(Part 3) Best music books according to redditors
We found 14,504 Reddit comments discussing the best music books. We ranked the 5,352 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 41-60. You can also go back to the previous section.
You could try checking out a book like Drum Programming (Music Instruction): A Complete Guide to Program and Think Like a Drummer by Ray F. Badness https://www.amazon.com/Drum-Programming-Complete-Program-Drummer/dp/0931759544
We need to understand what theory is and where it comes from.
For example, it might not be very useful to analyze a rap song with the same techniques we do with Classical stuff. It's certainly not useful to analyze a drum cadence in that way.
So first you need to pick out a style that you really want to analyze out. Hell, you could start with a single song. But either way, follow that backwards through time/formal analysis. You'll find that many styles follow this thing called "tonal theory". The idea is that much of music has a tonal center - that's to say, a single chord (and by some extensions, a single pitch or note) that we can use to define the entire key/song.
The beginning of tonal music came around the Baroque era, but we can start with Classical-era stuff (i.e. Mozart, Handel, Haydn). At this point there's clear structure to it - there are ideas of tonics, dominants, and predominants. This will end up being the basis of a TON of music - so-called "classical", rock, pop, jazz - much of the music we have today is reliant on this set of ideas.
So how do you start? Well, find some structure. Music has absolutely zero shortcuts. You need to carve out your own path through theory. Unfortunately this means acknowledging some permanent, temporally-obstacles (for example, learning atonality after tonality changes your understanding of atonality), but a not-so-bad way to do it is chronologically.
To do this, you can hit up musictheoryonline. Don't skip any of the exercises, boring as they may be. Or pick up a textbook. This was my undergrad textbook^1 , and I think it's pretty good. Read through each chapter. Take the time to listen to all the examples.
War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (and talk on it here)
I haven't got around to reading these books yet, but they seem to say that when you look at the historical archeological evidence, the % of people who die in conflicts has been going down, and societies that killed each other with clubs, poisoned arrows, etc. actually killed a higher % than current societies do with high powered weaponry and bombs. I think the problem is that there's news media reporting everywhere these days so you might get the impression that violence is everywhere/getting worse.
From the video of the talk I linked to, this slide is pretty interesting: http://www.edge.org/images/sp-Slide011.jpg
Lots to go on.. but start with the Rod Gervais book
Go by this and you'll be OK. Walls with double drywall + green glue will do you right... take care with ANYTHING ELSE that goes through a wall. Doors, HVAC, electrical... that's the tricky part.
Your best bet is to get a decent theory textbook. It might not always be material that you think is applicable to what you do, but it will set the groundwork for more specialized study.
Clendinning/Marvin
Laitz
Some of the material in the above is also found in Seth Monahan’s YouTube, www.musictheory.net, and www.openmusictheory.com.
I also suggest Understanding Rock to get an idea of what analysis of rock music can look like, though you’ll probably need a grasp on a good chunk of textbook theory before you get there. (Same as for this article, and the knowledge requirement is probably even higher for that one.)
Hey! I can relate exactly to where your'e coming from. I, some years ago, decided I wanted to get into building synths. I ended up getting a job at a pedal company and have spent more time learning to build and repair pedals than synths. I don't work there anymore, but it gave me a lot of perspective into the field as we also made euro-rack modules.
First up: I don't want to scare you off from this, but just want to give you a realistic perspective so that you go into this knowing what you are getting into. Making synths is hard and it's expensive. As far as electronic projects go, making a synthesizer is up there on the list. I've repaired powerplant turbine controller circuitboards that were simpler than some of the synths I've owned. This isn't to say, "don't do it!" but, expect to learn a lot of fundamental and intermediate stuff before you ever have something like a fully-featured synth that you built in your hands.
It's also expensive. A cheap synth prototype is going to cost a couple hundred bucks, easy, while a more fully-featured prototype could cost into the thousands to produce, and that's just to build one working prototype. If you want to make a run of products you're going to need money up front, and not a small amount. So, just be prepared for that inevitability.
One final note is that my perspective is broad (digital and analog) but is rooted in analog electronics because that's where I started. This isn't the only path you can take to get to where you want to go but honestly in my opinion, even if you're going to go mostly digital later, you need to understand analog.
If you have never messed with electronics much before I highly recommend the Make: Electronics book. I'm a hands-on person and this was the most effective book I found that let me study electronics fundamentals the way I wanted to; by making stuff! No matter which direction you go on (digital, analog, hybrid, DSP, SID, etc) you're going to want to know how to pick the right resistor, or how to pop an LED into a circuit, and this book will teach you that.
Solid follow-up books from there are Make: More Electronics, Practical Electronics for Inventors, How To Diagnose and Fix Everything Electronic, and The Art of Electronics. All of these books are good books that touch on different concepts you will find useful, so I encourage you to look through them and decide for yourself which of these interests you.
Around this same time, I'd encourage you to start getting into kits. Honestly, before you build anything synth, I'm going to recommend you build some pedals. Effects pedals are fun and rewarding to build without being too hard. Start with a distortion circuit and work your way up from there. Once you can build a delay pedal without freaking out, move on to euro-rack kits, or other synth kits. While you're building these kits, don't just build them, play with the circuits! Try swapping components where you think you can, or adding features. One of my first kits was a distortion pedal with a single knob, but by the time I was done tweaking on it it had five knobs and two toggle switches!
Once you're feeling somewhat comfortable with electronics, then you can dive into the holy grail of analog synth design: Make: Analog Synthesizers this amazing book was written by the brilliant Ray Wilson who recently passed away. His life's goal was to bring the art of building analog synths into the hands of anyone who wanted to learn, and there is no better place to receive his great wisdom than this book. You should also check out his website Music From Outer Space along the way, but the book covers so much more than his website.
If you make through most or all of those resources you are going to be well-equipped to take on a career in synth-building! I'm personally still on that last step (trying to find the time to tackle Make: Analog Synthesizers) but hope within the next year or two to get that under my belt and start diving in deep myself. It's been a fun journey of learning and discovery and I wouldn't trade the skills I've gained in electronics for much.
Hope this helps, good luck!
The 1960's "counter-culture" music scene was rife with military brats, you should check out some of Dave McGowan's work on the subject. Intelligence has been recruiting people for roles in popular culture for a long time.
Just to act as devil's advocate here - I would recommend at least balancing this guy's work out with some of the more standard texts on mixing (listed below). I checked out this video a while back and was a little weirded out by his approach, which often steps into pseudoscientific territory. If you go to the author's company website, you'll see some dubious claims and suggestions about mixing techniques:
-"There are archetypal frequencies that have been used since the beginning of time to affect us."
-"As shown by the research of Alfred Tomatis, every frequency is a nutrient."
-"Tuning A to 432 hertz vs. 440 has been proven to resonate better with the resonant frequency of our cells - Tuning concert pitch to more auspicious frequencies makes the music go deeper."
-"High Frequencies activate the mind; Low Frequencies calm the body."
-"When you relate to frequencies based on ancient Chakra energies, the way you "feel" the balance of frequencies in a mix in a whole different way that goes through your whole body instead of just your mind. "
I'm sure the guy's mixes sound great - and he seems to have been a successful mixing engineer - but I personally wanted nothing to do with this guy. There are other "holistic" approaches to mixing (like Mike Stavrou's Mixing with your Mind) that work without having as much of a "snake oil" flavor to them. But as always, if this guy's approach works for you and you can look past his quirks, then I suppose it's a good resource.
Other resources: Mike Senior's Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio, Roey Izhaki's Mixing Audio, Bobby Owsinski's The Mixing Engineer's Handbook
There are a lot of courses. Any specific topics you're interested in?
Edit: I'll just list a few anyway that I've used in classes (this may not reflect all professors' choices for the same subjects).
Tonal Harmony: Kostka-Payne - Tonal Harmony
Counterpoint 1: A Berklee book by the late professor Rick Applin. Some also use this Fux translation/adaptation
Counterpoint 2: Bach Inventions & Sinfonias (any edition, really)
"Advanced" Counterpoint: The Well-Tempered Clavier (again, any edition)
Early Twentieth-Century Harmony: Persichetti - Twentieth-Century Harmony
Post-Tonal Theory/Analysis: Straus - Intro to Post-Tonal Theory
Instrumentation/Orchestration: Adler - The Study of Orchestration &
Casella/Mortari - The Technique of Contemporary Orchestration
Western Music History - Burkholder/Paiisca - A History of Western Music (8th or 9th edition)
Conducting 1 - Notion Conducting
Conducting 2 Notion + Stravinsky's Petrushka
Berklee's own (jazz-based) core harmony and ear-training curricula use Berklee textbooks written by professors which, as someone else mentioned, come unbound and shrink-wrapped at the bookstore. You can find older (PDF) versions of the Berklee harmony textbooks here. Of course this list only represents explicit book choices - there are a lot of excerpt-readings, and there's a lot of instruction that isn't found in these books even in the associated courses.
Normally, I would try to (somewhat) annotate stuff I link/mention but I'm tired on all levels of my being so forgive me for making this reply less detailed than I'd like it to be. Keep in mind that I don't know sht and half the time, I'm talking out my ss.
Mostly I hope this, at least, helps you guide your search. Or the things I write here are so horribad that it prompts someone to viciously correct me, thus giving you the real info you need! :p
I might circle back after some time to add notes here and there. Maybe. Also, this first reply will be focused on quartal harmony but I should be able to muster up the spoons to write up a search guide for minimalism later.
First, there are some really neat proto examples of quartal/quintal harmony in Medieval music. The starting search term for this would be organum. There were/are more than a few kinds^A of organum but examples of parallel organum should be most interesting to you.
David Fenwick Wilson has a book on Early music called Music in the Middle Ages: Style and Structure. It's admittedly an older book but I mention it specifically because there's a lovely youtube video^B with examples from the related anthology. As always, I'm a sl*t for Norton's music history books^C so check those out as well, imo.
Outside of the realm of "classical" music, most of the quartal harmony you'll encounter will be in the form of quartal voicings^D for otherwise tertian chords. It's a favorite trick for more than a few jazz giants so naturally, there's an absolute glut^E of resources for this.
When we get to classical music though, we start to get some actual spicy stuff, like fully formed quartal harmonic systems and languages. Paul Hindemith was a BIG fan of quartal stuff. You can check out his own writings^F about his musical system in his book on composition. Arnold Schoenberg also devotes a section in his book on harmony^G to the newer quartal sounds cropping up (well "new" when he wrote it at any rate).
From there it's really a matter of doing the grunt work of either analyzing composers you find writing quartal harmony OR researching analyses of said composers. Sure, quartal harmony (and the related term "interval cycle") gets mentioned in more than a few books on 20th century harmony like Vincent Persichetti's^H or Richard Strauss's^I books; both might be good jumping off points on your journey.
Seemingly, every composer and their mother (Hindemith, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Copland, Cowell, Ives) experimented with quartal writing in the 20th century. So while definitive guides might be hard to track down, specific examples aren't. I'll include an analysis or two that you might find helpful in the list below. Be on the look out for any edits I might sneak in!
Beyond that, perhaps the most concrete way we could help you would be to analyze specific pieces/instances of quartal language you find and walk you through any questions you had about the piece. When I'm not tired, I'm usually down to dig into some cool music. Drop a score, ask something, and let's analyze something together! Still, I hope this helps. Have fun on your compositional journey and take care!
A.) https://sophia.smith.edu/~rsherr/earlypol.htm
B.) https://youtu.be/SgHzH5iDcGQ
C.) https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393929157
D.) https://leadingtone.tumblr.com/post/8203279125/quartal-voicings-in-jazz-here-refers-to-an
E1.) https://www.jazzguitar.be/blog/quartal-chords-harmony-voicings-for-guitar/
E2.) https://www.thejazzpianosite.com/jazz-piano-lessons/jazz-chord-voicings/quartal-voicings/
E3.) http://greglui.com/blog/quartal-voicings/
F.) https://www.amazon.com/Craft-Musical-Composition-Theoretical-Part/dp/0901938300
G.) https://www.amazon.com/Theory-Harmony-ANNIVERSARY-Arnold-Schoenberg/dp/0520266080
H.) https://www.amazon.com/Twentieth-Century-Harmony-Creative-Aspects-Practice/dp/0393095398
I.) https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Post-Tonal-Theory-Fourth-Joseph/dp/0393938832
J.) Berg's Lyric Suite has plenty of quintal yumminess. Check out Perle's analysis of its interval cycles: https://www.jstor.org/stable/741747?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Basic theory: http://www.indiana.edu/~emusic/etext/toc.shtml, and http://electronotes.netfirms.com/free.htm (e.g. see "Theory and Practice of Musical Sound Synthesis")
Ray Wilson's book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Make-Analog-Synthesizers-Ray-Wilson/dp/1449345220
LM13700 datasheet (has circuit example for VCO, VCFs, VCA, Sample and Hold, PWM, multiplier): http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/lm13700.pdf
The LM13700 is a $1 chip which can be used to implement most of the basic synthesizer modules.
https://hackaday.com/tag/lm13700/
http://musicfromouterspace.com/analogsynth_new/DUALVCA/DLLVCA001.html
http://musicfromouterspace.com/analogsynth_new/STATEVARVCFFEB2006/STATEVARVCFFEB2006.html
http://www.djerickson.com/synth/
"The kits I build use a lot of the same parts over and over, so having a stock of the basics is good. You can probably build this stock up for about $100:
DIP ICs, a few of each: LM13700, TL072, TL074, LM324"
Go and buy yourself a copy of Twentieth-Century Harmony by Vincent Persichetti! It sounds like just the thing you need, and it's legit the most inspiring theory book I've ever had!
And some musical recommendations: Jack Conte has some really harmonically interesting songs. It's never atonal or anything, but there are still some cool weird chord progressions I don't think I've heard anywhere else. Also, go back and listen to some Carlo Gesualdo! Seriously, there's some really out-there stuff in his music, even to modern ears.
It's a lunetta synth. The oscillators are simple CMOS chip opamp ocsillators that run off of DC. Look up the Hex Schmitt Trigger circuit. You can load tons of these into whatever housing you make for awesome noise drone synth stuff. Nic Collins from Make Magezine compiled a simplified workbook on how to approach making circuits similar to these. Here ya go.
I also assume this guy used a fuck ton of timer chips in weird ways to mangle the sound.
How to Rap
To be quite honest, that's what makes it so appealing to me.
The fact that he tells "a pretty generic hood story" as you put it but manages to make it sound so god damn smooth.
Imagine any other artist, writing this song without the rewind concept. It would be the most boring-ass, generic rap song. Nas turned that into a classic.
This song was even talked about in How to Rap: The Art and Science of the Hip-Hop MC. It's a pretty interesting read btw, I recommend it to anyone on /r/hiphopheads/
The AB guide to music theory
It helps if you learn an instrument.
Also helps if you start at 4 years old.
Like anything, you just have to learn it.
I personally think it helps if you’re good at maths.
I’ve always rationalised the way music works as a sequence of functions in time.
It also helps if your thinking can incorporate sound shapes, so you can spatialise sound and work out what should come next based on what just happened.
If you’re able to remember sound abstractly without reference is also really useful, so, can you remember the way a maj9 chord sounds so that you can hear a maj9 regardless of the pitch? Can you remember how a I IV V progression sounds regardless of the pitch? Why is this (CEGA) a C6 chord but this (ACEG) is an Am7 chord? Etc etc etc.
Hi there!
I've been producing Electronic Music as a hobby for almost 10 years.
Here's a quick guide to help you get started:
1.
you will need a DAW (Digita Audio Workstation), this is your tool and work environment in which you will create and mix your beats.
Depending on if you are on Windows or Mac you have a few different options.
FL Studio - This is the DAW I started producing in, back in version 8.something. It is widely considered one of the best starter DAW's because of the very intuitive user interface and HUGE library of native samples and plugins. FL Studio is sometimes looked down upon by some producers, who don't seem to take it seriously as a professional DAW. In my experience these producers often lack experience themselves, FL is a great DAW and in the end it is what you do with the tool that matters ;).
Ableton Live - This is the DAW I currently use, I switched from FL to Ableton for the simple reason that it was easier to collaborate with a friend of mine who also used Ableton at the time. I feel that FL Studio's native plugins and instruments are a bit better than Ableton's, but I personally like Ableton's interface and workflow better than FL's.
What is very specific about Ableton is the "Live Session mode", where you can arrange your sounds and loops in groups that you can trigger live with a midi controller, which is very handy for live performances (obviously) but also often used as a song writing tool, especially in hip-hop and futurebeat genres. - famous artists that use Ableton: Skrillex, Flume, Netsky, Dada Life, ...
These are the two DAW's I have personal experience with, but there are other options as well: Steinberg Cubase, PreSonus Studio One, Apple Logic Pro, and many more. Best to do your own research and download a few trial versions to see which one you like best.
2. After you decided on a DAW and "legally" obtained one, it's time to start making music. By that I mean "time to start making very shit music that you will look back on with huge cringe a few years from now" because that's exactly what it is like.
I don't mean this in a discouraging way, on the contrary! It takes loads of time and effort before you'll start noticing you're improving. One of the most important things to keep in mind is to be self-critical and open to criticism. Don't assume you know better when you're just starting out, be an empty cup because it's impossible to fill one that's already full.
Here's a very inspiring monologue on the subject by Ira Glass
3. Tutorials and books. Here are some books and tutorials that helped me out a lot, and hopefully will help you too!
books:
Mastering Audio: The Art and Science - Bob Katz widely considered to be the producer's bible.
The Mixing Engineers Handbook - Bobby Owsinski
tutorials:
Sadowick's ultimate Ableton Guide a full beginner to intermediate guide of Ableton Live, purely for this tutorial series alone I'd reccommend using Ableton. It's very comprehensive. Sadowick also has lots of other very useful tutorials on his channel, but is currently on hiatus because of his battle with cancer :(
SeamlessR this entire channel is gold. Seamless uses FL Studio but what he teaches is applicable to most DAW's. Lots of great tutorials on synthesis, mostly Drum and Bass focused but very interesting.
ADSR Tutorials very informative tutorials ranging from mixing to synthesis. Often about House and Techno, but most techniques are really applicable to every genre.
____
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if you start with these you'll come a long way, if you have any questions; pm me.
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EDIT here are some subreddits you might be interested in as well:
/r/makinghiphop
/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers
/r/edmproduction
If you're new to guitar, don't worry about a 'routine'. Buy a classical guitar songbook, or better yet, a classical guitar lesson book. A really good one is by Noad, and has good classical pieces to learn: http://www.amazon.com/Solo-Guitar-Playing-Frederick-Noad/dp/0825636795/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317996077&sr=8-1
Rather than focus on scales (which are very uninteresting), try working through a book, or pick a few classical guitar pieces to work on. I think this is the best way to hone your chops, but also keep your interest. You want to be motivated to practice, and scales just don't do that for me.
Classical guitar, if you work at it enough, will naturally build your finger dexterity. In contrast to scales/fingerboard exercises, you are able to see improvement in very definable ways--that is, from one piece to the next. That's where the excitement and drive to play comes from for me.
Good luck!
I am hereby developing three steps to get started in future funk that I will gladly post on any thread where somebody is looking to begin. Here they are, in their first ever iteration. Comments welcome.
