Music Theory

[JustDubIt]

Yo i am trying to follow the production bible you have here, but to put it bluntly, i cant understand half of the damn terminology lol.

'Use mono and cut the cypher 20ghz with a banana sinewave and add some flange at 60terawhatthefucks'

Props to the people who made it but im gonna get no where quickly with all the undefined jargon in there, which leads to my question - is there anywhere best to learn these things, im sure if i knew the basics i would be fine and i know that you dont need to know music theory to make your own dubstep, but i dont feel like making my music through imitations of videos ive seen on youtube - i want to make my own sounds from scratch.

Any help is much appreciated!

[fragments]

dude...seriously...google it...they are basic music/synth terms...try wikipedia

[bodom418]

Eventually someone was going to say this like an asshole, so here it is constructively - Sounds like you're looking for the basics of the all around craft of production, but regarding, say, making basslines... Read the manual of whatever your go-to synth might be (Massive?). It's tedious, yes, but the manual exists for the sole purpose of answering these types of questions. And the people who write them are paid to do so because they're usually good at communicating difficult concepts in a clear way. So, I'd say crack 'er open and have a read.

[O Captain]

It might suit you better to watch some youtube dubstep production videos first. Pretty soon you will start understanding what LFO and other "banana sinewave" means and how you can use it to sculpt the sound you desire. Don't give up.

[Triphosphate]

'Use mono and cut the cypher 20ghz with a banana sinewave and add some flange at 60terawhatthefucks'

This isn't music theory, it's audio tech terminology.

Any sound can be broken down into 3 terms:
Amplitude: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amplitude
Frequency: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_frequency
Wavelength: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavelength

Summary of the relation of these properties:
http://www.gamessound.com/soundwaves.pdf

Big glossary of audio tech terms:
http://www.mackie.com/pdf/glossary.pdf

[JustDubIt]

Still the tutorial could be made so much better and beginner friendly by having a minor thread on terminology at least

Cheers bodom, i get the way i came across in my OP but my point was if your gonna make a dub tutorial you may as well explain why this does this and that does that, and that way you know what to alter to get a desired sound. I got you though, Massive im already reading up on.

Not giving up though lads, I am getting on quite well despite sounding like a tard, made a great intro to a song just for Fruity Loops to decide it doesnt like massive so thats binned n Abletons on it way right now

Cheers all
JustDUBIt!

[Triphosphate]

Not giving up though lads, I am getting on quite well despite sounding like a tard, made a great intro to a song just for Fruity Loops to decide it doesnt like massive so thats binned n Abletons on it way right now

No offense, but stop wasting your time downloading DAW's and thinking they are the reason something doesn't sound massive and start spending a lot of time reading and practicing on whichever DAW suits your workflow... the DAW itself doesn't make your sound any more massive, just facilitates the ease with which you can create. In short, which car you use doesn't matter, its the skill of the driver.

IMO FL studio has a very accessible learning curve, and I recommend it to anyone starting out.

[wub]

Still the tutorial could be made so much better and beginner friendly by having a minor thread on terminology at least

Cheers bodom, i get the way i came across in my OP but my point was if your gonna make a dub tutorial you may as well explain why this does this and that does that, and that way you know what to alter to get a desired sound. I got you though, Massive im already reading up on.

Not giving up though lads, I am getting on quite well despite sounding like a tard, made a great intro to a song just for Fruity Loops to decide it doesnt like massive so thats binned n Abletons on it way right now

Cheers all
JustDUBIt!

So, just to clarify;

- You bought FL Studio
- You bought Massive
- FL Studio decided "it doesn't like Massive"
- You got rid of FL Studio and bought Ableton

Going to ask a silly question, but if you bought them and they weren't compatible why didn't you contact the respective tech support? How you've described it is like buying a new car because you got a flat tyre.

[Triphosphate]

Lol wub, you know you're only going to be locking this thread again when he answers. Also, I totally misunderstood and read that He didn't like FL because it didn't sound massive enough lol. In any case, if massive is failing because of what I suspect then it doesn't matter what DAW is being used, it's going to keep failing.

[JustDubIt]

What part of 'I got Ableton because everyone else I know uses that so I can work with them' did you not understand in my PM? Tell me how you manage to delve into other peoples brains and pick out facts like how I apparently didn't contact FL studios Tech Support, when in fact I did. Sat trying to get it resolved when the technician lazily told me i could always get money back, so Fruity Loops has been returned and Ableton bought.

I know 6 people that use Ableton, none apart from stupid lil teen cigarettes that use FL so I am going with the crowd on this one since we where looking to collab when i get up to scratch. Like i said, dont assume shit so much, you seem to have a terrible habit at it.

No, it is just that ONE daw that isnt working, i know this because i can click and work with any BUT ONE and whenever that one is pressed it instantly starts glitching and shuts down.

[Triphosphate]

Lemme bet, when you try to link a controller in massive it crashes?

[JustDubIt]

Nope even NI didnt have a clue

[OfficialDAPT]

To be fair to Wub you came across as one of "those" people who torrents everything and expects it to work flawlessly.

[Aufnahmewindwuschel]

you downloaded the wrong crack man

[wub]

What part of 'I got Ableton because everyone else I know uses that so I can work with them' did you not understand in my PM? Tell me how you manage to delve into other peoples brains and pick out facts like how I apparently didn't contact FL studios Tech Support, when in fact I did. Sat trying to get it resolved when the technician lazily told me i could always get money back, so Fruity Loops has been returned and Ableton bought.

