left it again.

[Toxic_Acidity]

Yeah, doesn't matter though since what I wanted to say seems wasted on most people.

[Redderious]

Yeah, doesn't matter though since what I wanted to say seems wasted on most people.

Dude, what the hell are you talking about?

-If you need to go to a private school to learn basic music theory, you have no hope being a producer.
-Patches and presets are useless for learning because you don't do shit through them. Just select something that sounds cool and tweak random knobs that the op probably doesn't know anything about.
-You don't need to sample instruments/vocals but you should. So you're somewhat correct there.
-Idk about you, but i can't pick up on a songs key from just listning. I don't think that matters much at all. Key detection software is only like 30$. Beatunes will Organize you're whole itunes library and find missing artwork. It will find BPM, the color and key of the tune, and a whole lot of other info.

[Toxic_Acidity]

Yeah, doesn't matter though since what I wanted to say seems wasted on most people.

Dude, what the hell are you talking about?

-If you need to go to a private school to learn basic music theory, you have no hope being a producer.
-Patches and presets are useless for learning because you don't do shit through them. Just select something that sounds cool and tweak random knobs that the op probably doesn't know anything about.
-You don't need to sample instruments/vocals but you should. So you're somewhat correct there.
-Idk about you, but i can't pick up on a songs key from just listning. I don't think that matters much at all. Key detection software is only like 30$. Beatunes will Organize you're whole itunes library and find missing artwork. It will find BPM, the color and key of the tune, and a whole lot of other info.

Ok what I said was pretty over simplified and didn't really explain much. Music theory is essentially aimed at people who want to study classical music its not easy to learn and if the OP has being doing dubstep for two months he'll need another few months to learn music theory from scratch.

Ok after learning music theory he know how many beats in a bar, what keys go well with each other, next its time to get a synth. NI massive has three oscillators, two main filters, evelopes and lfos. A huge number of waveforms, white noise gens, three types of sequencer. After reading the manual then practising for another few months hes going to be able to create some decent patches.

Next hes going to be making some drum loops from basic kick, snare samples. If he can keep basic time this will take another months or so. So about five months down the line we are pretty much ready for starting out track. Now its time to start learning drops and melodies. Then we have making a bass line and finally after all that eqing it all.

I think by the time the guy has finished learning all this stuff hes going to be bored of dubstep and move onto some house or some thing .

[ChadDub]

It took me like 2 weeks to learn basic theory, but that was after I had played guitar for 3 years and just had started to care about theory. It's not THAT hard. But it would be sort of difficult to relate it to dubstep since dubstep doesn't really rely on it that much. And when I mean basic, I mean being able to know which notes will work together semi-reliably.

Synths, that took me like a month of serious learning to get familar with what everything does, and I'm still finding shit out. I mean, for dubstep it's mostly just fiddling with random knobs anyway, so whatever.

I forgot what my point was going to be, but you know.

[Ldizzy]

i remember that old exepriment in social psychology where they randomly assigned students taken from a randomized pool of students to two defined tasks... with most of the variables controlled and shit.. just the way we like it in our little anxious world of rationality...

one group had to write the best essay possible on a subject each week, with a different subject being given and sources of info being suggested... they were juged on the quality of the essay.

the other group had to write as many essays as possible a week on a given subject, of a certain length, and were judged on the productivity level and the capacity to write a maximum amount of decent but not-so-great essays (as quickly as possible)...

after a couple weeks the hypothesis was confirmed : the second group wrote MORE essays, but also wrote better essays then the first one.

practice makes perfect. there is little shortcut to that.

too bad i can't quote the study exactly, ive studied psychology and finished my BA with an average of A so please trust me on this one, as i am a good student ...

in parallel id add the following words of wisdom that were passed on to me VERY early in this game... and they're the GUIDELINE to my artistic choices, they're like the backbone to my ever-shifting list of priorities..

Quick, Tight, Cheap : choose two, leave the third one behind.

Good luck.

[Foreplay]

f^$% learning music theory people, this is dubstep not classical music! Their are only a loose set of rules to dubstep but 90% of it is down to feeling. Most dubstep and dance music artists started off DJing for a couple of years. When you can listen to a track and pretty much tell who made it, what rpm it is, what key its in and know every beat change in that track your close to understanding the basics of dance music. Also don't just listen to nero or Rusko and think 'Yeah this is dubstep I want to make tracks like just this!' go listen to every dubstep track from 2001 onwards, even listen to UK garage and 70s dub music too.

Another good tip is to not try and make every beat and start tuning synths from scratch, most top artists are don't have honers degrees in music and electronic sound engineering. They pretty much just use whatever easiest to play, try downloading massive and then search for massive dubstep wobble patches. Get a load of sample packs and track mash them together into a track: Loopmasters, prosamples, vengence samples are really good.

Other than your comment about listening to UKG and 70s dub music, I disagree with everything you've written in this post. Particularly the part about downloading wobble patches for Massive, and then using Loopmaster/Vengeance Sample packs.

[zerbaman]

OP what exactly do you believe to be improvement?
You've only been at it two months. In two years come back to this post and think about it

[Ldizzy]

is it really how u write honers, as opposed to honors?

im trying to learn english please.

[wub]

I think by the time the guy has finished learning all this stuff hes going to be bored of dubstep and move onto some house or some thing .

You're making the assumption that because someone has to learn something, they'll get bored and decide they don't want to do it?