 
Step 0. Take your time. Be mentally prepared to throw out dozens of sketches of potential tracks representing hours of work for no other reason than that "they don't click" or you don't know where to take them next. Understand that future funk isn't a formula (and anybody who treats it as one is just asking to be ignored and forgotten). Just like ANY other form of music making, the good and the best take their time to really develop a craft. Be as holistic in your approach as your interest/life/ability allows (learn an instrument if you don't know one already, download ear training courses, basically be as adventurous as you can muster and look to, over time, learn things outside of just "future funk" skills).
 
 
Step 1. Learn to use some key tools. Pick and learn a DAW, anything will do as long as you learn it well (Ableton is popular for its flexibility and horsepower, but is more complicated than FL Studio which is an easy beginner's choice and is plenty legitimate as well). This will be your primary instrument, and over time using it will become second nature.
 
Step 1a. Learn about the tools for mixing- both generally, and the specific versions included in your DAW- this means basic knowledge of compressors, limiters, EQ, and reverbs at the very least to start with. Any audio mixing training will do, no need for it to be genre-specific. Eventually, start looking at mixing tools besides the built-in ones (browsing the Waves Plugin website will be equally exciting and overwhelming). Experiment over time and you'll gradually learn why certain tools/plugins are more powerful/preferred than others, and you'll develop your own preferences for what to use and how things should sound. Pay attention to the most subtle details. There's no shortage of great online tutorials on how to work with and listen to the tools of the trade in audio engineering.
>Recommended Resources: The Mixing Engineer's Handbook
>The Art of Mixing- old 80s tutorial video, very trippy, very educational
 
Step 1b. You'll also want to explore what instruments are built into your DAW, and what instrument plugins you may want to "acquire". Some good starting points for exploring instruments may be plugins that emulate classic synthesizers (CS-80, ARP1200, Korg legacy plugins, etc)- this kind of plays into point #2 as well, so I'll leave this point at that for now.
 
 
Step 2. LISTEN to other music. Your goal is to have a unique and varied and personal set of influences- see a great comment from Amherst here on why this is important.
Dig into your own iTunes library- what unique bits of your past may make interesting influences for your future funk music? My dad loved Dire Straits and Barry White and dad rock, my mom loved Deee-Lite and 80s hip hop. I've played on all of those elements before, plus the stuff I listened to at any point in my life (a lot of jazz in my teen years lol). Dig into the roots of future funk- disco, funk, boogie, smooth jazz, house, french house, 80s pop (feel free to ask for recommendations!). Go on your own digging adventures to find stuff that none of us have before. YouTube is your friend, Discogs is your friend (you can use other people's samples as starting points, but aim to get far away- both Amherst and I have playlists of samples we've used on different projects , just as examples of cool places to start).
You don't have to be looking for samples per say- you might just find some really cool sonic influences or ideas on song arrangement/elements (what synths are they using on that record you really dig? Try to find out!). But you need to spend a LOT of time listening to things that AREN'T future funk in order to make good FF. This is massively important, and one of the reasons future funk can often be seen as a stale genre is that many newcomers list their main influences as other, older FF producers and end up emulating the same old sounds instead of bringing something new to the table.
 
 
Step 3. At the end of the day, when you're looking at your project file and you think you have a groovin future funk tune ready to release, do a quick check that, if everyone did it, would solve 90% of complaints about this genre. "What is my unique contribution to this track?" Did you just take a j-funk song (because that's the type of music that so and so sampled!) and put drums over it at a certain tempo (because that's the tempo future funk is at!)? That fails the test. Did you chop up and rearrange a sample in a really unique way, did you combine 5 different songs to make something new and cool, did you add original instrumentation or harmony to old music? That passes the test.
> Side note: If something isn't very "original" and is just an edit of an existing track, or doesn't use much original material and should be considered a "remix"- be honest and label it as such. There's been a couple controversial FF "tracks" released lately where the artist in question became kinda shunned because they were attempting to pass off slight changes to an existing song as an "original track".
 
Try doing the same sort of self-check when thinking about how you represent yourself as an artist- your style and branding and vibe. Does the whole anime/kanji thing really represent you as an artist and your unique influences accurately? Or did you just default to that after seeing what other people are doing? Figure out something that's true to yourself. (For me, Camino is kinda a representation of me as a social being- upbeat, humorous, outgoing and partygoing- and that's why my music is meant for dancing and appreciating pop culture, and I often use recognizable music.)
 
 
Alright, hope that helps. Anybody starting out can always feel free to PM me, and I think I'll continually work on and update these guidelines/pieces of advice with the help of all mah good friends. There you have it- V1 of Camino's Guide to Starting in Future Funk
This is a great book which goes in depth with the tools and approach needed, along with the main circuits in every modular setup/ synth. It comes from this site which has tons and tons of circuits. They are not really beginner stuff but filled with inspiration and is great to go back to once you have some experience and components to use.
Book: https://www.amazon.com/Make-Analog-Synthesizers-Ray-Wilson/dp/1449345220/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367955744&sr=8-1&keywords=make+analog+synthesizers
Site: http://musicfromouterspace.com/
​
Here is a good blog to read through and watch the videos for some basic circuitry. Some really interesting stuff here! There are 12 posts on different things. He is quite knowledgeable indeed...
https://hackaday.com/2015/02/04/logic-noise-sweet-sweet-oscillator-sounds/
​
And if you really want to learn about electronics in depth (or any other field) check out https://www.khanacademy.org/ which offers lessons for free.
Have you ever read "Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream" by Dave McGowan? It's a must read for everyone to get insight on how these "movements" are created for control. Much like Antifa today. The Hippy movement was a creation of the MK Ultra mind control program....which certainly runs them like cults.
If you haven't read the book yet, I highly recommend it. It's fascinating, especially for those who lived through that period of time.
https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Scenes-Inside-Canyon-Laurel/dp/1909394122/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
I studied out of Tonal Harmony by Kostka and Payne. I found it pretty easy to approach, and the accompanying workbook really reinforces the lessons.
Most college music theory texts have a companion workbook filled with quizzes and practice problems/questions. Where I went to undergrad we used Tonal Harmony and the school I'm going to now uses The Musician's Guide to Theory and Analysis. Not sure if that qualifies as being "accessible," but it's good material if you're willing to part with all those dollars. Text books sure are expensive.
You need to start counting rhythms. You don't need a guitar to do this necessarily. There are a number of books with written out rhythms to practice, such as Louis Bellson's Modern Reading Text in 4/4 For All Instruments, Ted Reed's Progressive Steps to Syncopation for the Modern Drummer, and Gary Hess's Encyclopedia of Reading Rhythms. There are numerous ways to practice the rhythms in these books - counting the rhythm while clapping a steady pulse, counting a steady pulse while clapping the rhythm, tapping a steady pulse with your left hand while clapping the rhythm with your right while also counting, and so on. When I say "count" I mean count out loud. Your goal is to learn to keep your place in measures while accurately executing and eventually feeling rhythms.
You can also do these steps with a guitar in your hand. Just pick a chord - maybe one you're trying to work into your repertoire - and play the written rhythm with that chord while you're counting.
This will probably seem awkward and "unmusical" when you first start, but trust me when I tell you this is going to radically improve your rhythmic vocabulary and time feel over the long haul. This is the kind of thing band and orchestra kids learn as a matter of course and most guitarists don't get because we don't learn to read in ensembles.
War Before Civilization lays out a persuasive case that the premodern era was a very bad place to be - violence and war were endemic problems.
This is a PDF of a TED talk by Steven Pinker showing that warfare and violence are declining. Audio here.
Persichetti's 20th Century Harmony might be exactly what you're looking for.
Because you have an issue of constantly writing in the same key, I feel like your issue won’t be solved by just learning about modal interchange. I believe that thinking about harmony and phrase structure Functionally would be of more use to your process.
Every chord in a harmonic progression serves a function that can be broken down into 3 basic categories:
Each chord flows to the next, so a progression from:
Tonic -> Subdominant -> Dominant -> Tonic
Is atypical. It’s important to note that Tonics can come after a subdominant (T - SD - T), and the subdominant can be skipped and a tonic can lead directly to a dominant (T - D - T). Tonic chords can also lead to other Tonic chords (T - T), the same goes for subdominants and Dominants (S - S; D - D) so our new chart would look like this:
Tonic -><- Subdominant -> Dominant -><- Tonic
Harmonic progressions serve functions as well, and you can reduce almost every harmonic progression can into 3 basic categories (some would say there are only 2, but I prefer to think about it in terms of 3):
I - V - I
I - IV - I
i - ii^o - i
V - I - V
iv - i - iv
I - vi
IV - ii
ii - ii^6
I - vii^6/5ø - I^6
Etc etc
vi - ii - V - I, iv - V - VI, ii - vii^o - V - I, ii - I6/4 - V^7 - I
Etc etc
Ex
(by ascending 4th) vii - iii - vi - (ii - V - I)
(By descending 2nd) V - IV - iii - iii - (ii - V - I)
(Descending 4th) I - V - ii - vi - (V/V - V - I)
Etc etc etc etc
You can interject prolongation and cadential functions in between each sequential chord: I (V - I) - ii - (vi - ii) - iii - (vii - ii) etc. you can also tonicize each chord in the sequence: I - vii^o / ii - ii - vii^o /iii - iii etc etc etc
Phrase functions are also a thing, and these are strongly linked to Harmonic Progression Functions this is where both the theory behind natural chord progressions and sets of harmonic progressions come together. Understanding and being comfortable with phrase functions is extremely important.
In a typical musical sentence, you would have phrase structure that looks like this:
Presentation -> continuation -> cadential
A typical musical period looks like this:
Antecedent -> Consequent
You can mix and match functions to your pleasure, (one b.i. followed by a continuation function; antecedent -> continuation; antecedent -> continuation -> consequent; presentation -> cadential; etc)
Because you write rock music, adhering to Classical Formal structures is not gonna happen. However, each function and it’s interior components (b.i. , c.i., continuation, fragmentation, etc) are used in an altered way very very frequently.
I did not cover modulation is this post, but I will link an article below.
I hope this helps, bellow I will link some sites and books that could help with understanding these concepts beyond this post:
Links:
http://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/HarmonicFunction.html
http://openmusictheory.com/sentence.html
http://openmusictheory.com/period.html
http://openmusictheory.com/hybridThemes.html
http://openmusictheory.com/themeFunctions.html
http://openmusictheory.com/popRockForm-functions
http://openmusictheory.com/Modulation.html
Books:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Analyzing-Classical-Form-Approach-Classroom/dp/0199987297
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Melody-Songwriting-Berklee-Guide-Perricone/dp/063400638X
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Twentieth-Century-Harmony-Creative-Aspects-Practice/dp/0393095398
Try playing through this book, it's pretty difficult.
If you can spare the money I most definitely recommend finding a teacher. You will want to start with rudiments (they can be boring, but you'll be glad you did them in the long haul) and while you can pick them up from books, having a teacher giving feedback helps a lot. You don't have to stay with a teacher on the long-term, if you make it clear that you just want a solid base most teachers know what you mean and want.
If you don't have that money, these are three books I highly recommend to anybody who wants to play any percussion instrument:
http://www.amazon.com/Stick-Control-For-Snare-Drummer/dp/1892764040/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b
Description: This book is full of rudiments. Like ctrocks said: This book is evil. You will most likely both grow to hate and love it. Hate it for both how boring rudiments can get (to me, at least) and how hard they get. But love it for the results and seeing how all those rudiments advance your playing immensely. I suggest picking this up as soon as possible.
http://www.amazon.com/Accents-Rebounds-For-Snare-Drummer/dp/1892764067/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1343162586&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=Accents+and+Rebounds
Description: The 'sequel' to Stick Control. This book adds accents and even more difficult rhythms. I would suggest picking this up at an intermediate level.
http://www.amazon.com/Progressive-Steps-Syncopation-Modern-Drummer/dp/0882847953/ref=cm_lmf_tit_5
Description: Don't let this book fool you. It all starts out really simple. But this is one of those books that really lays down a foundation you will be very grateful for. And when you're getting to a more advanced level, you will see how you can translate a lot of these syncopated rhythms to the entire drumkit. I suggest picking this up as soon as possible.
http://www.amazon.com/4-Way-Coordination-Development-Complete-Independence/dp/0769233708/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c
Description: This book is very well named. You will want to grab this book after you got the basics down, imo. You want to work on the independence of your limbs as soon as possible, but not too soon. Yet again: rudiments. But now rudiments that require all limbs.
http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Techniques-For-Modern-Drummer/dp/0757995403
Description: We're starting to get into the bigger leagues with this book. I honestly don't quite know how to describe this book except for the word: challenging. Challenging in a very, very good way. I recommend picking this up once you're starting to get into a more advanced stage.
These books are for the basics, imo and in the opinion of many fellow drummers as far as I know. But don't forget: the books are merely tools. You don't want to be only playing rudiments, you'll go crazy. I tended to go for a trade: every half out of rudiments rewards me with a half our of putting on tracks and rocking out. Resulting in one-hour sessions a day. Hope this helps!
Edit: Feeling bored so added more books and descriptions.
Just learn some music theory, if you put in the time you'll grow as a musician and won't have to rely on tricks. This book is life.
nnngh I see what you're asking, but it's really just plain old theory about keys and then we can get a bit more complex.
I write atonal music which uses all 12 tones freely, but I still use the rules of the road to guide my decisions. You shouldn't ever throw pitches in willy nilly.
Buy these books. They're produced by the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music here in the UK. They are AMAZING and are a complete guide to everything you need to know. Heck, I'm doing music at degree level and I sometimes still find them useful.
1- http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Guide-Music-Theory-Vol/dp/1854724460
2 - http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Guide-Music-Theory-Part/dp/B00144C78E
John Riley: The Art of Bop Drumming
I would recommend reading.
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The Dance Music Manual. The producer (Rick Snowman) who wrote it has some solid credentials. Its presents the knowledge in a very approachable format and will give you a whole overview from construction of drums/melody/harmony to mixing to mastering.
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For drums you'll want Drum Programming by Ray F Badness. This book will teach you how to create drum progressions that catch attention and don't get boring.
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For synthesis, read SOS's Synth Secrets. Its free, and if you read it and try it out on a synth in your daw, you'll be well on your way to synthetic mastery.
A couple other suggestions. Don't buy any soundproofing product unless the company selling it publishes reliable test data on transmission loss. Lots of sketchy marketing out there -- or things that seem intuitively helpful, but really aren't (like glass block - the regular kind at least).
Get this. I wouldn't expect to start designing studios once you read it. But it will at least give you a sense of the concepts & help cut through the bs that is out there.
If the video interested you, then you should look into learning music theory. And a much better way to do it than watching some guy jump all over a piano while text strobes up on the screen faster than you can read would be to buy a book on the subject.
My recommendations would be this one or this one.
David McGowan uncoverd this years ago before he was killed
Author Dave McGowan wrote a book, Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon, about the nest of creativity that was the rock scene in and around Laurel Canyon in the days of Zappa, The Doors, and Joni Mitchell. Lots of strange occurrences happening in those days, maybe more than mere coincidence can explain. Here's the website
Tons of now-classic rock came from Laurel Canyon, by the way. Even if you think McGowan is a kook, his book is a fascinating read.
You're new here. Welcome, come see how deep the rabbit hole goes ....
https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Scenes-Inside-Canyon-Laurel/dp/1909394122
This is definitely not a rule for how to write music now, just a rule for how to write music in the style of Bach/Mozart/Beethoven/Haydn etc. If you're interested in Tonal (read: Common Practice) Harmony, here are a few good theory books used in Freshman/Sophomore college music curriculums (in my order of preference):
The Complete Musician
Techniques and Materials of Music
Harmony and Voice Leading
Tonal Harmony
I'm also a composer, and I tend to write more modally (and sometimes without a strict tonality), so I just teach these, I don't necessarily follow them in my own writing.
My standard advice for this matter is to avoid any guitar-specific theory books. They tend to focus on the wrong things, teach everything in a confusing manner, and overemphasize modes in a nonsensical way.
This is a great general introduction to tonal harmony, which is where you want to start. It might seem a little stuffy and tangential to guitar, but learning a solid foundation from this point will help you have a great understanding of music.
That's just false. I'd ask you for your source, but I don't think a "gut feeling" would count.
http://www.npr.org/2011/12/07/143285836/war-and-violence-on-the-decline-in-modern-times
http://www.amazon.com/War-Before-Civilization-Peaceful-Savage/dp/0195119126
http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html
20th century harmony goes fairly in-depth about all of those topics.
What a glorious time for you! If you haven't already check out nic collins book this was a big help as I moved beyond bending. Unfortunately, we lost Ray Wilson last year, but Music From Outer Space remains a tremendous resource, his make book is good too..
He just did.
War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage is a good book on how "peaceful" non-Europeans actually were.
Gonna be honest, 20 minutes is fine for grade-schoolers, but if you're looking to get good fast, at your age, I'd suggest closer to an hour of practice and study a day. Soon enough, when you're looking at more serious rep, that should jump up to something more like at least 2-3 hours a day. Warm up with scale exercises (do some Googling for that) and arpeggios, then I'd recommend something like an etude book to start finding new fancy tools for your fingers to use (the one by [Cramer](http://imslp.org/wiki/Studio_per_il_pianoforte,_Op.50_(Cramer,_Johann_Baptist) is excellent).
Remember, Liszt once practiced 14 hours a day. There's no real limit there once you cross the professional threshold.
As far as theory is involved, I really don't know how to help there. My college classes were invaluable in that regard. If you're really interested, we used this textbook (which also has a separate workbook). However, I'm sure you could glean plenty of useful theory basics just talking to lots of theory nerds (ha, like me). Perhaps your teacher would be willing to devote a little time here and there.
Edit: looks like there's a 4th edition now for that textbook, but hey, older means cheaper ;]
You mentioned you like jazz, feel free to hang out with us /r/Jazz
Internet is great, and there is a lot for good free ressources. You'll have to go through a bunch of crap though, it can be confusing for a beginner and takes valuable time away to an already time consuming hobby.
So here are a few books I personally recommand.
Jazzology, an encyclopedia of theory centered around jazz that you can use with any genre. It's really good.
The real book, a good way to learn jazz standards with sheets that aren't so painful, using solfège for melody and letters for chords. This is the format I use with students.
The Jazz Theory book, or anything from mark levine.
The Complete Musician is good if you can find it for cheap, which is no easy task.
The definition of perfect pitch includes knowing the names of the notes. Without this knowledge, it's just "having a good ear". A good way to practice it is picking random notes and visualizing what the chord will sound like before playing it. That vizualisation aspect is the amazing thing about absolute pitch and helps with composing. The tuning or knowing what key you're in things are cute but fairly irrelevant.
Anyway, have fun.
>Isn't there a whole course somewhere?
This is a fundamental theory crash course for total beginners who are interested in learning at a college level yet have no prior experience in theory. It was created by Steven Laitz, who also authored one of the best American undergrad theory text books. I haven't tried it, and I know it costs some moneys... but this guy has an awesome reputation and it looks super legit.
eTheory: Music Theory Fundamentals in 4 weeks
Trailer.
>what the chord progression is. I've come up with, what I believe, to be some pretty good "root notes" for the progression (is that a term??).
