Dance music manual

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1. gtaniMay 2023
   and anybody that wants to go serious/pro, there's Snoman's Dance Music Manual, 4th edition but earlier editions shd still be useful.
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2. playing_coloursAug 2019
   You can find quite a lot here https://www.lynda.com/Ableton-Live-training-tutorials/139-0.... The link is for Ableton, but you can find the courses for other DAWs there.

   I started with Ableton a few years ago, because it is widely used for electronic music production. Also, my employer provided 50% discount on Ableton products :)

   I’d like to also recommend this book https://www.amazon.de/Dance-Music-Manual-Rick-Snoman/dp/0415... if you are interested in theory.

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3. omer_balyaliAug 2019
   Audible Genius (http://www.audiblegenius.com) -> This is really a good resource. The subscription will be online tomorrow, 14,99$/m. I'm using it for some months now and it's really helpful, it develop your ear enormously. It's from the same guy who created Syntorial (http://www.syntorial.com).

   Dance Music Manual (http://www.dancemusicproduction.com) from Rick Snoman, version 4 has been recently released and it's the only book you need (for a time being). I don't own it but Secrets of Dance Music Production looks good too.

   Melodics (http://www.melodics.com) is also good for practicing keyboard, if you're interested in learning to play the keyboard.

   Music Production is very similar to front-end development, especially Javascript development. Your hardware-software studio is like your bundle system, continuous integration etc. So there are many moving parts to learn and it takes time and many many readings (books, blogs, forums, facebook groups, music store product descriptions etc.). It also takes time to develop your ear and in time you will see that new levels will be opened in your mind, like a game. You will hear more details, you will easily describe the qualities of the sound (is it sine wave or a square, what kind of sonic movements happening, what kind of effects with what kind of settings make that specific sound sound like that)

   It's fun, takes time, may take money (if you're interested in hardware studio and premium software plugins). But it's basically so much fun!

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4. gtaniMay 2017
   I was starting on the opposite tack, tho haven't got far, synthesizing/sampling kicks, snares and bass lines from scratch, which is prett tricky, like a kick is a sine wave swept down, play with ADSR envelope, saturate/compress, then you typically layer 3 separate kick tracks by phase aligning and more post processing. There's a lot to getting a good sounding kick with presence, attack, body.

   The reference on this is Rick Snoman's Dance Music Manual, 3rd ed.

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5. gtaniSep 2016
   For those interested in online/soft synths, sequencers and samplers (pretty deep rabbit hole)look up past discussions of Max for Live, ChucK, SuperCollider, Impromptu, CSound. Max Live is part of Ableton Suite license for around $700, I think others are open source/license. Also the clojure overtone and haskell tidal live coding libs. I think there were also threads about writing your own VST/AU plugins.

   Snoman's "Dance Music Manual" and Shepard "Refining Sound" are good books to start with

   (I'm old school about synths and sequencer, i think it's best to start with a knobby hardware synth, microbrute, ms2000, Minilogue, bass station II, sh201, mopho and understand how it's designed to work and how it glitches/fails gracefully)

   https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9178933

   https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9518601

   https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9573471

   https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9640218

   https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9635037 (that particular K-S synth isn't online anymore but somebody else put up a demo)

   https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10177716 (supercollier, alda et al)

   Big fan of Terry Riley, Lamont Young, Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt also.

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6. sethhochbergFeb 2016
   A fascinating read that I rarely see mentioned in these kind of threads is Rick Snoman's Dance Music Manual - for anyone interested in synths and their role in electronic music, it provides tons of information on the when/where/why/how various synth techniques became popular in different styles of dance music and gives good introductory information on how to take the raw synth components you can create in software or hardware (waveforms, filters, envelopes, etc) and turn them into the kinds of sounds common in various dance music genres.

   The book is written with a slant towards the aspiring dance music producer, but, it should be plenty interesting for anyone who wants to have a bit more musical interest in synthesis beyond the purely mathematical angle.

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