Ive been using Ableton and reason for a year now and i know the software well enough, i have made a lot of tracks but they are too experimental (I start a lot of projects (like my prodigy remix) and get annoyed at lack of progress, save what i have done in the hope that i will go back and finish them when i have more experience)

My problem is time signatures, arranging and beats i find it difficult to get right, i own hardware synths and a sampler i know them inside out (im good at creating patches, my own samples and sequences), its hard to get the ideas for beats in my head onto the screen if you know what i mean.

what if i take a course in music theory, would i need to do that? Or maybe my problem is i leave the beats til last cause i don't know time signatures very well, is it better to start with makin beats before adding other elements?

i always have it on 4/4 but dont know what the others mean, do i need to keep changing it for each section of the song, also any time i use quantizing it fucks it up even more..... aahhhhhh its so confusing!

4/4 is what is called a time signature and it indicates how many beats there are in a bar, a bar being a segment of time that's regular. 4/4 is basically four beats in a bar. So when you hear a techno track with the kick on every beat, it's just going 1 2 3 4. Difficult to explain without drawing stuff (that's how I teach my students, with lots of drawing)! Usually, a track won't change from 4/4 to another time signature like 3/4 or 9/8.

Taking a course in music theory is not necessary, Bob Dylan never knew anything about theory. However, it's damn useful, I mainly write by ear but if I just get stuck on a tune and don't know where to go next, I'll do a bit of experimenting with theory till I find something I like the sound of.

Oh, and usually, writing the beat first really helps. Beats not only give you a good sense of structure and timing but beats are a big part of genres.

colaborations can help. You say you are good at using the software, making sounds ect.. The hard part for you is making a whole tune. yes?

Try making a track with someone who uses the same software as you. Send the file back between you guys. Make some changes here and there.

That will also give you some inside on how other people makes music.

You can't learn much about rhythm by reading theory....it's more practive creativity and instict.
Try to recreate rhythms of commercial tracks starting from simple rhythms and then going to complicated.That's agood starting point.


Rhythm is the one of the 3 steps to build a drumbeat.

The second step is the "humanising" (fixing the velocities of volume and the times of the drumbeat to sound more natural and alive )

The third step is the mixing of different elements of the drumbeat by usind different outputs to have desired result (to avoid mud ect) aaaaand the global mixing of the drumbeat to give similarity.

EDIT
Important:
The samples you're gonna use must be at the right notes and the editing must be the right aswell. I mean, you can't use a snare with a long "tail" on fast tempo/rhythm drumbeat just like that...you've got to edit it properly or to use an other one.

thanks for the tips, i will keep practicing

So - I´m not really into music production, but what is the difference between i.e. using a program like "reason" and a program in that you can use music samples and put them into a self-created midi-file ?

I asked cos my remix was under critic it sounds too robotic, but if I would do i.e. a beat as a midi and a beat in reason, are there differences to hear ? I dunno what was meant with "robotic" ???

Doesn´t Liam i.e. sometimes use Midi ? I guess it depends on what you want to do, or am I wrong ???

which version of reason are you using? if you are using reason 4, there is a "regroove mixer" this basically adds shuffle and swing to beats and basslines etc.. so they dont sound robotic. i used to have the same problem, but adding shuffle or groove to the track makes it sound better

I don´t use reason, cos I don´t have it. But if you can give me a good audio example to compare a beat produced in a midi-file and the same beat with that "shuffle" function in reason maybe I can see the difference... But I want to know then, why there is a difference ? That´s the point I don´t understand.... hard to describe....

btw. my remix based on soundfonts i connected into a midi-program, created the tune as instrumental, recorded it and finally added in an audio mixer the recorded instrumental and the audio-file origianl source together and extracted them as a wave file.

i use fl studio i used it for awhile now but need more practice and i was wondering if any of you guys use fl studio if so can you give me any tips .

I would say my tip is to get a big bundle of vst effects -you can find torrnts out there for them everywhere. Also Edison is a good tool and learning the key shortcuts.

okay thanks for the advice :)