Your notes could be "roots" but I would call them "bass notes" or together a "bassline" and in this case that just means they are the lowest sounding notes of whatever chord they will end up being a part of, but not necessarily the root of the note. This might seem confusing but bear with me… if you have a chord with 3 notes, like C major for example. The notes: C, E, G make it up. C is your root note… hence the name of the chord (C Major). If that C note is notated below the other two notes then it is your bass. This is called C major in root position. Bass is just the note on the bottom of the chord. The lowest one. If you decide to put E in the bass and make the chord E, C, G, then now E is your bass notes but C is still your root. This is called C major first inversion. You can do the same and put G in the bass, and have G, C, E, This is called C major second in version, G is your bass but C is still your root. Sorry if this is confusing to you I might have skipped a little ahead in the theory, but it's a pretty basic topic.
>The notes are B-C#-D#-F#
As for your sample, and those 4 notes, I'd say you could be in F Major or B Major, depending on how you decide to harmonize the notes, you could even modulate between the two fairly easily, but that's a little more of an advanced topic.
>How do I determine the chord progression?
There are many ways to harmonize your bass line but if you need some direction, try using the notes in one of the aforementioned keys.
Not sure if I'm helping or just throwing you off even more so I'll stop here.
Edit: formatting and grammar.
You might enjoy The Complete Musician, by Steven Laitz (former theory professor at Eastman, currently a professor at Juilliard). It's used for undergraduate music theory courses in many conservatories and universities these days; the explanations are extremely thorough and there are many examples. However, I don't think it goes through the very basics (such as how to read music).
You won't really *need* this sort of knowledge until you're working on more difficult repertoire, although an understanding of form and musical structure can be very helpful in learning more basic repertoire as well. Some people learn music by hacking through it and imitating their teachers (or imitating a recording); others learn by analyzing it from a theoretical and historical perspective, and applying that knowledge to inform their approach. You might find that you enjoy music (even more than you do currently) if you know more about its processes and inner workings!
As for the very basics, you might find Teoria to be helpful - it has a lot of great tutorials and exercises that'll help you get a good handle on the fundamentals.
For the actual programming, there's the Juce C++ library which is pretty essential. If you spend a few minutes scouring the website, he recommends some good resources (both digital and print) for learning C++.
For DSP knowledge I would start with DSP Guide because it's just bloody incredible.
As far as books go, do you mean books on audio programming or C++? I started learning C++ with C++ Primer, but for audio programming both Designing Audio Effect Plugins In C++ and The Audio Programming Book have been invaluable.
Also check out the KVR Developer Forum!
Here are 2 that have been useful to me...
https://www.amazon.com/Make-Analog-Synthesizers-Electronic-Synth-DIY/dp/1449345220/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=make+synthesizer&qid=1569440610&s=gateway&sr=8-1
https://www.amazon.com/Handmade-Electronic-Music-Hardware-Hacking/dp/0415998735/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=make+synthesizer&qid=1569440643&s=gateway&sr=8-6
tl;dr Ball bearings tossed in a bowl will behave
exactlypretty much the same.The shape of the magnets may be particularly suited to trap the bearings in a flat plane, butnothing crazy is going on, it's just how numbers and geometry work.edit: after checking the source video, I see they're resting on a sheet of acrylic, but hopefully the rest of this comment still helps to simplify the topic and make sense of the often misleading conjecture.
_
Clap along!
"I didn't do anything fancy to make these balloons take this shape, I just tied them together at the base; they naturally form this shape because they can't overlap with each other." - I linked to that part because it captures the essence of the topic: nothing fancy or mysterious is happening with the ball bearings, geometry is simply how numbers as forces manifest in space.
People who like to mystify these phenomena are missing the forest for the trees. They are right to observe that certain structures are recurring in the universe and that it has everything to do with numbers in space, but I get the impression that many new age types like to anthropomorphize everything and make it about numerology or interpret it as the result of an intentional design... Nope, it's all just cold numbers. Two points make a line regardless of whether anyone is there to witness it or invent a word to describe it.
The structure of the universe simply emerges from the fact that competing forces in 3D space inherently balance out in a way that produces certain shapes.
So yes, in fact these ball bearings are reflecting the fundamental mechanism of the cosmos... but it's a rather straightforward explanation and we've already expanded on it's foundation into entire fields of study like quantum mechanics and chemistry.
Emergence is a key part of understanding everything. Complex forms and behavior emerge from the repetition of simple rules.
Reaction-Diffusion equations (aka Turing patterns) and diffusion-limited aggregation and cellular growth all share similar emergent properties based on randomness, probability, reaching equilibrium, etc.
Others in this thread suggest this is related to cymatics... This is what I mean by missing the forest for the trees. Much like geometry is about the patterns of numbers balanced in space, cymatics is about the patterns that emerge from the inherent harmonic resonance of a medium given its dimensions. They're only related in the sense that the inherent rules of numbers are the basis of all physics and reality.
If a square of metal is vibrated at such a frequency that its wave length divides evenly into the length of the square, then that frequency is said to be a resonant frequency of that material. It's the same at every other harmonic (the colored nodes). In physical terms, this means the nodes of a standing wave are the places where the plate is not moving as is nicely illustrated here. This is why Chladni patterns (LOUD AUDIO!) appear to "snap" into place; the particles only accumulate during standing waves so the frequency has to reach the next harmonic for that to occur.
The patterns are a result of the edge shape of the resonating material because the vibration emanates in ripples from edge to edge to edge until the energy is completely dissipated. The frequency determines the resonant points along the edge, and everything just keeps overlapping harmoniously. This is why liquid cymatics tends to appear more dynamic, essentially representing the reaction-diffusion equations from earlier-- because the medium enables you to see the flux of the harmony patterns that arises from the interfering reflections of the partially cycled waves between resonant points.
In other words, if you travel along the edge of that circle a quarter of the way towards the next resonant point, a wave is hitting that point a quarter of the way through it's cycle, and thus is reflected back out at a quarter offset. And there's one an 8th of the way with an 8th offset, and a 16th, etc, contiguously in all directions. The interaction of these offsets creates a harmony field that appears to move because the medium is constantly renegotiating it's shape between infinitely intersecting phases of waves.
__
Here's more cool emergent shit.
Also, /u/Novusod, /u/The_Prize, and /u/Darth_Venath, this comment was partially in response to your exchange. I don't mean to shit on anyone who chooses to emphasize the interconnectedness of everything, but I'm constantly bothered when people taint something simple with unnecessary mysticism.
For everyone who read this whole comment, you should seriously order yourself a copy of Quadrivium! It may indulge in a bit of mysticism, but it's more in the sense of it being an anthology of the history of this knowledge. Pretty much every book they publish is chock full of the beautiful simplicity of the big picture- would highly recommend.
Check out the Quadrivium. It contains a nice breakdown of the theoretical and practical aspects of music and marries these topics with geometry, cosmology, and numerology. Bonus: trippy illustrations.
Almost. There are other differences between "classical" nylon string guitars and steel string. Neck width (I mentioned space between the strings, which it's related to) is one, for sure.
Another "family" difference is modern steel strings tend to have the neck intersect the body at the 14th fret. Classical guitar necks join the body at the 12th fret. This matters somewhat if you sit and play "classical style" with the guitar balanced across your left leg (if you're playing typically right handed), neck inclined at more than 45 degrees, with the headstock level with your chin. See here for examples A steel string neck will be a bit longer than the classical neck, and the guitar will balance differently. Not a huge deal (I play my steel string in a classical position), but another difference.
Here's a huge difference - the sound. The steel string guitar was engineered with steel strings in mind. The tension exerted by steel strings on the bridge is about twice that of nylon strings. The bracing, thickness of the sound board, etc., are all designed with that in mind. Lower tension nylon strings just won't drive as much sound out of your guitar as they would a classical guitar (with much lighter bracing and thinner top). Also, you'll run into a technical problem with where/how to tie off nylon strings on your bridge. Unlike steel strings that terminate in a little round thingy that is trapped under the bridge pin, nylon strings just... end. On a classical bridge they're looped around and tied off in a fancy knot.
So my original advice stands, I think. Play your guitar just as it is. If you really like playing the classical pieces, consider getting a used classical guitar.
Now, as far as your complaint re: damping strings near the top of the neck. I hate to say this but that's your technique, not the guitar itself. Yeah, it's a bit easier to not interfere with strings on a wider classical neck, but there are plenty of steel string players that need to play clean chords without any thumping or buzzing. One thing classical lessons are good for is learning efficient techniques with left and right hands - practicing from the get-go on getting your left hand fingers pressing down vertically on the strings with the tips of the fingers, not slanting the fingers, keeping the thumb low behind the back of the neck, the curve of the hand, keeping it all relaxed and ergonomically sound... There really is a reason the "classical posture" evolved to what it is - it's about as ergonomically neutral (i.e., not holding lots of unnecessary strain or twisting) as you can get playing a guitar.
I started learning on a steel string guitar, too, using Noad's Solo Guitar Playing. I played on a steel string for a couple of years in high school before getting my first classical guitar, so it's possible!
Edit: fixed link.
OH, I'm an idiot. Sorry. Here are some good books -
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0692284087/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_3?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/089898890X/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_7?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1576236099/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_6?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
Also maybe just ask your band teacher to give you the basics in some off time?
> I'm teaching myself how to use a drum machine
Check out Hydrogen (I know it says for Linux, but it also works on Windows and OSX), which is the best free computer-based drum machine I know of. LMMS is pretty cool, too, but it's more geared towards techno. Still, if you want to make chiptune punk, worth checking out.
Drum Programming: A Complete Guide to Program and Think Like a Drummer is also an awesome book to program beatboxes (or Hydrogen) to sound natural. I used that, back when I had a guitar.
I've enjoyed this one as a start. Interested to see any other suggestions you get: https://www.amazon.com/Make-Analog-Synthesizers-Electronic-Synth-DIY/dp/1449345220
get at it then! for beats (people say it's easiest for beginners) and here's for the rapping part
I suggest getting a copy of Frederick Noad's guitar method, It starts our pretty simple but it should help you transfer your prior knowledge over to the classical guitar. It includes etudes as well as repertoire pieces.
Pick up the Noad book (https://www.amazon.com/Solo-Guitar-Playing-Book-4th/dp/0825636795). It covers all you need to know about rhythm and notes and comes with a lot of exercises. Learning to read music and actually being able to play from sheet are two entirely different things and takes lot's of practice. It can be quite frustrating to start out doing the simple exercises when you're able to play more advanced pieces but if you want to play classical guitar you'll need to bite the bullet eventually since a lot of pieces are only written in standard notation.
The Art of Bop Dumming by Jon Riley
Progressive Steps to Syncopation by Ted Reed
Jazz Drum Studio by John Pickering
Buy any or all three of these. Perfect place to start. And start listening to a lot of jazz. Good luck, dude. Jazz is great.
read this: https://www.amazon.com/Home-Recording-Studio-Build-Like/dp/143545717X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1495683568&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=home+studio+build+pros
It's full of expert advice on how and what to do in a home space.
Well that was far too nice and now I feel kinda bad. Honestly, I love when people analyze hip hop and rapping specifically, so this was just me being kind of contradictory for the sake of it. Who are some of your favorites, or people who encompass most/all of these aspects to you?
Edit: Also, the guy that recommended How to Rap (https://www.amazon.com/How-Rap-Art-Science-Hip-Hop/dp/1556528167) is definitely right in the fact that I think you'd enjoy the read.
The author converted the site into a book for sale
https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Scenes-Inside-Canyon-Laurel/dp/1909394122
Was something unclear? If you think my view of primitive societies is biased, I could recommend you a feature on a people of the Amazon rainforest here as well as the excellent book about hard archeological evidence The Myth of the Peaceful Savage by Lawrence Keeley, who himself had a fairly rosy perception of indigenous societies when he began his career.
For orchestration, the Adler book is definitely the modern day definitive book, but as a high schooler, paying for the Adler is probably not on your to-do list. Instead, I recommend the Rimsky-Korsakov because it's free on IMSLP.
http://imslp.org/wiki/Principles_of_Orchestration_(Rimsky-Korsakov,_Nikolay)
For composition, I recommend Persechetti's book, Twentieth Century Harmony. It's not really about telling you how to compose, it's more like an encyclopedia of possibilities and descriptions of what those possibilities sound like.
Here's the fancy updated version of that text, with better figures and a DVD and stuff. Kinda spendy, but I highly recommend it.
That Laitz book is the one they use at a music school in Germany I’m looking to apply to. When I sporadically sat in on some classes at Peabody Conservatory through JHU, they used this one , which is fine but I’m curious about the difference between music textbooks.
My question is about figured bass notation. I never understood why just writing „42“ or „65“ can give you the notes. How do you know if the interval is a major or a minor 4th or 2nd etc? I.e., if the 7 chord is a dominant 7, or flatted 7, or major 7? That’s why I find jazz notation clearer—it always tells you precisely the quality of the chord (aside from those sneaky and vague „alt“ chords which I hate :). Are you just supposed to know the position of the chord in the scale (ah, it’s a chord built on the 7th scale degree so the 7th must be B7b5? Or this 42 refers to the V chord so we know it’s seventh is flatted?) and that seems like it would not always be a sure bet to tell whether the 7th is flatted or not.
Happy cake day!
You’ll want to learn music theory. A pretty standard book that I read was called Tonal Harmony. It may be a little heavy, but it will give you the underpinnings of Music theory in a comprehensive way.
With that, songs usually have lyrics, which that book doesn’t explain. In fact, I’m in the middle of a pretty good book on songwriting called Tunesmith It really gets into meter, rhyming, etc. that goes into how lyrics are put together with quite a few examples.
Conflict certainly occured, as there is archeological evidence of tool based injuries on some specimen of early man, but it is difficult to define such conflicts as "war" as war has a connotation of conflict involving at least one state or civil authority against another entitiy.
For more on this topic see Myth of the Peaceful Savage, by Keeley
i recommend learning music theory first. Here's a really good book. music theory book Consider getting a tutor as well.
I would recommend going to your theory teacher's website/class website and look at what book they want you to get. This is a big sign of the approach the university will take in teaching from Theory I and upwards. This way, you will know the "common language" professors will use at your school regarding theory. What I mean are specifics, ranging from calling something an "accented passing tone" vs. making no distinctions between a regular passing tone, to various systems of abbreviations, and to differences in how the cadential "V^6/4 - V^7 - I" is viewed. Some people interpret this as " I^6/4 - V^7 - I." Basically, do you call a cadential^6/4 chord a V or a I chord? One use is not universal. Little clarifications like these, which can only been gleaned from your actual theory book, will make you better prepared and less confused on day one than learning one book's method, only to be presented with a completely different approach.
I think, given your background in theory, you will be surprised how far ahead you are compared to many people. A lot show up to their freshman year with a low level of theory competence.
I went to a university that used the Laitz textbook, so its about all I can recommend.
I've also been exposed to the Straus book for post-tonal theory.
For Species counterpoint, you can't beat the Schacter and Salzer book: "Counterpoint in Composition,"
For Schenkerian analysis, there is the Salzer book: "Structural Hearing." That is a bit more specialized, but it may pique your curiosity.
Great theorists like Felix Salzer and Carl Schacter, students of Heinrich Schenker, along with the acclaimed Steven Laitz, are good to learn about and be knowledgeable about. Looking into them, their associates, and their teachers can lead you to other good books.
Sure! Here are a few that have helped me out:
The textbook that my school uses for beginning theory classes is The Complete Musician by Steven Laitz. It is a pretty comprehensive look at tonality, covering the very basics through 19th century theory. Isn't too pricey either: http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Musician-Integrated-Approach-Listening/dp/0199742782
Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum is a great place to begin working on counterpoint: http://www.amazon.com/Study-Counterpoint-Johann-Joseph-Parnassum/dp/0393002772/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1368896313&amp;sr=1-1-spell&amp;keywords=gradus+ad+parnasam+fux
Samuel Adler's The Study of Orchestration is my current go to book when researching the basics of different instruments and orchestration techniques: http://www.amazon.com/Study-Orchestration-Third-Samuel-Adler/dp/039397572X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1368896395&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=samuel+adler+orchestration
Lastly, once you feel you have developed a solid foundation with your theory knowledge, I can't stress enough the importance of studying/analyzing scores. It is (in my opinion) the best way of learning how to compose. One can learn so much from one score!
This is the version of the Laitz in use today: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0199742782?pc_redir=1409923101&amp;robot_redir=1
There are also workbooks accompanying this text. I think the red one is written theory and the blue one is aural skills. I recommend using the written workbook and the main text and getting your aural skills somewhere else.
There's also a graduate theory review book. In a lot of ways, it's better, and cheaper. But it's really probably best used with a teacher to guide you, whereas The Complete Musician leads you by the hand more and thus works better for self-guided study.
If you want a general, but very broad (it's a huge fucking book ~1200pgs) overview check out The Computer Music Tutorial by Curtis Roads. If you have a strong math background and really want to get into the nuts and bolts of digital sound check out The Audio Programming Book by Richard Boulange. For something sort of in the middle Computer Music: Synthesis, Composition, and Performance by Charles Dodge. I took a two years of sound design / engineering at a UC campus. These were the three books we referenced most.
There's always the classic csound.
And the hip new kid on the scene, Supercollider. And by new, I mean only 10 years old.
If you are into this, you should check out Richard Boulanger's books.
The Csound book
The Audio Programming Book
You could also try Pure Data, which is the open source version of Max/MSP.
Max/MSP is a good start because you can go on to write your own objects in Java and C++ as you progress.
But I assume most plug ins are C/C++. The Audio Programming Book is quite good for learning C specifically for audio.
Edit: link to book
As others have pointed out, you'll have to use the Steinberg VST SDK and code in C++. A great book on that topic is The Audio Programming Book. There's a lot of examples and in one chapter you're actually walked through the process of writing a full VST from start to finish (there's also a bunch of other stuff in there about coding low-level audio). Another option would be to use something like JUCE to simplify the coding process. The other nice thing about JUCE is that it makes it really easy to write a VST that's also wrapped as an AudioUnit or RTAS plugin, so you get some great cross-compatibility there. JUCE also has a built in GUI library, but I've never really cared for the default style of it. A third option would be to use Faust, but it's kind of a weird language to learn and FaustWorks, the IDE that it comes with, is buggy as all hell. That said, it'll deploy as a VST, AU, RTAS, Max External, Pure Data external, or Pure Data abstraction and small effects plugins are generally really easy to write once you get the hang of the language syntax. There are a bunch of example VSTs on the site under the Online Examples section and it even has an online IDE, which is nice. IMO, if you're trying to really learn about signal processing and such, the best way to go would be to just write using the normal SDK. This is definitely doing it the hard way, but in my experience I learned so much more by not having anything of the functions abstracted away from me. On the other hand, if you're just trying to bang the VST out and use it, I'd look at JUCE or (depending on the complexity of the effect) FAUST. Either way, I hope that you'll post your results on /r/FreeSounds.
Here is a list of books that I own and were recommended to me.
Harmony and Voice Leading by Aldwell/Schachter/Cadwallader
Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven by Caplin
Study of Orchestration by Adler
20th century Harmony by Persichetti
Writing short little concentrated pieces is a very good idea. Try creating as much material out of the smallest idea you can. I like to pick a small little theme/motif and just run with it.