I know 6 people that use Ableton, none apart from stupid lil teen cigarettes that use FL so I am going with the crowd on this one since we where looking to collab when i get up to scratch. Like i said, dont assume shit so much, you seem to have a terrible habit at it.

No, it is just that ONE daw that isnt working, i know this because i can click and work with any BUT ONE and whenever that one is pressed it instantly starts glitching and shuts down.

Fair enough.

[JustDubIt]

To be fair to Wub you came across as one of "those" people who torrents everything and expects it to work flawlessly.

Totally, but only bad things comes from downloading applications.

[Atnos]

Haha, well this thread went nowhere.

OP, Fruity Loops, ableton, acid... they are all the same. Just find the meditation of truly learning the ins and outs of whatever tools you have available to work with. If you're really not feeling working with DAWs, jump back in time and buy a Korg Electribe. Fun, little analog toys but they offer a lot of knowledge about music and sound that is generally transferable. The visual part of working analog is that you are learning by limited experimentation (on the other hand, modern DAWs offer thousands of ways to do one thing, which gets frustrating) plus.. working with your hands via knobs and sliders is always fun.

[Turnipish_Thoughts]

Your post reminds me of how I felt years ago when I first got in to production. Until you have a grasp on all the jargon it does feel like there's a million things being spoken about. In reality it's actually a small group of processes/functions that are spoken about in many different ways (re: the fundamentals are combined in different ways).

On the scale of things I can honestly assure you that it'll take you next to no time, relatively speaking, to get your head round all the terminology and things will really begin to make sense. This requires learning (at least) basic synthesis theory because once you do a lot of the terminology will have context and it'll stop being words and begin being mental imagery of 'x' function on your favorite synth or what ever else abstract imagery you end up using to conceptualize that kinda stuff.

Like an LFO for example. It stands for low frequency oscillator. 'Oscillation' is a generic science term describing something that moves from one extreme to another. Sound is an oscillation, so by logic a low frequency oscillation would be something that oscillates below the threshold of human hearing.

Sine Wave, again, is a generic science term describing sinusoidal oscillation. All sound in nature is created by sine waves. This is because preasure fluctuations in the air simply cannot break the laws of physics and quantum leap from one preasure state to another, there will always be a smooth transition. So, I hear you ask, if a wave represents the air preasure fluctuations through time and all transition is smooth, then how can square or saw waves exist? Enter the harmonics...

Harmonics are sound waves (air preasure fluctuations) that have a mathematically rounded relationship to other soundwaves they are vibrating amongst. The sound wave with the slowest frequency is known as the fundamental, all waves above that, sharing whole number ratios, are said to be 'harmonious' with the fundamental. That is, for every single oscillation of the fundamental frequency, a harmonic will oscillate 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on times exactly. As the pitch of each consecutive sound wave is by definition higher than the fundamental, each harmonic is adding to the tone of the fundamental, increasing it's sharpness.

A saw wave then, is a given fundamental with every harmonic above it, decreasing in amplitude such that when said harmonics are stacked add infinitum the resulting fundamental resembles an inverted ramp, or saw.

A square wave is similar, except it is only every odd harmonic: 3,5,7,9 and so on. When the same amplitude reduction law is applied as in the case of the saw wave, the resulting fundamental waveform resembles a square like shape.

It is easy to electronically produce a square wave for example, in digital/analogue technology it is simply a binary switch allowing current through or not. When this on/off oscillation happens fast enough to be within the sonic domain and is hooked up to a speaker, the resulting stack of sine waves produced follow the laws of physics and create a fundamental and harmonics following the rules mentioned previously.

This all relates to the 'tone' of a soundwave, or its timbre. Which in synthesis, a filter can be used to alter, that is, it can be applied to reduce or increase certain harmonics present within the tone of a sound. This is known as modulation.

Modulation is similar to oscillation, it means to change something over time. This can be achieved a number of ways, one way is by using an envelope, which again is a generic scientific term used to describe the onset, magnitude and dissipation of an event. How fast does the event begin (attack), how long does the event last at peak magnitude (sustain) how long does it take for the event to dissipate (decay). Every sound event in nature or otherwise has an amplitude envelope which defines the character of its existence. In synthesis, these stages are shuffled round a bit to attack (same), decay (this time, how long does it take the event to transition from peak magnitude to sustain magnitude, sustain (what is the magnitude and length of the sustain phase), release (same as decay in the previous expression.)

So, applying a filter to modulate the harmonics of a sound, changes the timbre of that sound as it is heard through time. You could also use an LFO to modulate the filter, and so on.

It's all based on a physical science. Essentially that of stacked sine waves, synthetically produced waves of varying natures and how they translate in to stacked sine waves in the air around us; and the application of modulated paramiters that effect that system, therefore, alter the timbre and/or amplitude envelope of said sound waves through time.

This type of terminology is used because it simply is, they were not names made up specifically for music production but are rather words describing events occuring within the physics of preasure fluctuations in the air, and how, as shapers of the sonic world, we go about creatively manipulating them.

peace.

[JustDubIt]

Turnipish, your the man! Thanks a shit load for your post I certainly learned 10x more from that than people smart ass comments. Wish I could return the favour bro!

[1stfiest]

I am studying Music Tech in college (BTEC), best thing I ever done.