if you are keeping it simple. Yes.
Have someone on your side who helps catch you when you start doing bad habits. Even if it's just a buddy that knows what he's doing checking in once every 2 weeks.
I'd definitely taper your experiences and instead of focussing on 'making a full track' start with seperating that out. Because to make a full track you need to have good single parts. And if you don't focus on those 1 by 1 you'll have a lot less tools to work with.
To give a bit of illustration; you could want to make disco house for example.
You can learn how to do a house bass and kick. But unless you've learned how to do a lot of styles of disco bass lines and learned how people build basslines very deeply you'll have a lot of trouble making the track sound good as a whole.
The same goes for drums. It's easy to make a 4 to the floor drum beat. But your track might get boring unless you've learned how to build fills and variations, tweak drums to play in unison with the bass or melody at times to help enhance the song.
Will those generic things that are easy to learn let you make a 'good enough' track? Yes. But you really need those tools of at least having vague knowledge and the ability to execute it to be able to make tracks that you'll look back on 5 years from now and be like "aight that's fire though!"
I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. But focus on the smaller stuff. You'll have a lot more fun and get further if you are able to celebrate you making a sick bassline. Or a cool drum groove. Or that amazing chord progression that really captures your feeling.
And the best about that. you can save those things and revisit them later to turn into full songs once you feel you've gotten better at arranging and songwriting... or even when you made a drum beat that suddenly matches perfectly for that bass or that melody. And now instead of staring at a blank canvas trying to make a full song happen. Now you have a drum beat and a bass and you're just filling in the blank.
It's just a lot easier, more fun, and you wont get dissapointed with yourself when you've only made a good bass, or that good melody, or that good chord progression.
I like what you wrote here. I will use that information for myself also. Is there anything more you can share with us? It's just that it really looks useful what you wrote.
like what?
A good general tip is that when you get stuck. You take another song. Warp it to the bpm your song is at and put markers where the intro/verse/chorus/drop/breakdown start and stop. Then remove the song and place your own song in those markers to 'steal' the song structure.
You'll do that 20-30 times and you'll naturally start knowing what kind of song structure you want.
At first it'll be a bit hard to understand why sections transition well. But now you're 'stealing' a song structure. You can totally steal the "oh there's a riser happening here and the drums get more busy, then it stops for a bit and then a drop" or "oh, they removed the hats from the drums for this part" or "oh on verse 2, they did something different in the drums but kept the rest the same"
Figuring out those things helps you build a library of tools to change song sections at a more song level.
My friend, sorry for what I am about to say...
but if you judge the quality of what you do by how much time you've spent on a DAW you have to review what you think music production is!
I mean...in the end, Ableton is just a tool.
There is of course a learning curve and the more time you spend on it the better you get at translate what is on your mind into sounds and ideas. What should matter is if you are satisfied with what you have done. Music writing is something you learn by doing it, by listening to lots of stuff and by facing every obstacle in front of you (plus, some music training in the traditional manner doesn't hurt)...
Keep doing it. Publish it. Embrace praises and criticism. And constantly put yourself on the challenge.
Looking forward to hear some music from you! :)
>Do you think 6 months is enough of time to make decent release-worthy music?
Really depends on the person. While one person could probably do it in even less than 6 months, another person might take years to do so.
>How much Ableton can you ideally learn in 6 months?
Again, really depends on the person. If you treat every day of the 6 months like you're putting yourself through a course, putting hours and hours into it, you can learn quite a lot.
Now if we combine your 2 questions, you're basically asking if someone in the process of learning to use Live can also make something worthy of release in 6 months and I'm going say maybe. Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? No.
Thank you for your input!!! So should ideally the goal for 6 months should be DAW mastery? Or should it be getting to sound better ? How do I gauge what to learn in 6 months?
Ableton has resources on learning Live on their website. Start there.
Focus on learning how to use the program. Everything else is irrelevant. Also, I can't tell you how to gauge what to learn. Only you can.