The piano music I've been listening to includes; Scriabin (I have a book of his Piano Sonatas on my desk right now), Bartok, Prokofiev, Roslavets, Mosolov, Bach, and Beethoven. If you like Scriabin then I suggest going on youtube and listening to Roslavets and Mosolov, they write in a very Scriabin-esque fashion.
Books, I personally love reading about music. I do a lot of reading about composers and about harmonies and stuff. Wikipedia is a good place to start, but it's certainly not a definitive source. Persichetti's book on harmony is a good book for harmony, it certainly helped me think about harmony in different ways. And Modernism in Russian Piano Music is very good if you're looking to mimic Scriabin/Prokofiev and other composers of that musical language.
There's a few books you can check out (I stumbled onto most of these in my local community college library, and yes, some of these are really expensive). I can suggest more if you like
http://www.amazon.com/Make-Analog-Synthesizers-Ray-Wilson/dp/1449345220/
http://www.amazon.com/Handmade-Electronic-Music-Hardware-Hacking/dp/0415998735/
http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Technique-Electronic-Music/dp/9812700773/
https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Sound-Press-Andy-Farnell/dp/0262014416
------------
and some subs: /r/diySynth, /r/SynthDiy, /r/modular
Started collecting bent stuff a couple years ago and now can bend and build stuff myself. As you learn to solder, the only skill you need basically, read these two books:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0415998735
http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0764588877
Hey, everyone starts somewhere. I hope I can point you in a decent direction here:
I started with hardware via guitar pedals and Nicolas Collins' "Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking" and have now moved into things like modular analog synthesis, Max/MSP (or Pure Data), and Supercollider. Of course there are many paths to go about understanding how to synthesize sounds, and why certain sound tools like biquad filters are necessary or convenient, but it is best for you to figure out how and why you would want to use those ideas for yourself.
One thing you have to understand is timbre. I'm not going to go into detail about it, because you seem motivated enough to lead your own path, but timbre is probably the most important reason sound synthesis exists. Think about it, the people who created synthesizers (E-mu, Moog, Bell Labs, etc.) wanted to make it easier to make "full" music without having to use a huge orchestra of people, so they figured out how to recreate the sounds of the instruments, the "timbres." At this point the timbres of synthesizers are their own, rather than trying to simulate others, and are what make synthesizers such an interesting part of musical instrument history.
Once you understand why timbre is so important, then you can look into what "voices" in synthesizers are. A simple "voice" in a synthesizer consists of three main components: An oscillator (or noise generator), a filter, and an voltage controlled amplifier that is usually controlled by an envelope generator. That is a really crude description of what a voice is, but that is why there are very expensive synthesizers with capabilities of their "voices" that are versatile and desirable depending on their design and components. And that is the main reason why things like a biquad filter are useful in certain situations.
I'm not going to go on too much longer here, but I will say one last thing about sound synthesis that will prove useful. That is that in sound theory, or the scientific analysis of sound (physics, acoustics, even psychoacoustics), it is theorized that every single timbre can be analyzed resolutely down to its constituents; every sound can be represented by a given number of sinusoidal frequencies (the more frequencies, the greater accuracy of the sound). That is a big one to bite into, and has a lot to do with "additive synthesis," but I feel that it is very important to understand this about sound theory in order to be proficient in sound synthesis.
Just for fun, a quote from one of my instructors, the one that taught the analog synthesis class I took: "Trying to filter a sine wave is the definition of futility."
Good luck out there, sound synthesis is a wide world of weird nerdy stuff.
Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer. Seriously this book will help you greatly. Just push yourself, and you'll see results. There is even PDF files for you to download so you don't even need to buy the book I'm not sure how trust-worthy the links are, but seriously, use to book.
I recommend "Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer: Coordinated Independence as Applied to Jazz and Bebop" by Jim Chapin for a jazz practice method.
my favorite book was "Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer"
It's been probably 10+ years since I bought that book, and I'll still pull it off the shelf and play through pages.
Another really fun thing to do is to go through the Syncopation book and play the quarter note and eighth note pages with just your left hand and kick drum while playing jazz time with your right hand and hi hat
i'm a beginner too, self-teaching. do you have a metronome?
i bought this 4 way coordination book. its straight forward and you can do it on or off the kit. these are exercises to get your limbs on time and independent. they are extremely challenging, especially as you build speed.
http://www.vicfirth.com/education/ has some interesting stuff to check out, i am working off "Beginning Snare Video Lessons" to build my actual stick/bounce/finger technique. it's all about perfecting technique slowly if you want to get blinding fast.
i've had experience with music my whole life though (can already read music, understand time signatures, etc), and this is the path that i am sure i want to take to get where i want to be. you might find it very dull and want to just dive into playing along to songs?
As they told u, start simple and slow. Also, check this book: https://www.amazon.com/4-Way-Coordination-Development-Complete-Independence/dp/0769233708 .
"4-Way Coordination: A Method Book for the Development of Complete Independence on the Drum Set". It sounds overwhelming but the exercises are very simple (think stick control from gls and add left and right feet). Most importantly do each one slow! don't go up on the metronome until you are comfortable with an exercise.
I'd say limb independence. I spent some time working through this book and it's very challenging.
a good book, though not necessarily occult in nature is The Quadrivium.
Not intentionally Masonic books per se, but I recently picked up the Trivium and Quadrivium.
Unfortunately, I've had a lot fall into my lap lately, so I haven't yet been able to dive into them, but I can say that they are beautiful books. Anyone familiar with the FC lecture should understand why they piqued my Masonic interest.
CONT:
The idea of heavenly spheres being an authentic feature of the world is evident in the universality of the idea of the seven planetary (Luna and Sol, the sun and moon, are included in this classical definition of a planet- it's not a "wrong" definition- just a different classification system) heavens throughout the world's cultures. They even tend to be associated with the same days of the week and interrelated in intriguing ways with the musical concept of tuning by fifths.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/leithart/2012/06/tuned-cosmos/
Moreover, there are very interesting mathematical relations ordering the seven heavenly spheres (and yes, I do believe NASA is real, I am not a flat earther- I am saying that a "symbol" is an intrinsic aspect of the world and that the ancients and medievals understood this) in their classical associations. Luna and Saturn are the first and last of the seven heavenly spheres. Luna has a 29 day cycle. Saturn has a 29 year cycle in its revolution around the sun. The correspondence, day to year, is actually 99.5%. Yes, we've had a closer look at the moon, the sun, and Saturn. So? I don't think that we have discovered anything which would actually undermine the classical world-picture. It's like seeing a picture in 144k vs 4k. We see a great deal more in ultra-HD than we would in old-style SD. We notice lots of new things. But it's perfectly recognizable as what it is. For more on these mathematically ordered relations among the spheres, see this excellent book, especially the last section:
https://www.amazon.com/Quadrivium-Classical-Liberal-Geometry-Cosmology/dp/0802778135
Unfortunately, most of the people talking about the beauty and symbolic craftsmanship in the Heavens are associated with the occult. But the Bible and tradition speak about these subjects. It's not magic. It's part of the world-design God made through the Logos. "The Heavens declare the Glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day to day they pour out speech, night to night they speak knowledge." (Ps. 19:1-2) For more on the reality undergirding classical and medieval cosmology, see Wolfgang Smith's excellent The Wisdom of Ancient Cosmology:
He is a professional physicist and possesses immense philosophical and metaphysical skill. An excellent thinker if you want to rework your conceptual world.
https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Ancient-Cosmology-Contemporary-Tradition/dp/6602883925/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Wisdom+of+Ancient+cosmology&qid=1557417059&s=books&sr=1-1
You mean this gallon of milk grandma?
Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology (Wooden Books) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0802778135/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_XzWQDb18BHEKB
That's just standard technique on a classical or flamenco guitar. The two strokes used for single fingers and called rest strokes and free strokes. Strumming is referred to as rasgueado.
The book I started with way back when is Frederick Noad's Solo Guitar Playing. Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Solo-Guitar-Playing-Book-Edition/dp/0825636795/
I know no shortage of guitarists who use it to teach and who started with it themselves. You'll learn a ton even if you already play, really can't recommend it enough.
I took a couple courses in classical guitar and we used this book. It's a very traditional, bottom-up way to learn, starting with open strings, then 1st position and so-on. You get out of it what you put into it. That means taking as much time as necessary with each section, even if it means spending 2 or 3 weeks on a single chapter.
It's quite possible to teach yourself, of course. The question is really how quickly do you want to progress? A teacher is your single best resource as they can give you feedback that a book or video just can't. So, if you can find a teacher in your area that teaches the style you want to learn, I would definitely go that route.
With that being said, as far as books are concerned, anything by Fredrick Noad will be helpful - especially his 2 book series on solo guitar playing.
Here's the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Solo-Guitar-Playing-Book-4th/dp/0825636795
As for playing the classical guitar using an acoustic guitar approach, keep in mind you're conflating a couple of different things. A "classical" guitar is the instrument - nylon strings, wider neck, lighter body. Classical guitar is a style of music (and differs from Spanish guitar, but that's another conversation practically).
So, yes, you can learn to play folk, blues, jazz and any other sort of genre on a classical guitar. And you can learn classical guitar music on an accoustic (or even electric) guitar, though it won't sound the same and might be a bit more difficult.
A classical guitar book would start from the ground up in notation rather than tab and have lots of sight reading exercises.
Personally, I think Frederick Noad's Solo Guitar Playing is awesome. It's how I got started.
If you already have a theory background and already have some of the mechanical techniques of the guitar down, you could probably move at a good clip through it.
Any of the old jams posted in the sidebar will give you a selection of pieces of varying difficulty. You could also pick up the Noad book, Solo Guitar Playing vol. 1 for exercises and shorter pieces.
The classical guitar pieces not in standard tuning are few. Off the top of my head I can only think of one in drop D, and it's an arrangement of a piece originally for another instrument.
*edit to add link for the book.
Rudiments, and a metronome are great suggestions.
Id recommend getting going on some sight reading too.
Here are a couple great books I used starting out:
Progressive Steps to Syncopation for the Modern Drummer -I still use this one regularly 20 years later. It's a classic.
The Art of Bop Drumming
Here's a great list from Modern Drummer of some other good instructional books. YouTube is great, but don't forget the basics.
https://www.moderndrummer.com/2013/04/25-timeless-drum-books/
Any reason why your teacher is telling you that you have no chance??
For my audition I just played a few drum set grooves (swing, bossa nova, samba, 3/4 swing, and a ballad), sight read a snare drum solo, and sight read a marimba piece. I had already spent a semester in the percussion ensemble (because I originally wanted to be an English major, but after meeting the faculty of both departments I settled on music) so my teacher already knew me and had a good idea of my skill level.
My first semester was mainly rudiments and solos from Cirone's portraits in rhythm. Pretty much snare drum only focusing on building my technique. My next semester I got started on Frank Malabe's Afro-Cuban book and John Riley's Art of Bop Drumming. Beyond that I worked through Riley's Beyond Bop Drumming, Ed Uribe's book on Afro-Cuban drumming, and his book on Brazilian drumming. After that I spent a lot of time working on solo transcriptions, playing pieces that my instructor and I picked out for drums and vibes, jamming with my instructor on vibes or on drum set, and working on pieces that I was writing. By the end at lot of what I was doing was driven by my interests and what I wanted to work on to improve.
As far as the music department as a whole I took your standard history, theory, aural skills, and piano classes, along with tons and tons of ensembles.
I've Enjoyed:
http://vicfirth.com/40-essential-rudiments/ - this is a good place to start imo, all you need is a practice pad and a pair of sticks.
http://www.snarescience.com/index.php - some crazy difficult Drum Corps stuff on here.
Realistic Rock - rock based rhythms. Decent book.
Art of Bop Drumming - I'm currently in the process of learning to play jazz, and I couldn't imagine a better starting point.
I've heard great things about:
Stick Control - many people would suggest you start here, it's a classic.
Chart Topping Drum Beats - this looks like a fantastic place to start learning reading music for drum set.
Jojo Mayer's Secret Weapons Part 1 - goes over hand technique.
Jojo Mayer's Secret Weapons II - covers foot technique.
The Drumset Musician - covers many different styles.
As for videos, Drumeo has a Youtube channel with plenty of quality information.
My personal opinion on hand / foot technique is watch a variety of lessons / other drummers and just find what works for you.
The Art Of Bop Drumming is really good to learn some jazz beats and helps alot with independence. I don´t know of any books that are better than others for Tool songs but I would recommend trying to play some of their songs or play with a metronome to odd time signatures. Hope this helps.
For mixing: The Mixing Engineer's Handbook is my favourite resource for learning the mix engineer's craft. Also many people recommend Mixing With Your Mind, but I can't claim to have read it.
For tracking: The same author of the Mixing Engineer's Handbook has one on tracking which is also quite good. I learned tracking as an apprentice, so I have read very little in the way of published books on this topic, but for guitars specifically some person archived the posts of a person named Slipperman here which I've found to be a valuable resource for information and entertainment(!).
In general: Get yourself a copy of the Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook, and read it cover to cover, twice. It is an absolute building block of audio engineering and probably the best single resource I can suggest for the theory and practice of audio engineering and sound reinforcement.
Audio is an expensive hobby. You'll have to make sacrifices. I suggest get a part-time job and use the money to buy equipment in this order:
•Mac (because music)
•DAW
•Decent monitors
•Microphone + interface
•A plugin suite
If you learn everything there is to know about each piece you obtain as you obtain it, you'll learn the entire flow of work in audio and you'll know where you'll want to specialize.
There's plenty of books you can read to get you started, I suggest Recording Tips for Engineers, The Mixing Engineer's Handbook, Assistant Engineer's Handbook, and The Music Producer's Handbook. The manual to your DAW is essential.
When I was your age, I worked at Five Guys a couple shifts a week in order to buy a Macbook. 5 years later, I work in a fine dining kitchen to pay off the student loans I took to attend a private recording arts school. So while you're in highschool, learn as much as you can and decide if you really want this. It's not an easy or simple path. It's almost entirely up to you how far you go.
Recording Studio Design. Philip Newell
Acoustic Absorbers and Diffusers. Cox/D'Antonio
Room Acoustics. Heinrich Kuttruff
Sound System Engineering. Davis/Patronis.Jr/Brown
Home Recording Studio. Rod Gervais
Master Handbook of Acoustics. F.Alton Everest
Some are heavy on the acoustic theory some are more practical but all really good resources. I'd also second the John Sayers forum.
To start, it's good that you're not expecting 100% soundproof or even close because that's just not possible in residential settings on reasonable budgets. In fact, I suggest you do this test:
If the difference is 30dB or up to maybe 50dB, then that's doable. If you require 60dB or 70dB... well, you will likely need to hire a professional in that case. Flanking will kill your performance at that level and getting generic advice online won't cut it.
So if you're still in reasonable territory, then here's the 80/20:
That doesn't have the (very expensive) MLV or the moderately expensive Green Glue or clips/channels. Studs and drywall are both cheap as is insulation.
That does assume you have the space for the floating ceiling, though. If you don't, then you might get away with just doubling or tripling the drywall on the ceiling since that'd just be a flanking path and not a primary soundproofing path.
Ductwork is out of the scope of any ad-hoc online advice. Far far too many variables.
If you're serious about this then I strongly recommend buying this book: Home Recording Studio : Build it Like the Pros by Rod Gervais. It's fantastic.
search google for mass loaded vinyl.
Also read a lot before wasting money on sound treatment. This book will save you a lot of $.
http://www.amazon.com/Home-Recording-Studio-Build-Like/dp/143545717X
You might not be building a home studio but the concepts are all the same.
Adding to this, his book Make: Analog Synthesizers is a great resource for beginners.
Just passing on the recommendation I got here a long time ago, which is: [Ray Wilson's Make: Analog Synthesizers] (https://www.amazon.com/Make-Analog-Synthesizers-Electronic-Synth-DIY/dp/1449345220) A really chill / good read but also really good to have nearby as technical reference.
That page only has info on adding the resonance pot that was removed for the delay.
Ray Wilson's MAKE book is here. His site, Music From Outer Space is also a good resource.
theres the book from Make as well https://www.amazon.co.uk/Make-Analog-Synthesizers-Ray-Wilson/dp/1449345220
Make publishes a book called Analog Synthesizers if you want a head start.
and by speaking of mfos, you really should get his book... it was so helpful to me... I learned a lot by doing his stuff from the book and reading all the explanations...
http://www.amazon.com/Make-Analog-Synthesizers-Ray-Wilson/dp/1449345220
Rapper here: yes, for many reasons.
If you're literally just beginning to start out with rap, don't worry about finding original beats just yet. Grab some of your favorite instrumentals, write to them and record them into Garageband. See how you sound, and work on what you don't like. Practice, practice, practice. It'll take years to begin to get comfortable with your own voice in hip hop, but if it's something you love, you'll find it.
edit: I also recommend reading "How to Rap", you can get a cheap copy there. It's the perfect book to explain the basics.
Here's a good place to start.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Rap-Art-Science-Hip-Hop/dp/1556528167/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1540108592&amp;sr=8-3&amp;keywords=How+to+rap
Alternatively, if you want to get into mumble rap a rudimentary understanding of nursery rhymes should suffice.
The AB Guide to Music Theory Vol 1 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1854724460/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_-axqDb02SRK8G
£5 each. Surely you can find both on whatever local marketplace you use for books, or source the PDFs.
Congrats on starting! Thats often the hardest part! And the best bit? Even if it feels like you've started late, some of the best musicians did exactly the same and it never stopped them! In fact I only started singing when I was 16 and now thats my job!
There are loads of resources online which might be able to help you. It does depend a little on what your priority is though. If you would simply like to be able to play and work things out as you go there quite a good app/site called Yousician which helps you learn music on your chosen instrument in a guitar hero style way. Your listening skills will definitely get better with this but I don't think it does much theory.
https://yousician.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIz8OE6t-W2wIVBZUbCh1LqQQBEAAYASAAEgIGmvD_BwE
For learning the theory side of things, Piano is definitely very helpful if you can afford a small keyboard. Thats awesome you've already transferred some of the piano stuff you watched onto the ukulele, aural skills like that are hugely useful particularly later on if you want to listen to something and then write it down.
I would recommend music theory.net, they have lots of lessons and exercises online which you can use for free but the lessons are particularly good to give you a full understanding of how to read and understand music.
https://www.musictheory.net/lessons
They also have an app (which is the same material as the website) which you could use, but you do pay for it.
As far as other apps go there is another very useful one called Meludia. I love this one, it helps you train your ear rather then the theory side of things and will play you a short phrase which you then play back within the app. - https://www.meludia.com
For the general practice and seeing how you're doing, I've also just released an app called Muso which lets you practice a load of topics (like recognising notes and chords, and also written stuff) and see where your strengths and weaknesses are. You can also add a teacher further down the line to set you little quizzes and help you learn faster if you ever start lessons.
It's totally free and theres no rubbish in app purchase stuff you can just practice and see how you're doing (we've got a basic AI that learns what you need to practice next which will hopefully kick in soon!). If you do want to check it out its at www.theoretical.xyz or search "Muso by Theoretical" on the app stores (UK).
