Hi guys,
I am a huge lover of music, I listen to it all the time and have recently decided that I would like to start making my own as a hobby. The issue is I have no idea where to begin. In terms of the music I listen to, it is mostly electronic (dance music and ambient) and occasional alt rock/other genres. I love techno in particular and would love to be able to produce my own techno tracks, as well as be able to DJ in that genre.
Last year I decided to buy a digital piano, as I had read in a lot of places that learning the piano/keyboard was the best instrument to start with if you wanted to get into production. I took about 4-5 months of lessons last year which has helped me with the very basics, but since then have been playing only semi-regularly using the self-learning app SimplyPiano. It is helpful for a guide but I feel like I am not improving much at all. I also don't feel like I get the same enjoyment out of learning the piano in isolation, as my real passion is electronic music and often I am learning pieces on the piano which don't really excite me on there own. It would be nice to be able to play to a high standard, but my main motivation would be for my piano knowledge to feed into my techno production/DJing.
I also bought a Novation LaunchKey mini around the same time, which was bundled with Ableton Live Lite. I found an online course for Ableton which I followed, again for a few months, and managed to make a few sounds with it. I have struggled to learn how to use my midi keyboard however (lol) and generally don't know what I am doing without the course to follow. I am now at the stage where I feel I need to upgrade to Ableton Live Suite (full version) in order to continue making progress, but I am hesitant to do this as I feel like I do not have enough musical knowledge or experience to make the most of the software. I feel very restricted by having basically zero formal musical training.
I honestly don't know where to go from here. It feels like I do not know enough about music to make much progress with production. I would ideally like to be learning about more than one area at once (piano, production, DJing) so that I can link the skills together, but where should I start?
I also don't have any DJ equipment but would love to get into this at some stage. I have a digital piano (Casio CDP-S100BKC5), a keyboard (Roland GO:KEYS) and a midi keyboard (Novation LaunchKey mini) and the limited version of Ableton (Live Lite). I also have a subscription to SimplyPiano.
Is it worth restarting the piano lessons? Maybe getting some production/DJing lessons? Obviously I can probably only afford to pay for lessons in one area. What area should I focus on first?
Any advice on any of this would be super helpful.
Thanks!
Submitted September 06, 2023 at 01:19PM by tom-seymour https://www.reddit.com/r/Learnmusic/comments/16boihf/interest_in_keyboardpiano_learning_electronic/?utm_source=ifttt
Javier Rodriguez
Wednesday, September 6, 2023