DAW mastery might be a bit much, but you could easily learn it well enough to release music. Unless you know nothing about making and recording music, then you've got a journey ahead of you
I think overall ableton, like music, is a life long journey. Everyone progresses at different rates, has different skills and natural talents. Ableton isn’t just production. It’s mixing, mastering, recording, engineering, sound design, etc. you could be great at production and really suck at mixing or any other important facet. And then on top of that, the music you’re recording is gonna hit you with different hurdles. Like, micing and mixing a full drum kit with a track in a bad room will
Be hard, where as if you’re making more synth generated music, finding synth sounds you like without sound design knowledge will
Be tough.
All I’m trying to say is, anything in life that is worth doing is not easy. Don’t expect to be a master in 6 months but if you make a track today and look back on it after 6 months of constant work and attempts, you will def see improvement
Your tracks early on are going to be bad and should be thought of us learning experiences, not a race to get to “release-worthy music” as fast as possible. It’s less about learning a piece of software and more about learning techniques and processes that work for you and lead to better results. You won’t need to ask this question when you’re able to assess your own capabilities and satisfaction with your own work for yourself.
It sounds like you are asking for validation. Post a track or you can send me a project and I can tell you where you are at.
Can you make professional level music in a 6 month time span? Yes it is possible if you have extra dedication and commitment to your goal. If you are spending maybe an hour a day on this goal, no it is not possible.
Could you become a master guitar player in a few months? Yes it is possible but highly unlikely because it takes literally years to figure out the technical parts and then you get to focus on building your style.
To answer your questions, yes you can accomplish these goals. You just need the time and effort to put into understanding it all.
I’ve been making House music for almost three decades and I am finally getting to the point of making stuff I am actually happy with. That is my own journey and I’ve had a lot of obstacles and distractions so I couldn’t put the time and effort towards it.
Enjoy the journey and try to have fun with what you are making.
I watched YSAP (you suck at producing) helped me a lot. Took me a week to watch it all. Also just experiment and play around imo. Those are the two things that got me comfortable.
I got a track signed to a label in 10 months. I think if you put enough time into it it’s def possible. Just put in the hours and stay learning and experimenting with new things
I mean yeah it’s totally doable. Now I won’t say that the release worthy music you make will be mixed and mastered to a professional level but you can surely learn some mixing techniques in those 6 months and get some good sounding stuff. Now it’s not gunna be chart topping or sell out shows but it’s fun. And you continuously learn new tips and tricks along the way. Build instrument and effects racks, save them in ur presets folder. Build chains within those racks to create different layers. Use mid side eq and see how much it can clean up a dookie water sound. Use side chain compression on ur bass for ur kick to cut thru, use delay to add some space to ur sounds, saturation is good for adding volume and color to sounds. Just some quick lil things that took me a while to learn that are really beneficial
I learned Ableton in a weekend. Was making great music and releasing it within a month. But I already had lots of experience creating music and producing in other DAWs.
Yeah totally doable. Definitely focus on Live skills and not music skills. Ignore quality and bask in the totally unoriginal loops you copied and pasted and you'll be a star. /s
Ableton is generally very user friendly. For better performance run it on at least an i7. There are some navigation controls changes in 12 so for now I stay with 11. The only slight downside is at mixing level there are less effects and pro versions in standard. I really want to upgrade to Suite but them high price tags need to come off.
i am also in a similar boat and been hammering ableton for a couple of months now! if you want someone to work with or bounce ideas around with i’m available
I've been working on a mix for two weeks on and off and it's sounded super good so I would say yes 💜 but having passion for the song, feeling the feels will make it so good and working with someone to bounce ideas is really good too
Pop could look like 4bars into, 16bars verse, 4bars pre chorus, 8 bars verse 2, 8 bars Chorus, 8bars bridge, 8 bars Chorus. Helps to have direction in your music so that you can make quicker progress.
"Release worthy" is a question of your musical ability and creativity (and how high you set the bar for quality, because most people online set a pretty low standard for themselves). Someone with at least a basic foundation in music (particularly electronic music and synthesis) could have a decent quality track in 2-3 weeks while learning Ableton.
Ableton isn't difficult at all. It's just software. If you know specifically what you want to do, you can google how to do it. Writing a genuinely original banger however is fucking challenging (anyone who thinks it's easy probably needs to reevaluate their own music. If someone tells me it's easy to write a number one hit, then I know their music is crap).