Theres also a lot of resources through ABRSM (the music Exam body) in the way of books and practice tests for the theory.
This is the most comprehensive to my knowledge and is very popular, though quite in depth!- https://www.amazon.co.uk/AB-Guide-Music-Theory-Vol/dp/1854724460
Or they have a few practice apps you can use, I think you have to pay for some of the features but you might find one you like - https://gb.abrsm.org/en/exam-support/practice-tools-and-applications/
Really though, I think the best tip is to practice practice practice, but above all have fun! Music is awesome and if you can get a bunch of friends together and have a jam together it really is some of the best fun!
I hope that helps a little bit, good luck with all of your music and I hope you enjoy it!
This book has some mindblowing stuff on Zappa. I would link to the free version but his site just shows a white screen.
Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream
http://www.amazon.com/Weird-Scenes-Inside-Canyon-Laurel/dp/1909394122
Thank you, spread the info far and wide.
I've seen Jan's stuff (gnostic media). I'm a fan. It's good work. I generally agree with most of his assertions except that T. McKenna was an agent. If he was, then his role was benign and simply to corral triphead and psychonauts into one forum.
A lot of his cia-psychedelic movement is elaborated in David McGowan's book "Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream". It's an interesting read.
Look into rock n roll and the laurel canyon community
https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Scenes-Inside-Canyon-Laurel/dp/1909394122
https://www.conspiracyschool.com/blog/laurel-canyon-sex-drugs-and-aliens
https://open.spotify.com/episode/58H5HM7fNtDbbRRbRVfyDY
It is SUPER interesting. And the publisher did a GORGEOUS job of printing it and absolutely the kind of thing this community would like - each of the six sections are printed in different colors of ink.
It is basically a very interesting and enjoyable summary of "The Quadrivium" which forms the basic foundation of knowledge that someone with a good education would have learned in antiquity - the renaissance.
I bought it because I kind of wanted to expand beyond my modern mindset as I continued work on my novel and I really have enjoyed it.
https://www.amazon.com/Quadrivium-Classical-Liberal-Geometry-Cosmology/dp/0802778135/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2/143-9757225-2246932?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0802778135&pd_rd_r=3efa8e5b-2de1-11e9-9c23-7dae46bfe87d&pd_rd_w=fERSt&pd_rd_wg=chOqa&pf_rd_p=6725dbd6-9917-451d-beba-16af7874e407&pf_rd_r=QDSH5R8ZXEP4MWC6RW87&psc=1&refRID=QDSH5R8ZXEP4MWC6RW87
If you find that TED talk fascinating then you should check out this book. Everything is laid out in a very simple way.
Yep.
Great book:
http://www.amazon.com/Quadrivium-Classical-Liberal-Geometry-Cosmology/dp/0802778135
You know what? I just realized I was thinking of this book, which is co-written by the same author. I found a promotional video for the one you posted and it does seem like a good resource for rhythms!
And by "popular", I really meant "popular and folk styles" (i.e. not art/classical idioms).
Hi, I hope your day is going well! Thanks for connecting. Related to these topics, I would recommend the book Quadrivium, an article about the 'Octave of Energy', a collection of experiences by Stan Grof, titled "When the Impossible Happens" , and for online material you can tune into /r/holofractal, which has aggregated lots of material relevant to the quantum nature of reality.
This is the 'dry' approach. A stylistic and heartfelt seed can be sprouted by planting your attention in the gardens of Sufi mystic poetry, or say, by reading the stories of the Vedas and Upanishads.
Stephen Mitchell has done amazing work translating the Tao te Ching and the Bhagavad Gita.
"Deluded by identification with the ego, a person
thinks, 'I am the doer.'"
Krishna; Chapter 3, verse 27
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802778135?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creativeASIN=0802778135&amp;linkCode=xm2&amp;tag=worldli-20
-here's an interesting book that's relevant
You guys might like this book:
Quadrivium
Also anything by Cliff Pickover
Frederick Noad [Solo Guitar Playing] (http://www.amazon.com/Solo-Guitar-Playing-Book-Edition/dp/0825636795) is all you need. Start with Book 1 and you'll be reading music and playing Bach before you get to Book 2.
Solo Guitar Playing
https://www.amazon.com/Solo-Guitar-Playing-Book-4th/dp/0825636795
You may find it a bit tedious, having played steel string for a while, but I have enjoyed it.
No good comes from waiting. I take classical guitar lessons at a university and wish I had started sooner. The only thing I'd be wary of is developing poor technique early on, which can be killer to fix later. Just watch out for your left and right hands. Make sure the thumb of your left hand is always on the back of the fingerboard (not curved around) and that your right hand is not perpendicular to the strings but in line with your wrist; like this. I know you said not to name books, but this book is the one that has been teaching me classical guitar and it's great. Now as for spanish/flamenco style guitar, I play a little and am learning, mostly from this video.
Sorry, I know you said not to post anything, but I got excited.
If you can get your hands on Frederick Noad's Solo Guitar Playing 1, or Christopher Parkening's Guitar Method 1, you could go a long way. If money is an issue, I know my local library has the Parkening book, so that might be a resource to check into.
http://www.amazon.com/Solo-Guitar-Playing-Volume-1/dp/0825636795/ref=pd_sim_b_1
I've been playing classical for about ten years, and I'm currently studying it at a conservatory. This is what I learned out of, and I think its a great method. There are plenty of methods out there if you don't like this one: Shearer, Duncan, Tennant, and others. If you want something older look at the methods by Sor, Giuliani, or Carcassi. There are tons more, just look around for what you like. All of these require being able to read music, if you want to really do classical guitar, you have to start reading it. Don't let that discourage you, though, classical guitar is well worth the effort.
If you're serious about fingerstyle playing, enough to spend some money, I recommend picking up Solo Guitar Playing Vol. 1 by Noad. I haven't come across a more comprehensive analysis of technique, down to hand placement and individual movement of the fingers. I picked the book up after 8 years of playing and was learning fundamental techniques described within the first few pages. It's also a great introduction into reading sheet music, not quite as fast paced as Modern Method for Guitar, the other commonly recommended book.
I second the JustinGuitar recommendations. His Practical Music Theory and Chord Construction Guide eBooks are great introductions to music theory.
Firstly, get used to playing swing with the right hand while keeping 2's and 4's steady with your left foot. Once you've got that down, grab a book like Syncopation and practice playing the rhythms on the snare while keeping your right hand and left foot as solid as a rock doing the same thing as before.
I used an Erskine book that does exactly this, but also goes into hand-foot combos, taking it to the next level. It also goes into triplets and such, but that's for when you're good with the basic patterns.
This sets you up for being able to comp using any rhythms you want but keeping your left foot steady on the up beats, essentially the core of jazz drumming.
This is a really condensed explanation, but I hope it helps.
Good Resources to Use
http://www.amazon.com/Drumming-Book-Manhattan-Music-Publications/dp/089898890X
For beginner-level jazz drumming, John Riley's The Art of Bop Drumming is a fantastic resource to get you going. It builds from the basics by starting you with just the hi-hat/ride ostinato, then adds in comping ideas that you can use with the snare or kick, then starts to combine them. Later it has a nice selection of 1-bar phrases and soloing ideas as well as brush techniques. Riley does a good job of explaining his notation and how to play through the exercises.
In between the exercises are high-level descriptions of jazz playing (explaining the framework of a jazz tune, the drummer's role in a jazz combo, how your playing can influence the other musicians). The CD includes some tunes, and there are lead sheets in the back of the book, so you can get a feel for what the musicians are basing the songs on.
For rock/funk drumming, I've gotten a lot of mileage out of Gary Chaffee's Patterns series. I started my formal lessons by working through the Fatback Exercises in his Time Functioning Patterns, and they are incredible. You play a fixed cymbal pattern (eighth notes, for example) and a fixed snare pattern (strictly on 2 & 4), then go through every iteration of bass drum 16th note phrasing that can accompany your snare drum without kicking on 2 & 4. It works out to 128 different patterns (2^7) contained in 3 pages. It took several months before I could play through all of them consecutively, but I was blown away by how much more flexible my playing around that 2 & 4 snare framework became in such a short time.
If your coordination is already good enough to breeze through those exercises, you can change the cymbal ostinato, and then it's a whole new game. You can add in a tricky pattern with your left foot if you're really feeling adventurous. There's a tremendous amount of work to be done with just 3 pages, and there's a lot of other material in the book - his jazz section provides a similar resource for improving your flexibility when playing swing time (triplet-based), and the linear section provides a very cool system for developing fills, solo ideas, or full linear grooves. For a beginner, I think the Fatbacks are where it's at, but here's a video of a guy looking at some of the other exercises (a different 3-page section) in a more advanced context.
There are some cons to the Chaffee book. Notation is weird, and he doesn't do a great job of explaining it himself. To save space, he frequently notes his exercises as single beat or two-beat phrases rather than full measures, so you have to repeat them to get a full measure. He also uses a minimal staff, so a snare-kick exercise like the Fatbacks only gets 1 staff line (two spaces). If I hadn't had a teacher explaining the exercises to me, I would have found them very confusing. Since the ideas here are so flexible, it can be hard to sense how they'd be used in a more musical context. Compared to the Riley book, which has some really nice, musical comping phrases, the Chaffee stuff is broken down into such small blocks that it doesn't flow on its own. That makes it incredibly powerful for building your flexibility as a player, but it can be frustrating sometimes to work through exercises that don't sound good when repeated as a half- or quarter-bar phrase, even if they'll be interesting once you've incorporated them into your arsenal.
TL;DR: Riley's Art of Bop Drumming, Chaffee's Time Functioning Patterns as beginner resources with advanced potential
The Art of Bop Drumming by John Riley
Stumbled across this today: http://www.amazon.com/Drum-Programming-Complete-Program-Drummer/dp/0931759544/
There's a pretty ancient book about programming drum machines by one Ray F. Badness called "Drum Programming: A Complete Guide to Program and Think Like a Drummer" http://www.amazon.com/Drum-Programming-Complete-Program-Drummer/dp/0931759544/
While it obviously doesn't go into the specifics of modern EDM genres (it's a little dated), it is a pretty solid grounding on the basics of beat programming which should leave you in a better position to analyze the kinds of beats you're looking to replicate.
In case you really want to buy it it is much cheaper than that.
USB sends midi information to the computer, hun!
https://www.plogue.com/products/sforzando/
this soundfont player has a nice standalone player!
https://www.plogue.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=7090
there are lots of free soundfonts, but the garritan jazz piano that comes with this is really, really nice and I highly recommend it.
Use the soundcard you have, friend! If you're not recording 1/4" or XLR in, you don't need an external soundcard.
http://www.reaper.fm/
here's a DAW I'd highly recommend! Record your piano in midi clips on there to a metronome (or simple drum loop), you can load sforzando in Reaper as a VST
https://www.amazon.com/Drum-Programming-Complete-Program-Drummer/dp/0931759544
here's a book on drum programming! You can easily find a pdf of it on the internet, download some drum samples, n get going with composition.
Youtube is a really good resource for you also!!! Find yourself piano, theory, and composition lessons n give em your all
Good luck friend
This book has helped me immensely with my drum loops. I highly recommend it.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0931759544?pc_redir=1407362375&amp;robot_redir=1
I have a Launchpad S and a Mini, and I use the Launchpad95 script with both. It takes some time to learn; I would recommend going through the documentation and getting used to each of the different modes at a time, instead of trying to do everything at once.
The way I've been working is like this: I use the drum sequencer mode to create a few drum clips that I like, mostly based on what I learned from the book Drum Programming: A Complete Guide to Program and Think Like a Drummer.
For other instruments I use the melodic step sequencer. I usually chose a scale depending on my mood, and then I use the random button to create a few patterns, until I find a few that I like. In addition, I also add some chords using the melodic step sequencer, creating some pads for the song.
Once I have enough clips for drums, bass, pads and leads I record an arrangement by using the Launchpad in session mode to launch clips. And when I have an arrangement that I'm happy with I'll record the automation of volume and filter parameters on top of it, using a Launch Control.
But seriously, if you don't even know what the term 'gain-staging' means, a single paragraph on a reddit thread is not going to help you much. That's basic fundamentals on how audio works. I'd suggest picking up some beginner books.
There's a lot of fundamentals covered in this Sound Reinforcement Handbook.
And the Mixing Engineer's Handbook is great.
I recommend looking into some books on production. There is so much more information crammed into the better books than you will find in a week's of searching forums and youtube tutorials. For books on mixing, I say you can't go wrong with Bobby Owinski's The Mixing Engineer's Handbook or Mike Senior's Mixing Secrets for the Small Studioand for general production I recommend Rick Snoman's Dance Music Manual just be sure to get the latest edition, it includes chapters that cover everything from basic theory the popular genres (trance, dubstep, DnB, Techno, House, and Ambient/Chillout), it covers the electronics and science of acoustics, MIDI, DAW's and everything that come's along with them (instruments, effects, samplers, etc) and promoting and distributing your music. I can't say enough about this book and what a great way it was for me to see the "big picture" of what was ahead of me when I was starting out.
https://www.amazon.com/Mixing-Engineers-Handbook-Bobby-Owsinski/dp/128542087X
The Mixing Engineers Handbook is the standard, although there are 100’s of books.
https://www.amazon.com/Mixing-Engineers-Handbook-Bobby-Owsinski/dp/128542087X
As far as phasing issues, you can fix those either during recording by flipping phase on offending mics, repositioning mics, or, if you’re using a DAW, aligning your tracks so that the issue goes away.
If you don’t build your walls on top of your floating floor you’ll still be sending lots of transmission down through the walls into the floor/ceiling below.
Best analogy is that you should try to keep your sound within a watertight bubble. Any holes or weakspots will absolutely let sound through.
I spent >50k on studio construction on the 2nd floor of my building, and I can tell you that it’ll take a lot more than that to stop it from going below unless you’re in a concrete reinforced building. I have a storage space under me so it wasn’t a big deal.
Also structural engineering blah don’t crush the person below blah
Build It Like The Pros
^pdf is out there
+1 for cans after 10p or moving
This book is super helpful.
http://www.amazon.com/Home-Recording-Studio-Build-Like/dp/143545717X
I'm assuming this is a be-all, do-all type of room that includes tracking and mixing. I'm going to give pointers based on a "perfect world" scenario. It's up to you to make the necessary compromises.
If you're interested in where I got my information, I basically just followed any advice I could find from Ethan Winer, but a lot of it didn't make sense until I built my studio and ran some of my own calculations using this porous absorber calculator. I found it very interesting that a really thick layer of the pink insulation works way better than the dense fiberglass stuff at controlling low end for cheap. The reason people like the dense stuff so much is simply because it saves space, but it's actually pretty ineffective compared to say, 8" of pink stuff.
If you plan on mixing in this room I would highly suggest the books Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio and Home Recording Studio: Build It Like the Pros, as they both go over small, existing room treatments in great detail.
Good luck with your room.
Quick edit: Don't be tempted to put your monitors on their sides just to look cool. If they have tweeters then they should be standing upright to give the best imaging.
Have you tried doing some research?
There is a wealth of information on the internet, and numerous books on the subject as well.
Here's one: https://www.amazon.com/Home-Recording-Studio-Build-Like/dp/143545717X/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=home+studio&qid=1564774723&s=books&sr=1-2
Are you planning on making a recording studio or just a space for making noise? If you are making a recording studio I'd recommend this book. It's what I used for my basement studio - it covers important things to consider like electrical wiring tips (use thicker yellow wire, don't run lines parallel, don't use non-LED light dimmers), 2x4 stud placement (make 2 rows of 2x4 with a few inch air gap in between), ceiling recommendations and everything else. It also debunks many of the popular myths like egg carton soundproofing and gets into the science of how the room should be shaped, etc. It's a must have for home studio building.
For more information about this build, here's an imgur album I did showing the build process
To try and answer all the questions in this thread:
Sure, you can basically go as simple or as complex as you'd like. The most basic "synth" You could make would probably be a tone generator based on the 555 timer, something like the Atari Punk Console. Music From Outer Space is a good resource for more involved synth projects and the book Make: Analog Synthesizers is a pretty popular resource (you can find pdf versions online). Finally, r/synthDIY has some good resources too.
Make: Analog Synthesizers is a great introduction. It even details an example project, the Noise Toaster. But I think its strongest section might be the appendix, which is a good reference for various utility circuits you need in an analog synth, especially the LM13700 OTA, which you can use to build VCOs, VCFs, and VCAs.
The only glaring omission in the Make book is the lack of voltage-controlled exponential current source circuits that drive the OTA's current bias inputs. You can find more about those by digging through the textbook Musical Applications of Microprocessors (beware, much of the content regarding embedded systems is a bit outdated, but there is a surprising amount of analog material in there) and this Electronotes newsletter. In fact, this collection of Electronotes newsletters is a gold mine in itself.
Happy tinkering.
The best advice I can give you is to check out "How to Rap: The Art and Science of the Hip-Hop MC". I've been a fan for about 15 years and even then this book provided valuable insight into some of the intricacies of the genre, as explained by the pioneers and torchbearers themselves.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Rap-Art-Science-Hip-Hop/dp/1556528167
hey man
first thing is, practice. Start small and build up. use single syllable rhymes and try to get a feel for what a "bar is". then from there get more complex.
&nbsp;
Start with a simple flow and rhyme scheme
&nbsp;
just walked in the crib 1
look at my Asian chick 2
she hella thick, do a split, 3
she don't take no shit" 4
&nbsp;
this is a simple rhyme scheme with all single syllable rhymes. You will notice. the rhyme does not always end on the end of the line. If we were to continue this. my rule is to change the flow every four bars but I tend to change it up a lot more than other people. My first indication would be to change the flow right after
&nbsp;
I ain't seen her in a min-ute 1
I miss her...this love 2
really ain't a gimmick 3
..I fall to pieces when i'm in-it* 4
&nbsp;
This is an example where the rhyme scheme becomes more complex and the rhymes can increase to more than one syllable.
There are plenty of resources online about how to rap. there's even a book! [How to Rap!] (https://www.amazon.com/How-Rap-Art-Science-Hip-Hop/dp/1556528167/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1480085264&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=how+to+rap)
Best of luck to you little homie. holler if you got any questions
https://www.amazon.com/How-Rap-Art-Science-Hip-Hop/dp/1556528167/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1527022188&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=how+to+rap
it shows the intricacies of the song writing for individual artists and the subtle details that make or break a song.
Read this or anything else you can get your hands on that explains the creative process some professional rappers use to write lyrics. It would probably be especially helpful for you to find interviews of your favorite artists where they discuss their inspirations.
Also, you don't have to write with a beat in mind or while listening to an instrumental. The lyrics can come first and then you'll find or make a beat that fits them.
Lastly, don't let your dreams be dreams. Stay focused and work hard for what you want and don't let anyone discourage you with their negativity. At the same time, don't let compliments get to your head and tell you you're the greatest and then get complacent with your work. Always be your own worst critic.
Lastly lastly... Enjoy yourself! If you're not enjoying it, it'll show in your lyrics and delivery and then nobody else will enjoy it either
> Say if I can't find a teacher right away, how would you say I should try striking that "balance" you talked about? Any resources you'd suggest for each element (technical/musical/theoretical)?
Technical and musical elements are quite difficult to advise on because they are quite individual. Some people are very expressive but aren't necessarily brilliantly technical players and some are brilliantly technical but make music that sounds like robots, and all shades in-between.
If you pushed me I would say that something like Yousician's free lessons will get you off the ground as far as basic technique is concerned. Their free service is perfectly adequate for a complete beginner.
As far as musicality goes that's more difficult to teach. Really you're looking to try and "feel" something while you're playing and it's not quite the same as feeling an emotion - you're trying to feel the flow of the music. I found it helpful when I was first learning to play along to a track and not worry too much about getting it right - just noodle around trying to get into the feel of the thing. Playing with other people helps here too.
As far as theory goes that's easier.
Standard theory (you can call it 'classical' theory if you like but it applies to pretty much any form of music except really early music and more modern experimental stuff):
The AB Guide to Music Theory Part I
Music Theory in Practice Book I
(As you'll see from the Amazon listings there are more books in the Music Theory in Practice series, and there's an AB Guide to Music Theory Part II as well).
Get someone who knows what they're talking about to check your answers!
Jazz theory:
The Jazz Theory Book
Songwriting:
Chord Progressions for Songwriters
Bear in mind that music theory is a bit like art theory in that it's largely descriptive rather than prescriptive - it describes common practice and therefore gives you some guidelines but it's quite possible to follow all the rules and still come up with something that's fucking dreadful. So when you're writing try not to get bogged down with "is it correct?" - just ask yourself "do I like it? does it sound good?".
> What would an ideal (or even okay) progress would look like according to you?
I would say classical guitar grade 1 within 1-2 years is normal progress. If you're ambitious then 6 months to 1 year.
The ABRSM Guide is what I always point people towards - it takes you through all of the necessary basics in a thorough manner.
It doesn't explain the connections between the fundamental principles and string instruments, but if you get the former better understood, a lot of what is going on with the violin will fall into place.
However, feel free to ask here if there's specific questions you've got, whether violin-specific or not.
For general music theory there are some good videos on youtube for a lot of the basics (and a few for more advanced stuff as well if you wanna go that far)
If you're looking to buy books to learn from, then any theory book for grades 1-5 is a good way to get you started, maybe something like this (of course you could probably seek out the equivalent e-book or site with the same info)
If it's more the technical side of production you want to look in to, then /r/edmproduction has plenty of info, although stuff aimed at beginners tends to get buried a bit. But the search function or the faq will help with that : D
Also, youtube (again). There are literally thousands of production videos on there you can learn from once you have an idea of what you want to search for.
Coursera even have a few free introduction to music production courses every year if you wanna get really serious!
I had guitar lessons and learned there, so I'm not too sure. For a start, subscribe to the music theory subreddit and maybe look a little on there for help. I would highly recommend buying the book 'The AB Guide To Music Theory Part 1' by Eric Taylor. It's pretty cheap and not too much of a long read, but is very clear and will help you loads.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Guide-Music-Theory-Vol/dp/1854724460/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1345727330&amp;sr=8-1
This is UK, but I'm sure the American website has it to.
A couple of standard texts in the UK are these two:
[AB Guide to Music Theory pt.1] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/AB-Guide-Music-Theory-Vol/dp/1854724460)
[First Steps in Music Theory] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/First-Steps-Music-Theory-Grades/dp/1860960901/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=KJ0AYXKZW43PBX65Q6P2)
They are closely connected, in that the former explains stuff in more detail, while the second is a kind of abridged revision text, listing all the things you need to know, with minimal explanation. Both start with the absolute basics and go up to grade 5.
A companion books of exercises (for testing yourself) is [this] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Music-Theory-Practice-Grade-ABRSM/dp/1860969429/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_3?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=CXWDMNP8955NNC8DN0QE) (Grade 1 only)
Music theory won't necessarily help you make "beautiful melodies". It will give you some basic formulas to get you started, such as scales and simple chords: raw material to begin working with. But to understand melody, you have to learn some melodies. (Many composers write beautiful melodies with no theory knowledge - other than what they've gained from learning songs.)
This book taught me a lot of what I know. Over the years I have added to it from different sources, but I still recommend this book.
https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Music-Theory-Part-Pt/dp/1854724460
This one is probably the most eye opening book available.
Holy cow, if you don't know Dave McGowan's "Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon," you are in for a TRIP. A must-read.
https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Scenes-Inside-Canyon-Laurel/dp/1909394122
McGowan originally was writing this as an ongoing web series, about half the book is there, including some material that didn't make it into the book (including a particularly interested segment about Jack Nicholson). Original version had very helpful pictures, most of which are gone now. It's well worth reading, too, though not as good as the book.
https://www.sott.net/article/155794-Inside-The-LC-The-Strange-but-Mostly-True-Story-of-Laurel-Canyon-and-the-Birth-of-the-Hippie-Generation-Part-1
Weird scenes inside Laurel Canyon
Laurel Canyon, in Los Angeles. This is the book:
https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Scenes-Inside-Canyon-Laurel/dp/1909394122/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1527092729&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=Dave+McGowan+Laurel+Canyon
Yes, counterpoint assumes that you have a foundation in 18th century harmonic practice, also known as "common period" practices, e.g. voice leading as practiced by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, etc.
Harmony by Walter Piston is very thorough, but it's a serious treatment and perhaps not for the faint of heart. Also, you may want to get an edition before the fifth as it's substantially different from a pedagogical standpoint than the earlier editions. I can also recommend Kostka's Tonal Harmony very highly, but also a serious treatment. In fact, it may be best just to start with the Kostka and pick up the Piston later if the fancy strikes you.
These two books teach harmony in very structured way, and in many ways that's the best for learning counterpoint. Eventually, depending on how serious you want to get about composition, you may want to read Schoenberg's book Theory of Harmony. It covers the same material as most harmony books, but it does so from the perspective of the composer. It's even a little philosophical (and dense). It's not unusual for graduate students to re-learn harmony using the Schoenberg text as it forces you to think like a composer. Of course it's a more difficult read, but only if you're unprepared.
If you'd like something a little more easy, there's no shame in getting the Dummies series book on harmony. It does the job with a minimum of depth. Frankly, though, it's in your best interest to start with a solid, university level textbook like the first two I mentioned if you want to tackle counterpoint. Eventually, it's a good idea to read more than one book on tonal theory anyway, so it can't hurt to start with the Kostka and just put it down and use the "Dummies" book. You can always just come back to it later.
Apparently you want a textbook, but know that music theory and composition demand tons and tons of practice. My suggestion is to get yourself educated with legit basic theory resources (note that Jazz is sufficiently complex and different from everything else that it's a very bad way to start).
Lectures - here (someone else in this thread has posted this).
You will need both auditory and written practice. Musictheory.net is great for "ear training." You should also have a physical instrument. If you're willing to blow cash on a textbook, Stefan Kostka's Tonal Harmony (older editions are less than half the price listed there) is a common university choice that starts from nothing and goes far. It's important to also complete the exercises in the workbook, and get a music notebook for practicing your chops. As soon as you know how to write music, you can make up your own melodies, and you can garnish and revise them as your knowledge grows). If you're poor, I see little harm in breaking copyright law and obtaining a free electronic copy of the text - but it is still in your interest to obtain the workbook.
One might consider using iTuna ($3, a note recognizer app for mobile devices) and eventually Sibelius ($100+, a score-writing program) but it is important that you train your brain to audibly recognize objects, and premature use of computer resources can make you dependent.
Music exists to be made and that's all there is to it.
You missed 2-8 years of constant exposure, performance opportunities and lots of cool classes, but if music is something you love just do it as much as you can. Ear training, sight singing, transcription, these are very important tools but it takes the repeated application of them to make you "better." I have a BM, it was 4.5 years of immersion. I can tell you that most of the things I "learned" I could point out to you in a few minutes each. Lots of little tricks and tips, neat combinations and things like that. Figuring out how to really apply them is what's so difficult.
If you want a good introduction to harmony and tonality, Tonal Harmony is very thorough.
Make what you want. Fuck everybody who says you can't.
Edit: phrasing
Learning theory does involve a lot memorization, but it's more about learning musical function. And yeah, it can be, as you put it, agonizingly slow if you're still at a beginner level. Much of theory practice involves reading and interpreting notes and chords, which is much easier when you can read notes and chords very quickly and have an instrument you are proficient in to work things out on. But if you're seriously interested, it can be learned by anyone and it will enrich your piano experience.
Be sure you're not just learning random factoids one at a time. Context is very important for putting together musical theory. Use a theory book (here's the book I learned from in college for reference) and take things one chapter at a time. You can use your flash card study method to help memorize important concepts from there.
This guy is a college music theory teacher and he's uploaded like 50 videos of his classroom lectures and he's excellent at explaining things. Every lecture is very clear, concise and too the point. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICDPWP6HUbk&list=PLw9t0oA3fHkxx1PgYpiXrMUPXaOiwh6KU&index=1
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I think his lessons are based around readings from this book, which is a little confusing to some people, but is a very standard college level music theory texbook https://www.amazon.com/Tonal-Harmony-Stefan-Kostka/dp/0078025141/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1550514584&sr=8-3&keywords=tonal+harmony
You can buy the books for every individual grade online. Either in PDF form or an actual copy. Most grades are a series of scales or arpeggios to play and an assortment of pieces suited to the difficulty. Most if not all can be found here http://shop.abrsm.org Schirmers Library also has books of exercises (which can be found free). If you’re interested in theory this is a pretty standard college text book on the subject Tonal Harmony
I wouldn't recommend self-studying this. A lot of the test is based on skills that you pretty much need from music as u/ChubbyMonkeyX said. Honestly, it is an extremely hard exam if you don't have a solid background in music. But it probably possible. If you need a textbook for self-study, I recommend this. If you need a review book, I recommend Barron's AP Music Theory Review book.
Virnibot has detected a misspelling or incorrect use of grammar in your comment.
> I am also a white devil and tbh I think only morons idealize the culture and advancement of whites without looking at the blood that was spilt to propogate it, white people colonized and enslaved millions throughout history to get to where we are today. However the only people that think 18th century china were backwards are also morons and I doubt that they opened a single historical textbook.
>
> That being said, human nature is violent and opportunistic, you can't judge our ancestors with the world view of today, their simply wasn't the infrastructure in place for people to be co exist peacefully in the same manner as today. There was no antibiotics, no internet, no welfare, no democracy, limited legal and policing systems, no easy transport, no supermarkets the list goes on and on. Without these systems in place, people become greedy and mistrustful of each other.
> If one cut on your knee can get infected and kill you, leaving your family destitute and the average life expectancy was 30 then people are going to act alot more sociopathic, it becomes about survival, like actual life or death survival.
>
> The reality is human history is dirty and messy and violent, and pretending that any race or ethnicity is innocent from that is completely ignorant, its in our genes to be opportunistic and violent, its evolution and natural selection at work. We only became largely peaceful in the last 50 years because a) we developed to such a degree that working together economically was in our better interests than military and b) the deterrant of nuclear war and mutually assured destruction
>
> I recommend you read the following books: http://www.amazon.com/War-Before-Civilization-Peaceful-Savage/dp/0195119126
>
> Basically how all human societies are violent and
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393317552/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1449043242&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=guns+germs+and+steel
>
> This book gives the reasons why civilizations rise and fall and why European culture became the dominant one post 19th century
> Essentially there are deterministic factors that are needed for any culture to prosper and white people inherited them all just because of geography and luck
<3 Good day Courtesy | Of | User Virnios
War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage
http://www.amazon.com/War-Before-Civilization-Peaceful-Savage/dp/0195119126
Organised war? Sure it was more common after agriculture.
But tribal peoples skirmish constantly and raid each other like it's going out of fashion They have very high interpersonal violence rates.
War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage
Easy to digest.
This is a great textbook and is one of the few college textbooks that wasn't a waste of my money. It has everything in there starting from rhythms, chords, and intervals all the way up to a bunch of crazy stuff analysis and part writing wise that really spices up music and will give you a great appreciation for all types of music. Once you realize how much of this "technical" stuff that you never knew is applied to even pop songs, it really changes your perspective on the artists and producers behind them. The first fourth of the book is really REALLY important stuff though and the rest is just really cool (or really boring depending on your love for theory) stuff that will make your music even better. Beat production doesn't "need" to involve a lot of the other stuff, but having more tools under your belt is what it's all about.
Get a good theory text book and actually read it. it won't be something you can sit down and take in all at once. No skimming. No "powering through".
The first couple chapters may seem useless. "Why do I need to know how to read in tenor clef and who the hell still writes scores with figured bass?!!" All these principals will help you understand theory. Reading in "C" clefs will help understand transposition and figured bass will help with intervals and chordal voicing.
As you're reading, actually take notes as if you were in a class. The act of writing down newly learned information will really help cement the ideas. Also, try not to just quote the text in your notes. Write down the principals in your own words in a way that makes sense to you.
If you come to something that you can't quite wrap your head around, google that shit. There are a metric shit-tonne of online articles and videos demonstrating basic music theory.
All that said, taking an actual music theory class is really the best way to go about learning the subject. You'll learn much faster and the professor will be able to explain things much better.
I found Laitz's Complete Musician to be very handy while starting out.
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Musician-Integrated-Approach-Listening/dp/0199742782
One thing I tried doing was learning every chord in every position and every inversion. I'm not done writing them up, but I have charts for dominant, major, minor, and half-diminished chords I could scan for you. I also have the arpeggios to be played over the chords.
Another thing is to learn are your scale modes. I'll pick either 4 modes in 1 position or 1 mode in 4 positions and practice each scale for 5 minutes.
You could improve your sight reading with this. It's not meant to be studied, but to be opened up to a random page and played.
I'm also a fan of speed and dexterity exercises. You don't have to shred, but sometimes you need to get from point A to point B in a hurry. After playing these for a while, you'll also feel less fatigue. My favorite books for this are John Petrucci's Wild Stringdom and Frank Gambale's Technique Books
Also, if you really get into jazz, I highly recommend The Jazz Theory Book. It will help with your improvisation and teach you how songs are structured, which will help you with other genres. A more classic theory book that's good is The Complete Musician.
After you get technique stuff down, it all comes down to where you want to be as a player. What do you want to play? Do you want to write? Do you want to do covers? Maybe you want to teach.
Sorry this was so long. I love teaching music myself, so if you want to learn anything specific, PM me and I should be able to help you out and send you some materials.
Wwise or FMOD are solutions which attempt to solve these high-level problems. They each come with their own authoring tool and a library to trigger events and set parameters which are defined in that authoring tool to trigger sound playback.
They're both somewhat complex (Wwise much more so). You're not going to get a library that is easy-to-use and also handles all those tasks for you. They're also the "pro standard".
You can also start with a library that will just give you an interface for writing samples and go from there:
The Audio Programming Book is a decent intro to concepts relevant to audio programming. It's more focused toward people who do installation art or new music, but is still relevant for audio programming in games.
I'm into Csound, which is kind of like a scripting language using a library of audio function objects (opcodes). Some of the programmers who worked on it just made a straight up C programming for audio book. I have it, but being a crappy programmer I haven't done much with it yet.
So what did you think of JUCE?
This seems to be way easier. Did you read this book? There are CSound chapters
https://www.amazon.com/Audio-Programming-Book-MIT-Press/dp/0262014467
It's a very good book but not so much about VST. The OP could have a look at https://www.amazon.com/Audio-Programming-Book-MIT-Press/dp/0262014467 instead.
There's a single book I've found it in B&N the other day about creating audio filters and what not. It's a very hard thing to find information about and I've been curious about diving in to it myself. I just left my job as a radio engineer for almost a decade, I was constantly trying to learn about codecs and lossless audio file formats with the hopes of taking an open source format like ogg or flac and piggy backing ads to specific tracks with the hopes of creating a new type of automation system. anyhow, long story short, if you're truly willing to learn you're going to have to hunt down the guys who make the codecs and learn from them directly, try emailing the devs who make this stuff. I would start with Radio because radio engineers love to show off tech and teach people what they know.
if you're thinking about audio programming for games this is a great book to get started with basic audio programming concepts.
It's true that there's a ton of great information online, but books present the info in an organized, trustworthy fashion. Online learning should be fine for more introductory music theory and common practice period harmony, but once you're looking into more advanced stuff, check out these books:
-20th Century Harmony by Vincent Persichetti
-Contemporary Harmony by Ludmila Ulehla
Playing two chords at the same time is also called a polychord. Vincent Persichetti's "Twentieth-Century Harmony" has a good section on polychords. https://www.amazon.com/Twentieth-Century-Harmony-Creative-Aspects-Practice/dp/0393095398
This book will give you plenty of ideas.
I got one. It's kind of gimmicky, you'd definitely have to write around the effect. The (intentionally bad?) pitch-tracking will only work semi-reliably on leads. Everything else sounds like glorious glitchy noise. Don't get me wrong, if you want to sound like Lightning Bolt, this thing is right up your alley. As a more traditional effect it sounds like someone spilled beer on your MXR Blue Box.
One of my buddies told me that it's just a pedal version of one of the basic projects from the book Handmade Electronic Music by Nicolas Collins. I never confirmed this.
I have the older version, construction wasn't so good. I let someone borrow it and they fried it (no reverse polarity protection or some shit). I cracked the thing open, and the components were soldered to a hobby breadboard. I never fixed it, it lives in a desk drawer now.
I'm happy to answer any other questions you might have. Keep in mind that I am a synth-player, not a guitar player.
Handmade Electronic Music and Circuit Bending are two books that one can not miss if one wants to dive into this experimental territory.
I don't know if you're interested, but you can DIY a simple line input mixer for about $10.. maybe $20 if you wanted volume pots. There's probably a few tutorials online, if not this book has a great section;
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Handmade-Electronic-Music-Hardware-Hacking/dp/0415998735/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1412272132&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=circuit+bending
Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking https://www.amazon.com/dp/0415998735/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_zFTUAbTT96WFH
This book is incredible, you can start with a 74c14 chip, a capacitor, resistor, 9v battery and audio jack to get a mono pitch.
Find a good book, well reviewed by the community. A good reference text will have all the concepts you need to know, on at least a high level, all right there within the pages. Once you build a foundation from that, learning more complex topics will be easier.
E.G. I know nothing about making music hardware, and I read a random comment of someone recommending this book (http://www.amazon.com/Handmade-Electronic-Music-Hardware-Hacking/dp/0415998735). I saw that the book had great reviews, so I bought it.
It's just easier to read a damn book than google stuff sometimes, especially when you dont even know what you should be googling!
Nice work! I’d recommend an Atari Punk Console next if you want a noise box that can accept CV.
Alternatively take a look at CMOS noise makers, there’s a nice hex inverter chip that will give you 6 square wave oscillators. These types of CMOS/Logic devices are often called Lunettas.
If you want to step up do LMNC’s CEM3340 VCO’s. They work great, I just built 3. Doing his filter and envelope next.
Lastly, shell out the money for the 2nd edition of Nic Collins excellent book Handmade Electronic Music.
https://www.amazon.com/Handmade-Electronic-Music-Hardware-Hacking/dp/0415998735
Yes, it’s worth the money. Especially if you’re coming in to this with zero knowledge of electronics. This book will show you how to do the CMOS stuff, circuit bend, make a 10 step sequencer, plus all kinds of rad “experimental” stuff. It’s money well spent.