Also consider that there are some people who have used Ableton for over a decade, still have little to no music theory or production knowledge and therefore still cannot produce what I would consider "release worthy" music (hell, most YouTubers I hear create absolute recycled rubbish - they release it, have thousands of subscribers but is it "release-worthy"? IMO definitely not, and they all just copy each other with the same boring shit). A lot of people struggle to complete a single song. They might be proficient at using their DAW, but be absolutely clueless about song writing. The number of Bro's stuck in 4 bar loop hell is actually pretty funny. "God damn it. How do I get out of this loop. Fuck it, I'm gonna start a new track". It's funny, but this is a real issue for quite a few people who never bothered to learn more than just using a piece of software.
So I guess it's dependent on your definition of "release-worthy" in combination with your musical talent and skill. Any software is basic to learn. It's your creativity that matters.
But you'll never know if you never try, so I wish you all the best - go create something uniquely you. Most importantly, have fun - because you may spend 6 months creating total junk - but if you enjoy the process and have fun, then that's all that matters.
This is your friendly reminder to read the submission rules, they're found in the sidebar. If you find your post breaking any of the rules, you should delete your post before the mods get to it. If you're asking a question, make sure you've checked [the Live manual](https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/welcome-to-live/), [Ableton's help and support knowledge base](https://www.ableton.com/en/help/), and have searched the subreddit for a solution. If you don't know where to start, [the subreddit has a resource thread](https://redd.it/zkhqhe). Ask [smart questions](http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#before).
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Hey! 6 months is a decent amount of time to learn live, i teach and most clients do 1 session a week and i find after 5/6 sessions they are able to navigate the program and get their own ideas down
As long as you are referencing tracks and understanding what is going on, then i dont see why not! The mixing/mastering might take a bit longer but you should have the basics down!
if you are keeping it simple. Yes. Have someone on your side who helps catch you when you start doing bad habits. Even if it's just a buddy that knows what he's doing checking in once every 2 weeks. I'd definitely taper your experiences and instead of focussing on 'making a full track' start with seperating that out. Because to make a full track you need to have good single parts. And if you don't focus on those 1 by 1 you'll have a lot less tools to work with. To give a bit of illustration; you could want to make disco house for example. You can learn how to do a house bass and kick. But unless you've learned how to do a lot of styles of disco bass lines and learned how people build basslines very deeply you'll have a lot of trouble making the track sound good as a whole. The same goes for drums. It's easy to make a 4 to the floor drum beat. But your track might get boring unless you've learned how to build fills and variations, tweak drums to play in unison with the bass or melody at times to help enhance the song. Will those generic things that are easy to learn let you make a 'good enough' track? Yes. But you really need those tools of at least having vague knowledge and the ability to execute it to be able to make tracks that you'll look back on 5 years from now and be like "aight that's fire though!" I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. But focus on the smaller stuff. You'll have a lot more fun and get further if you are able to celebrate you making a sick bassline. Or a cool drum groove. Or that amazing chord progression that really captures your feeling. And the best about that. you can save those things and revisit them later to turn into full songs once you feel you've gotten better at arranging and songwriting... or even when you made a drum beat that suddenly matches perfectly for that bass or that melody. And now instead of staring at a blank canvas trying to make a full song happen. Now you have a drum beat and a bass and you're just filling in the blank. It's just a lot easier, more fun, and you wont get dissapointed with yourself when you've only made a good bass, or that good melody, or that good chord progression.
Thank you so much, this is greatly appreciated!!!!!
I like what you wrote here. I will use that information for myself also. Is there anything more you can share with us? It's just that it really looks useful what you wrote.
like what? A good general tip is that when you get stuck. You take another song. Warp it to the bpm your song is at and put markers where the intro/verse/chorus/drop/breakdown start and stop. Then remove the song and place your own song in those markers to 'steal' the song structure. You'll do that 20-30 times and you'll naturally start knowing what kind of song structure you want. At first it'll be a bit hard to understand why sections transition well. But now you're 'stealing' a song structure. You can totally steal the "oh there's a riser happening here and the drums get more busy, then it stops for a bit and then a drop" or "oh, they removed the hats from the drums for this part" or "oh on verse 2, they did something different in the drums but kept the rest the same" Figuring out those things helps you build a library of tools to change song sections at a more song level.
My friend, sorry for what I am about to say... but if you judge the quality of what you do by how much time you've spent on a DAW you have to review what you think music production is! I mean...in the end, Ableton is just a tool. There is of course a learning curve and the more time you spend on it the better you get at translate what is on your mind into sounds and ideas. What should matter is if you are satisfied with what you have done. Music writing is something you learn by doing it, by listening to lots of stuff and by facing every obstacle in front of you (plus, some music training in the traditional manner doesn't hurt)... Keep doing it. Publish it. Embrace praises and criticism. And constantly put yourself on the challenge. Looking forward to hear some music from you! :)
>Do you think 6 months is enough of time to make decent release-worthy music? Really depends on the person. While one person could probably do it in even less than 6 months, another person might take years to do so. >How much Ableton can you ideally learn in 6 months? Again, really depends on the person. If you treat every day of the 6 months like you're putting yourself through a course, putting hours and hours into it, you can learn quite a lot. Now if we combine your 2 questions, you're basically asking if someone in the process of learning to use Live can also make something worthy of release in 6 months and I'm going say maybe. Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? No.
Thank you for your input!!! So should ideally the goal for 6 months should be DAW mastery? Or should it be getting to sound better ? How do I gauge what to learn in 6 months?
Ableton has resources on learning Live on their website. Start there. Focus on learning how to use the program. Everything else is irrelevant. Also, I can't tell you how to gauge what to learn. Only you can.
DAW mastery might be a bit much, but you could easily learn it well enough to release music. Unless you know nothing about making and recording music, then you've got a journey ahead of you
I think overall ableton, like music, is a life long journey. Everyone progresses at different rates, has different skills and natural talents. Ableton isn’t just production. It’s mixing, mastering, recording, engineering, sound design, etc. you could be great at production and really suck at mixing or any other important facet. And then on top of that, the music you’re recording is gonna hit you with different hurdles. Like, micing and mixing a full drum kit with a track in a bad room will Be hard, where as if you’re making more synth generated music, finding synth sounds you like without sound design knowledge will Be tough. All I’m trying to say is, anything in life that is worth doing is not easy. Don’t expect to be a master in 6 months but if you make a track today and look back on it after 6 months of constant work and attempts, you will def see improvement
Your tracks early on are going to be bad and should be thought of us learning experiences, not a race to get to “release-worthy music” as fast as possible. It’s less about learning a piece of software and more about learning techniques and processes that work for you and lead to better results. You won’t need to ask this question when you’re able to assess your own capabilities and satisfaction with your own work for yourself.
Check production music live, they have really good courses from scratch, some of them are free!
It sounds like you are asking for validation. Post a track or you can send me a project and I can tell you where you are at. Can you make professional level music in a 6 month time span? Yes it is possible if you have extra dedication and commitment to your goal. If you are spending maybe an hour a day on this goal, no it is not possible. Could you become a master guitar player in a few months? Yes it is possible but highly unlikely because it takes literally years to figure out the technical parts and then you get to focus on building your style. To answer your questions, yes you can accomplish these goals. You just need the time and effort to put into understanding it all. I’ve been making House music for almost three decades and I am finally getting to the point of making stuff I am actually happy with. That is my own journey and I’ve had a lot of obstacles and distractions so I couldn’t put the time and effort towards it. Enjoy the journey and try to have fun with what you are making.
[https://www.ableton.com/en/live/learn-live/](https://www.ableton.com/en/live/learn-live/) just fyi someone posted this question like 10 minutes ago.
I watched YSAP (you suck at producing) helped me a lot. Took me a week to watch it all. Also just experiment and play around imo. Those are the two things that got me comfortable.