That's a pretty clever use of that book, thanks for sharing.
I was doing exercises from Jim Chapin's "Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer" with a similar mentality, rotating which limb got which part. Butch Norton has a similar series of articles on independence and limb rotation. Really really cool stuff.
Here are the books you may be looking for.
4-Way Coordination: A Method Book for the Development of Complete Independence on the Drum Set or Advanced Techniques For The Modern Drummer: Coordinating Independence As Applied To Jazz And Be-bop
Both focus on independence, though this is the one I just order today for myself, The New Breed
Ah memories. Yep I started with How to Play rock'n'roll drums, Syncopation and this book way back in the early 90's. Then later on went to Advanced Techniques, Future Sounds and The New Breed for different permutations and limb independence. And 'trying' to pick apart and play Dave Weckl's Island Magic.
Does anyone else remember those drum solos like calypso eclipsed and aint it rich?
Jim Chapin's Advanced Technique for the Modern Drummer is a must have for learning independence. Also, learn your rudiments. Get a copy of Alan Dawson's Rudimental Ritual and work the hell out of it. Charley Wilcoxon's Advanced Swing Solos is a great practical application of rudiments as well. These books are tough but if you take them slow at first, little by little you will figure them out and build up your chops. Finally, listen to and watch a lot of jazz drummers. Find your favorites and get your hands on everything they ever recorded. Play with the records to help develop your musical sense.
This is all great advice- the Riley book has been open on my music stand for years and I am still a long way from 'finishing' the exercises. I also recommend 4 Way Coordination,playing exercises in that book is very humbling and eye opening.
That is awesome. I just found this book on 4-way coordination while drumming that sounds like the kind of thing redditors have shown interest in in other threads. I threw it in my Amazon shopping list.
https://www.amazon.com/4-Way-Coordination-Development-Complete-Independence/dp/0769233708/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1521491430&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=independence+drums&amp;dpID=51jflAn474L&amp;preST=_SY344_BO1,204,203,200_QL70_&amp;dpSrc=srch
I built it so I could practice from http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0769233708 using actual pedals and sticks instead of just hands and feet. I need a snare stand still for my practice pad but until then ill just keep beating up my thighs
Also, you might want to check out Louis Bellson's book-https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Reading-Text-All-Instruments/dp/0769233775. There are lots of exercises with over the bar rhythms and half-note triplets.
Don't be surprised if the unis don't respond. You're basically asking them for help without paying the astronomical fees that now come hand in hand with degree level study in england ;)
Here's a few books that I had that are really good:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Reading-Text-All-Instruments/dp/0769233775 - We were told to use this book by clapping the 4 beats, and vocalising the rhythms in the book. It starts off simple but gets hard real fast. Full of deliberately obscure notation that smears beats to prepare you for some bad writing as well!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hearing-Writing-Music-Professional-Training/dp/0962949671/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1539085026&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=hearing+and+writing+music
This book is basically the bible of ear training. You could study this book for 5 years standalone, if you wanted to be secure in all the stuff in it.
Aside from that, other stuff was more about production and bass guitar specifically. Those two though, seriously a good combo I think.
Modern Reading Text in 4/4 by Louis Bellson and Gil Breines
It's dry, but it will improve your playing. It has no pitch, just rhythm and is written by a drummer and frequently used to instruct drummers, but because it doesn't have pitch is perfect everyone to study pure rhythm. Playing it, reading it, everything about it.
Take a page every week or so and work through it. Play to a metronome to be sure you're getting it evenly. Work up in tempo and when you're doing that well start having your metronome click on only the 2 and 4 so you have to take responsibility for laying down a solid 1. Loop through a couple of bars and start to play with the articulation, making certain notes legato and other staccato and see how it affects the feel and phrasing. Take that loop and start adding pitches over it, using the bare rhythm as a tool to explore purely melodic improvisation, figuring out what works with the rhythm and what doesn't.
The other good suggestion is to try to find a teacher. They'll help you find your weak points and suggest how to work on them. They'll drive you into new areas that you haven't yet considered. Even if it's just another bassist mentoring you rather than a formal instructor you're at the point where feedback from others will really help you to keep growing.
I found my instructor on Craigslist. which meant there was going to be a good chance I was going to find someone shitty. That wasn't the case though, my instructor graduated with his bachelors of music and he has a great curriculum. Perhaps you could look for a local drum instructor for him?
If it helps, the books I use (I started 6 or so months ago) are: Ultimate Realistic Rock: Drum Method, Fundamental Studies for Snare Drum, and Modern Reading Text in 4/4 For All Instruments. My instructor also prints off rudiments and other drills for me.
The Louis Bellson Book
This is for jazz syncopation. Can practice this without the bass. Just tapping your foot and tapping your hand on your knee or whatever.
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The Applebaum Book
This is for more modern/contemporary pit band / session type of stuff, but still valuable.
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There are also smartphone apps like "Read Rhythm" and sites like "SightReadingFactory.com" but I prefer the books above for rhythm-only stuff.
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Best way to learn two-feel is to transcribe a ton of two-feel. Transcribe the all the two-feel choruses Bob Cranshaw plays on this tune. That should add some variety to your lines. Or what Don Bagley does on this tune. (Or anything that Ray Brown, Scott Lafaro and Eddie Gomez ever did in two feel).
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There is no one size fits all bible of music theory. To be extremely well rounded you need to look at a few different books:
For just starting out in the sense that you don't know how to build chords or intervals, Carl Fischer's grimoire books are excellent.
For classical harmony this is the book I used in my classes:
http://www.amazon.com/Tonal-Harmony-Introduction-Twentieth-Century/dp/0073401358/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1465247193&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=tonal+harmony
For jazz harmony:
http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Theory-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/1883217040/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1465247235&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=jazz+theory
For deeper classical/counterpoint:
http://www.amazon.com/Counterpoint-4th-Kent-Kennan/dp/013080746X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1465247274&amp;sr=8-3&amp;keywords=counterpoint
Also, try to get lessons with a university teacher because none of these books are comprehensive or perfect.
I remember in one of my beginning classes we went over the omnibus, and the deepest the book went was "this is an omnibus".
It wouldn't be until college where a professor ACTUALLY explained to me what the omnibus is and how to make one.
Also, the mark levine book can probably be condensed into 20 pages of meaningful material. He uses a lot of filler/examples...
http://www.amazon.com/Tonal-Harmony-Stefan-Kostka/dp/0073401358/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1332857444&amp;sr=1-2
Time to move off the websites and into some books. This is a good overall intermediate/pre-advanced textbook
Heres the textbook my college uses for all of theory (1-4):
http://www.amazon.com/Tonal-Harmony-Stefan-Kostka/dp/0073401358/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1382458576&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=tonal+harmony
I believe it's the standard for quite a few colleges as I know a couple other people who used it, as well as the teacher who taught theory at my high school. You could also acquire a copy somewhere probably....
It uses examples mostly from either classic rep pieces or twentieth century and romantic works so if thats not your thing or your looking for specific jazz voicings there's probably other resources that'd work better. If you want knit-pick specifics for voice leading with all the types of chords, going into more exotic and strange chords, some 12-tone stuff, and tetrachords, it's probably a good book.
The chapters are stand alone in terms of what they teach, but they will rely on basic concepts and possibly concepts covered in other chapters.
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If you're an electric. music minor (Though I'm not sure exactly what that entails) you probably have a theory teacher or someone you could ask for similar texts?
I only reccomend a textbook because it will go far more indepth and pull together a huge breadth of information compared to most internet resources (which are geared more for rock/pop normally).
Alright. Well, whenever you're ready, just PM me, and I'll get you my cell number and Skype info. This theory text has made the most sense to me — http://www.amazon.com/Tonal-Harmony-Introduction-Twentieth-Century/dp/0073401358/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1450929787&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=tonal+harmony. It'll get you through all of the basics and some of the advanced stuff as well!
As far as jumping into playing stuff like CHON, depending on your technical ability, it's not that big of a leap. But understanding what's happening theoretically is the tricky part. Most people don't understand what's happening in the music that they play. What many of those people don't realize is that having a sound understanding of the theory can help articulate the music that they make more efficiently.
Do you understand how to construct chords and determine the quality of chords? If not, I would recommend checking out /r/musictheory for now. The sidebar has some great resources for a basic understanding of chords / harmony. I would check that out; play through the major scale w/ triad chords and identify the chord qualities (Major, minor, diminished etc); then, do the same thing and identify all of the seventh chords and their qualities. That'll get you off to a good start!
How Music Works by John Powell. It is a good breakdown of many elements of music and how we hear sounds and read notation. Other than the, look on Amazon for a used music theory textbook and go from there.
I used this on in college classes.
Another decent theory book.
If you are planning on teaching yourself (which it sounds like you are) I would highly recommend working through the Elementary Music Rudiments series. I would recommend the all incluisive one as it is more economical and allows you to advance to where you need to be. http://www.frederickharrismusic.com/FHMCsite/capricorn?para=showPage&amp;docId=catShowProd&amp;section=**&amp;prodCode=TSCR&amp;fromCatCode=CATHEORY3&amp;actionType=show&amp;treePath=Theory >&categoryDesc=Theory Publications by Mark Sarnecki&fromTree=Y&pageNum=&level=2&code=CATHEORY3
This book can also be found on amazon and at many local music stores.
If you're not on a super tight budget another great theory resource is Tonal Harmony by Stefan Kostka
http://www.amazon.ca/Tonal-Harmony-Stefan-Kostka/dp/0073401358/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376420694&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Tonal+Harmony
This was my university text book for my first two years of theory classes. It explains everything from basic rudiments (it covers it slightly) and goes through the harmony methods used into the 21st century.
If you are serious about writing music and learning about the different compositional methods I would recommend going through and doing the exercises in each of these books as they will allow you to devlop a much better understanding and you may find it allows you more creative room.
The benefit of a book is that you don't get lost in duscissions and work sheets that are way over your head as you do online (I know I got into this situation a few times).
It is very important to be very confident in your rudiments before moving on to more complex harmony study so my recommendation would be to first go through Elementary Rudiments and then move on to Tonal Harmony. That's my two-cents, hope it helps!
If you have the budget for it, there's always grabbing one of the many theory/aural skills textbooks and doing some of their self-tests. This is one of the textbooks we used for my aural training class, and it comes with a CD that has a ton of listening examples; I think all of them except the quizzes have an answer key in the book, so that can be good for self-testing.
The Kostka textbook also has a workbook with some exercises - see this review for some critiques of that textbook series, but if you're using it for self-practice as opposed to first-time learning, I think it would be okay and it does cover a pretty broad base of topics for studying.
Of course, as someone else pointed out, musictheory.net and teoria.com are also good online resources for a lot of this stuff as well, so check out those self-tests. I also agree that grabbing music on IMSLP can be really good practice that's easy to access. In addition to Bach, try looking at some of Mozart's piano works, since those tend to be fairly straightforward but offer a slightly different texture for identifying harmonies.
Otherwise, I mean - I think most of these topics are things that fall into "the more you do it, the better you'll get" category, so I would just encourage you to immerse yourself in whatever music you're participating in, and focus on these topics. When you have downtime in a rehearsal - analyze. When you're waiting for a bus/picking up your kid/dinner to finish cooking - analyze. Listening to music on the radio - analyze. You get the idea. :) The more you build it into your life and the music you're actually doing, the more relevant it feels and the better you'll learn it.
huh.. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0073401358
goodreads gives it a 3.9/4
classical.net which is the first review to show up on google, gives a glowing review
amazon buyers gave it 4.3/5
booksaboutmusic has nothing but positive things to say
I'm struggling to find all these negative reviews you are speaking of. Other then the typical bad apples on the various sites, I was unable to find a large amount of people saying bad things about the text. I do not mean to say they don't exist, but rather that it's not as widespread as you would like me to believe. I think this more a case of me upsetting the hive-mind here on reddit then this book actually being widely disliked by music scholars.
Knowing theory won't really help you create better songs. It will help you understand what's going on in a song and can help you solve many compositional problems for arrangements. But that's not the same thing.
I'm not trying to dissuade you, I'm a theory geek myself. But I do want to convey what theory will and won't do for you. Having a good ear for melody and a sense of song structure is far more important for making a great song than theory is.
If you want some great theory books, I can heartily recommend the text Tonal Harmony, by Kostka and Payne as well as Harmony and Voice Leading, by Aldwell, Schacter and Cadwallader
While pricey because of their academic audience, these texts avoid much of the confusion rigorous texts demonstrate, particularly with regard to the importance of modes to understanding the relationship between melody and harmony.
For really expanding your understanding of harmony on the guitar, and if you like Jazz, Johnny Smith's "Mel Bay's Complete Johnny Smith Approach to Guitar" is an amazing book, but requires a lot of hard work on the part of the student (not least of which due to Smith's insistance of writing the music in actual pitch using bass and treble cleffs.
http://www.amazon.com/Tonal-Harmony-Stefan-Kostka/dp/0078025141?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0
A book refering mostly to classical music (probably exclusivly) but its an immense source of knowledge of music theory and practice in general. It's written for academic purposes but is easily read by laymen :)
if you want a book that covers classical theory and harmony this probably the best.
Phillip Tagg's 'Everyday Tonality' is also good but a bit more advanced :)
I went to berklee and this was our textbook:
https://www.amazon.com/Tonal-Harmony-B-Music/dp/0078025141
Also ear training helps, it is pretty hard though, you have to practice alot. Im sure you can find some youtube vids to help.
Hey, similar situation here and this is what I recommend
The Everything Music Theory Book has lined up pretty much exactly with my high school music theory class, but I haven't finished yet. It seems to be a great baseline to make sure you know what you need to: it has the same tricks everybody uses, workbook questions/answers, and you could look back in it anytime you need to remember something. (I have the second edition, not sure if it's superior)
Although I don't own it, my teacher has taken a lot from it: Tonal Harmony, apparently any music theory class you'll take in college will use this book, and my director says there's no need for the newest edition.
These two books should be enough of an entrance to music theory, without boring you. Supposedly there's plenty of resources online; I especially love the youtube community around it.
Hey, hope I can help! Music composition and theory background -
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It is great that you can come up with melodies - that is one of the hardest battles. To be quite honest with you, there is proper ways of doing voice leading in tonal (and atonal) harmony, but really no one cares if it is "proper" anymore outside of some collegiate settings. Basically, if it sounds good to you, chances are it will sound good to others (tonally speaking - atonality is not liked so much here in the west).
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The textbook I used in school was called "Tonal Harmony". It was a good textbook, but I didn't think it was worth it outside of learning the basics. What has really helped me as a composer has been learning to play and improvise on the piano. Even musicians like myself with little piano training should be able to go up to a piano and "bang" out notes and add simple left hand chords to them. Piano music (and choral scores) are all about voice leading - it is what makes the instrument (and voices) sound good.
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Next time you have a chance, play a melody on the piano. Try and identity what chord sections of your melody use and try that. Keep in mind that just because your melody has "C E G" in it does not necessary mean you have to use a C major chord. Try an A Major (there will be dissonance with the c/c#), an A minor 7 (A C E G), etc. Let me know if you have any questions. =)
I super recommend reading Tonal Harmony! (I'm sure you can get a better price though, amazon is notorious for overpriced textbooks). It explains things really well in an easy to understand way, and it still goes deep into harmonically challenging and interesting waters.
Beautiful violin!
I don't know how well-received this book is, but it's what my university uses for it's music major Theory courses. I've enjoyed it so far. I also really enjoyed this book when I used it in high school. The Suzuki volumes are a decent place to start repertoire-wise - especially if your teacher doesn't use the Suzuki method. Depending on whether you're interested in pop/classical/etc. different books can be recommended as well.
This isn't specifically guitar, but this is a great book - a little on the expensive side though: https://www.amazon.com/Tonal-Harmony-Stefan-Kostka/dp/0078025141
Have you looked at doing some cheap courses on Udemy? There would be some good information on there! I've been thinking about making a course on there myself
Tonal Harmony is the standard for music students
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0078025141/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=1944687782&amp;pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&amp;pf_rd_t=201&amp;pf_rd_i=0073327131&amp;pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;pf_rd_r=0PNRPDC4XH3KGDR045MK
Some of the examples given in the book are meh, but it will definitely cover pretty much everything you need to know
> In the meantime, you don't even have a list to copy, haven't cited a source
Yeah, did you miss the part about the invention of writing? We rely on archaeological evidence to indicate the presence of native american wars, genocides, and massacres.
>and don't seem to know that mesoamerica was one of three places where written language was independently developed
Oh please, written language was isolated and rare in the Americas and you know, now you're grasping at straws with your school-boy pedantry.
>I'll admit my post didn't take a lot of work - but the fiction you're spinning takes no work at all until you bother to back it up.
Why should I back it up when you just keep moving the goalpost?
Everything's amazing and nobody's happy.
Sure, things aren't perfect, but they're a lot better than most people make it out to be.
I can buy a plane ticket, and take part in the miracle of human flight--I can sit in a chair, flying through the fucking sky, and travel across the world in a few hours. It astounds me that people don't find that more amazing.
If I want to, I can engage in internet discussions like I am with you right now. We can use electrical impulses and waves of light to send videos to each other from across the world. Holy balls!
Meanwhile, we are getting closer and closer to being able to use biomedical implants and prosthetics to give disabled people new limbs which they can use just as well as the ones nature gave us. Hell, some of them are even better.
Do we have wars? Yes, but violence has always been part of human nature, and in fact, we are probably less violent now than most primitive societies were
Is there environmental damage from our lifestyle? Yes, but they are far from causing doomsday scenarios that many alarmists like to concoct.
Overall, I'd say this is a great time to live in. In my opinion, those who insist that humanity was much better off in the days of ancient tribes and primitivism are no different from the republicans who call for a return to the "good old days" of American traditional values. A return to a time that never even existed.
Yes, because I can write a dissertation here. You’re a racist. Get woke: https://www.amazon.com/War-Before-Civilization-Peaceful-Savage/dp/0195119126
No Japan didn't change their flag after WW2. And by "revolution", did you mean the very revolution that massacred and terrorised its own people (the Vendée)? Obviously the French don't reject their glorious revolutionary heritage in order to denounce their colonial past. Shame to Australia self-denial.
While I haven't read much about Australian Aboriginal history (still educate myself on that topic), I am more educated about the history of Asia, colonial and pre-colonial. What I am sure is that the natives didn't fare better under non-European tyrannical monarchs than under foreign colonial regimes.
And while dying by smallpox or by guns is no different to the natives, it is very different when judged by the intent of the colonial power. Equating germs with genocide, therefore, is dishonest. The colonisation of Australia is far from genocide.
About the devastation of tribal wars, I suggest you read War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage.
>I was merely pointing out that the idea that the NAs were peaceful, environmentally-friendly earth-children is grossly over-simplified.
The Myth of the Peaceful Savage.
BrazenBull: ^^original ^^reddit ^^link
I don't need to "sound" smart. I'll leave that up to the scholars, such as Harvard Professor Steven Pinker. Here's his TED talk about the violent nature and yes, barbarism of the so-called "noble savages" in a pre-Colombian world.