I got a track signed to a label in 10 months. I think if you put enough time into it it’s def possible. Just put in the hours and stay learning and experimenting with new things
I return to this masterclass often https://youtu.be/oQa0UclLItI?si=TrfEGB-0TjVLDeyw
I mean yeah it’s totally doable. Now I won’t say that the release worthy music you make will be mixed and mastered to a professional level but you can surely learn some mixing techniques in those 6 months and get some good sounding stuff. Now it’s not gunna be chart topping or sell out shows but it’s fun. And you continuously learn new tips and tricks along the way. Build instrument and effects racks, save them in ur presets folder. Build chains within those racks to create different layers. Use mid side eq and see how much it can clean up a dookie water sound. Use side chain compression on ur bass for ur kick to cut thru, use delay to add some space to ur sounds, saturation is good for adding volume and color to sounds. Just some quick lil things that took me a while to learn that are really beneficial
I learned Ableton in a weekend. Was making great music and releasing it within a month. But I already had lots of experience creating music and producing in other DAWs.
Yeah totally doable. Definitely focus on Live skills and not music skills. Ignore quality and bask in the totally unoriginal loops you copied and pasted and you'll be a star. /s
Is this sarcasm?
Ableton is generally very user friendly. For better performance run it on at least an i7. There are some navigation controls changes in 12 so for now I stay with 11. The only slight downside is at mixing level there are less effects and pro versions in standard. I really want to upgrade to Suite but them high price tags need to come off.
i am also in a similar boat and been hammering ableton for a couple of months now! if you want someone to work with or bounce ideas around with i’m available
I've been working on a mix for two weeks on and off and it's sounded super good so I would say yes 💜 but having passion for the song, feeling the feels will make it so good and working with someone to bounce ideas is really good too
I'm also very new to Ableton
Pop could look like 4bars into, 16bars verse, 4bars pre chorus, 8 bars verse 2, 8 bars Chorus, 8bars bridge, 8 bars Chorus. Helps to have direction in your music so that you can make quicker progress.
"Release worthy" is a question of your musical ability and creativity (and how high you set the bar for quality, because most people online set a pretty low standard for themselves). Someone with at least a basic foundation in music (particularly electronic music and synthesis) could have a decent quality track in 2-3 weeks while learning Ableton. Ableton isn't difficult at all. It's just software. If you know specifically what you want to do, you can google how to do it. Writing a genuinely original banger however is fucking challenging (anyone who thinks it's easy probably needs to reevaluate their own music. If someone tells me it's easy to write a number one hit, then I know their music is crap). Also consider that there are some people who have used Ableton for over a decade, still have little to no music theory or production knowledge and therefore still cannot produce what I would consider "release worthy" music (hell, most YouTubers I hear create absolute recycled rubbish - they release it, have thousands of subscribers but is it "release-worthy"? IMO definitely not, and they all just copy each other with the same boring shit). A lot of people struggle to complete a single song. They might be proficient at using their DAW, but be absolutely clueless about song writing. The number of Bro's stuck in 4 bar loop hell is actually pretty funny. "God damn it. How do I get out of this loop. Fuck it, I'm gonna start a new track". It's funny, but this is a real issue for quite a few people who never bothered to learn more than just using a piece of software. So I guess it's dependent on your definition of "release-worthy" in combination with your musical talent and skill. Any software is basic to learn. It's your creativity that matters. But you'll never know if you never try, so I wish you all the best - go create something uniquely you. Most importantly, have fun - because you may spend 6 months creating total junk - but if you enjoy the process and have fun, then that's all that matters.
This is your friendly reminder to read the submission rules, they're found in the sidebar. If you find your post breaking any of the rules, you should delete your post before the mods get to it. If you're asking a question, make sure you've checked [the Live manual](https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/welcome-to-live/), [Ableton's help and support knowledge base](https://www.ableton.com/en/help/), and have searched the subreddit for a solution. If you don't know where to start, [the subreddit has a resource thread](https://redd.it/zkhqhe). Ask [smart questions](http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#before). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ableton) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Hey! 6 months is a decent amount of time to learn live, i teach and most clients do 1 session a week and i find after 5/6 sessions they are able to navigate the program and get their own ideas down
Thank you so much. Is 6 months good of a time to make tracks sound decent enough, with proper sound design, mixing and mastering?
As long as you are referencing tracks and understanding what is going on, then i dont see why not! The mixing/mastering might take a bit longer but you should have the basics down!
Thank you, much appreciated!!
Thanks for saying thanks! It's so nice to see Redditors being grateful :)
Omg I just happen to be super expressive in general, just spent my time writing personalised thank you notes and letters to my college professors