If that doesn't do it for you, I invite you to check out anthropologist Lawrence Keeley's book, "War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage"
Or perhaps "Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage" by the archaeologist Steven LeBlanc (also of Harvard!!).
Lots and lots of hand PT and exercises. I am in a similar boat except I'm returning to music after about 20 or so years of not practicing and it's pretty much like learning anew, except with much stiffer fingers and joints.
Depending on how limber, agile, and your stamina, I would say start slow and pay lots of attention to form and posture, take break often and stretch. Do arm/hand/finger strength drills a few times a day and stretch A LOT, and I don't mean just hands and arms, develop and follow a routine to maintain overall mobility (which isn't a bad thing to do at this age anyhow).
Other than that — The Complete Musician could be a good start and a teacher to get you started with your instrument though be careful as early bad habits are very hard to fix in the future.
Since some time has now passed and there haven't been too many answers, I want to add something that I think is the most important answer: you can make up your own chorale preludes by getting better at improvising.
An easy way to start improvising is by playing just the harmonization in your hymn book, but rather than playing the top three voices at the same time, you can play them in an arpeggiated way. Some notes will have to be added or taken away in some situations, such as when two voices merge onto the same note. Here is a very quick recording that I made to demonstrate this principle.
Over time, you'll want to add basic harmonic ideas to your musical vocabulary. A few things I'd note:
If you keep working on this, you'll get better and better. My favourite improviser who lives in my area sounds like this (the recording is terrible, but good enough that you can get the idea). A feature of his improvisations that I really like is modulations to far-away keys; when I hear him play, it feels like I'm being thrown into something vast and mysterious.
A resource I recommend for liturgical musicians' improvisation is this book by Gerre Hancock. It's intended for organists, but is still extremely useful for pianists. I also find Improv Planet on Patreon very useful. It's run by a piano professor who specializes in improvisation in the style of Bach and Handel.
If you haven't already studied harmony, I also highly, highly recommend it (I'd call study of harmony a prerequisite for Improv Planet). Good resources for self-study of harmony include the textbooks by Laitz and by Clendinning & Marvin.
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Musician-Integrated-Approach-Listening/dp/0199742782
Laitz is what we used for theory, but the way to approach different things is different amongst different people...
Edit: [Straus] (http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Post-Tonal-Theory-Joseph-Straus/dp/0131898906/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376717704&amp;sr=1-4&amp;keywords=theory) for base 12/12 tone
Edit 2: Don't forget that looking at various texts is another great way to think about understanding how different composers approach things, so once you learn a fundamental way of slapping labels on things, actual music is the best way to learn theory. Also, check out [this.] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenkerian_analysis)
Well, it all start there. If you know it well enough, you start to extend the harmonies by including chords from the parallel minor/major, relative minor/major, secondary dominants of diatonic chords, diminished 7th chords, neopolitan chords, aug 6 chords, tritone subs, etc. At the point you seem to be at, it's probably time to buy a good book on Tonal Harmony. There are some really good ones out there, I prefer [Laitz's myself] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Musician-Integrated-Listening/dp/0199742782/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1383066513&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=The+complete+musician)
I posted a similar thread a few years back, and it seemed to come down to this book. I bought it, but it's pretty above my head and I haven't had the time to really try and delve in.
Have you looked into MaxMSP?
Glad to hear it, thank you! And yeah I can think of a few books that really helped me.
For analog, the best book I've read is "A Practical Introduction to Electronic Circuits" (https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Introduction-Electronic-Circuits-ebook/dp/B01MSEO5HX). It's actually a terrible introduction, so the title is dumb, but if you already have a basic knowledge this book will take you to the next level. Also one of the best resources for analog is Dave Jones' YouTube channel EEVBlog (https://www.youtube.com/user/EEVblog). He's an excellent presenter and a real analog pro.
For digital, after you have a good grasp of C, I'd recommend Musimathics Vol. 2 (https://www.amazon.com/Musimathics-Mathematical-Foundations-Music-Press/dp/026251656X/ref=asc_df_026251656X/?tag=hyprod-20&amp;linkCode=df0&amp;hvadid=312152840806&amp;hvpos=1o1&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvrand=13200640003814220797&amp;hvpone=&amp;hvptwo=&amp;hvqmt=&amp;hvdev=m&amp;hvdvcmdl=&amp;hvlocint=&amp;hvlocphy=9021581&amp;hvtargid=pla-645450504952&amp;psc=1&amp;tag=&amp;ref=&amp;adgrpid=61316181319&amp;hvpone=&amp;hvptwo=&amp;hvadid=312152840806&amp;hvpos=1o1&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvrand=13200640003814220797&amp;hvqmt=&amp;hvdev=m&amp;hvdvcmdl=&amp;hvlocint=&amp;hvlocphy=9021581&amp;hvtargid=pla-645450504952). The first volume can be skipped cause it's mostly acoustics and music theory related, but it's a good book too. The second volume is by far the best explaination of DSP and digital audio synthesis I've come across. If you want something a bit lighter, this is a great book as well (https://www.amazon.com/Audio-Programming-Book-MIT-Press/dp/0262014467/ref=asc_df_0262014467/?tag=hyprod-20&amp;linkCode=df0&amp;hvadid=312140868236&amp;hvpos=1o1&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvrand=9994434488221753680&amp;hvpone=&amp;hvptwo=&amp;hvqmt=&amp;hvdev=m&amp;hvdvcmdl=&amp;hvlocint=&amp;hvlocphy=9021581&amp;hvtargid=pla-330509287619&amp;psc=1).
C / C++ are the main languages to learn for this. This is a good book for reference. I would strongly recommend looking into the JUCE library. Their latest version JUCE 5 comes with some added features (free for personal use). They have good tutorials and it also allows you to build for AU/AAX etc just by selecting a few options when setting up the project.
The other guys covered your specific filter question, so here's some general info on learning/implementing DSP via code. I don't know whether you're a programmer already or not, so if you're not, DSP is not a great way to learn C programming from the beginning. Basic DSP like your low-pass filter is not very demanding of more advanced programming skills, but it IS (relatively) hard to debug. I don't even want to imagine how awful debugging DSP output would be for a new programmer who's not yet sure his basic code even works properly. Much easier to learn C by writing some scrubby text output programs rather than staring at a huge pile of output floats.
If you're already comfy with C, you're just going to have to dig into some textbooks and work your way through them. Don't let them scare you. The math looks ugly, but it REALLY isn't! I highly recommend combining at least two sources for each topic.
http://www.dspguide.com/ is free and great for understanding what you're doing. Very little math, very heavy on explanations of how DSP works. Read the section on filters or whatever from this book first.
http://www.amazon.com/Audio-Programming-Book-Richard-Boulanger/dp/0262014467 is the math side of the same DSP topics + lots of actual C code implementations of each
If you make it through the pair all the way, you've pretty much got an entire foundation
As far as book recommendations, check out anything by Julius O Smith (his website has all his books for free), A Digital Signal Processing Primer by Ken Steiglitz, The Audio Programming Book by Richard Boulanger & Victor Lazzarini, and this one has been on my wishlist for a while.
The program is very young (under a decade), so I can't give too many examples (our first graduate did land a producer's job at Microsoft, and our second is in R&D upstairs, working on the sound engine for our in-house game engine), but generally these skills translate to other areas of software development that involve heavy DSP knowledge (biomedical tech, watermarking, speech recognition, communications tech).
I should mention DigiPen provides a hyper-focused course of study. It's definitely not a good choice if you're looking for a general education, or even a generalized CS education. Most of what we learn is Assembly/C/C++ in Procedural/Object-Oriented styles. On the upside though, there's a projects course every single term, which is where most of your portfolio comes from.
The Audio Programming Book, if you're interested in music: http://www.amazon.com/Audio-Programming-Book-Richard-Boulanger/dp/0262014467/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1452310130&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=audio+programming
More links:
The Audio Programming Book - highly recommended to me
Designing Audio Effect Plugins in C++
Apple's Documentation for AU
Another thread
Some relevant stuff in this thread too
edit: I forgot an important one. Steinberg's VST SDK. Complete with example projects to get started with.
Steinberg
edit: basically people are saying Juce, WDL, Steinberg, C++. And lots of math.
Also this looks interesting coming from a java point of view: Java VST Wrapper
You can combine with what you learn in that book with a little more flair and flavor, from this book: Twentieth Century Harmony. But if you can only get one. Get the Fundamentals of Musical Composition above.
https://www.amazon.com/Twentieth-Century-Harmony-Creative-Aspects-Practice/dp/0393095398/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1518151206&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Twentieth+century+harmony
I recommend Persichetti's Twentieth Century Harmony instead. I think you may find it closer to what you are looking for.
I have no single favorite chord. But if I shared my whole list of favorites, I would be giving away all my compositional secrets!
Here's one though. I like this monster:
B♭2 A♭3 C4 E4 G4 B5 D5 F#5 B6
Those doubled B♮ notes over the B♭ bass ought to sound like a train wreck -- but they don't, thanks to the other supporting notes.
As to how to hear it or parse it, you can treat it as a polychord: in slash notation, perhaps Bm / B♭13#11? That's how you are likely to play it at a keyboard.
Alternately, read composer Enrique Ubieta's thoughts on the idea of augmented 15th chords, which Vincent Persichetti also considers in his Twentieth-Century Harmony. I think the notes in this stack mesh well enough that you are less likely to hear it as a polychord, and more likely to hear it as a dominant 13#11 with a #15.
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Some Books that I have that are good are:
Twentieth Century Harmony by Vincent Persichetti
Theory of Harmony by Arnold Schoenberg
A Chromatic Approach to Jazz Harmony and Melody by David Liebman
Great that you know what you want to do with the webapp. As said, break into small chunks and conquer. Even to the point of 'sit at desk', 'open computer'... so small that it's impossible not to do them. On the days where that's too much, just imagine yourself doing it. This will create cognitive dissonance and make you want to do it. This video shows you how.
Yeah work your way up to jamming. Play along CD's like Aebersold are great to start with.
First step is to learn the Cmaj scale fingering. Once you have that, move up a string and you have the Fmaj fingering. As said, practice around the circle of 5ths.
I'm living abroad too ha ha. I know exactly how you feel. I recommend reading this book.
Well the entire scan is available there for free
I don't think the book should cost that much
Here it is for $30 on amazon
It's a musical circuit book which deals with a wide variety of projects, but I can't remember if circuit bending is one of the tecniques used.
These reviews and these video tutorials are very interesting.
Edit: The book Circuit-Bending: Build Your Own Alien Instruments might be more specific.
This is the best book on the subject and really got me far in creating original circuits: My copy is as dog-eared and bookmarked as could be.
Nicolas Collins
Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0415998735/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_57MCAbAZ0WC52
More than hacking and mods, really gets into playing with ICs and such.
Have fun.
Sorry, wasn’t trying to be a jerk.
If you’re getting into modular synths and you don’t have a good grasp of basic electronic theory, I highly recommend this book:
Handmade Electronic Music by Nicolas Collins
https://www.amazon.com/Handmade-Electronic-Music-Hardware-Hacking/dp/0415998735/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1541778119&amp;sr=8-1&amp;pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&amp;keywords=handmade+electronic+music&amp;dpPl=1&amp;dpID=51rgvIc6vvL&amp;ref=plSrch
Having a decent understand of what’s going to happen before you do something will help you understand what your modules are actually doing, come up with new patches, avoid damaging anything, and a host of other benefits.
Lol we should get coffee, I'm like the opposite-- ok with hardware synthesis but me trying to understand microcontrollers is comical.
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Anyway I exported one of my earlier folders from when I was first reading and learning to HTML, its pretty disorganized but is a ton of random builds and info. Heres the html! https://file.io/DxE4uG ( if thats not working try https://gofile.io/?c=R3nHUN )
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I'm a noob myself, but I recommend breadboarding and aiming for guitar pedals and effect stuff before jumping into other stuff. stuff like distortion is easy to make while tuned oscilators are... well, simple, but a lot of moving parts. There are a lot of cool youtube channels that have tutorials, one well known one (while a bit hectic) is sam at look mum no computer. For general hardware electronic understanding with some entertainment value I also like Electroboom's channel, and Diysynthguy is another good one to find cool kits through
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If you are in the US, good sites to buy kits from are synthcube and modularaddict. outside of the US thonk is great and a lot of the synth companies in DIY modular are in europe so you can buy direct too, like from befaco.
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Here are a good read on the topic too:
https://www.amazon.com/Handmade-Electronic-Music-Hardware-Hacking/dp/0415998735/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1537984669&sr=8-1&keywords=hardware+electronic+music+book
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if you live in seattle, lets get a beer! Because I've been working with microcontrollers lately and it makes me want to blow my brains out.
I'm pretty sure this is the book I'm referring to.
http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Techniques-Modern-Drummer-Independence/dp/0757995403/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1394506238&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=advanced+techniques+for+the+modern+drummer
Thanks for calling that other one out though, I'm going to go check that out! Chapin writes some good stuff.
Don't mention it! My pleasure. What helps with the feet in keeping swing time is, learning how to feather the bass drum. It's extremely common in jazz, especially with cats like Joe Morello, Max Roach, and Jimmy Cobb. Even at the faster tempos, they feathered the bass drum a lot of times. Feathering, if you're not familiar, is pretty much keeping time on the downbeats very, very quietly. Make the pulse be more "felt, not heard".
They actually have bass drum pedal beaters that are designed for this sort of purpose. Check out the Vater Vintage Bomber beater. Here it is:
http://drums-percussion.musiciansfriend.com/product/Vater-Vintage-Bomber-Bass-Drum-Beater?sku=446667
Also, if you want a couple of GREAT books to check out, I recommend these:
John Riley - The Art of Bop Drumming
http://www.amazon.com/Drumming-Book-Manhattan-Music-Publications/dp/089898890X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1301166520&amp;sr=8-3
Jim Chapin - Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer (basically, this will be your best friend)
http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Techniques-Modern-Drummer-Coordinating/dp/0757995403/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1301166610&amp;sr=1-1
Keep swingin', man! Listen, learn, and absorb. The world of jazz is a wonderful one. Just keep loose, relax, and swing your ass off.
Cheers!
https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Techniques-Modern-Drummer-Independence/dp/0757995403/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1487494311&amp;sr=8-1
Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer by Jim Chapin and Progressive Steps to Syncopation for the Modern Drummer by Ted Reed
When I was younger my teacher was all about Jim Chapins book. It helped so much and I still check it out from time to time.
https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Techniques-Modern-Drummer-Independence/dp/0757995403
http://www.amazon.com/Haskell-Harr-Drum-Method-Orchestra/dp/1423420268
http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Techniques-For-Modern-Drummer/dp/0757995403
http://www.amazon.com/International-Drum-Rudiments-Book-CD/dp/0739013106
http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Realistic-Rock-Drum-Method/dp/0897244869
get these books and read them and you will truly learn to beat smith. starts with the hands first then the feet, then the hands and the feet. i live by these books and remember that slower and more accurate practicing is 1000 times more important that fast and sloppy. get solid and have fun swingin.
http://www.amazon.com/Drum-Tuning-comprehensive-guide-tuning/dp/0964465817
this is a stand by too my man
And 4-Way Coordination!
https://www.amazon.com/4-Way-Coordination-Development-Complete-Independence/dp/0769233708
Start by learning some basic rudaments and slowly improve your speed doing them. http://www.vicfirth.com/education/rudiments.php is pretty good and had videos on each rudament. I also invested in This, and this which I found were really helpfull.
Edit: I invented a book instead of buying one
Another guitarist learning drums here! And yeah, drums are a bit on the physically exhausting side (admittedly I'm out of shape though), wow I knew I was uncoordinated, but I didn't really realize how uncoordinated I was until I started trying to play drums. I bought copies of 4 Way Coordination and The New Breed.
I'd call New Breed a 'difficult but worth it' workbook for actually getting your hands and feet working together. And 4 Way Coordination more of a 'learn to control them separately' (little tip: make sure that your hands are on different drums for the melodic exercises).
https://www.amazon.com/4-Way-Coordination-Development-Complete-Independence/dp/0769233708
For drum set books, I really like Mel Bay's Complete Modern Drum Set
It will give you at least a working idea of a wide variety of styles.
If you're looking to build strength and independence in your limbs, 4-way coordination
My old college professor actually studied under Marvin Dahlgren.
And finally, Gavin Harrison's books have been blowing my mind lately:
Rhythmic Illusions
Rhythmic Perspectives
This one right? That's awesome. I may have to invest in this book. Thanks!
4-Way Coordination, so you can do what you want when you want.
All American Drummer, so you can swing that snare like Philly Joe. Also move around the set.
Modern Reading Text in 4/4, because Louie Bellson knows his big band rhythms. Play them across the entire set and sing along. Use rests and busy rhythms to set up the big hits.
Syncopation for All and Syncopated Big Band Figures. More of the big band rhythm stuffs.
Get really used to 4s and 8s before moving on to longer solos. Try starting with a simple idea and develop it; don't play a bunch of different, random crap for 4 bars: 2-3 beats of a rhythm, and keep working with it. You'll find you can express yourself much better after some practice.
Also, metronome. Always, always the metronome.
I found the book 4-way coordination helped me with unisons - https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Way-Coordination-Method-Development-Complete-Independence-Drum/0769233708
Check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0769233708/ref=redir_mdp_mobile
Even just working through the beginner exercises really opens you up on your kit. Some of them can be used as sick fills too and maybe even a beat (it would be kinda busy though)
There are many people here telling you to use the metronome, and they are right. Unfortunately not much advice is given on how to start using one.
Start really simple, start the metronome really slow ( 60 clicks per minute) and just fret play frets 1 then 2 then 3 then 4 on one string all with down strokes. count out loud or in your head "1 2 3 4" as you play those frets in sync with the clicks. You can pluck the "1" harder to remind your self that you are starting a new bar. So go ONE two three four, ONE two three four.
Then try playing 11 22 33 44. Same metronome speed, except now say in your head "One and Two and three and four and One and two, etc. " you will still pluck down on the one two three four, but on the "and"s you will pluck up, going up, down up, down.
This will get you started. to start learning basic rhythms try something like this: Modern reading in 4/4
Also, before you start tapping your foot as you play, try tapping the beat to songs you listen to, as if you are the metronome. the vast majority of songs will easily fall into "One two three four" rhythm. Try the intro to "Sweet child of mine" you can count along with the guitar "One-and-two-and-three-and-four-and" and you will notice it repeats. Then when you go to play these songs your self, you will not only hear the song in your head, but also the "beat", which will tell you exactly when to play the next note, even if the notes are not played one after another.
Go very slowly and evenly and you will get better.
The most challenging thing for me to learn I think was always sight reading. However, my guitar teacher showed me a good methodology for this, basically he split it up into the different skills you needed to sight read. One skill was reading the rhythms, which was covered by http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Reading-Text-All-Instruments/dp/0769233775 this book, Modern Reading text in 4/4 time. Which is basically a book full to the brim with rhythms. The idea is then that you tap your feet in 4/4 time on the floor and clap and vocalise what ever rhythms are written down. I used to do this for hours, and the rhythms contained in that book went from simple to just insane.
Actual note reading was covered by reading studies for guitar...
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Studies-Guitar-William-Leavitt/dp/0634013351/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1311235782&amp;sr=1-3
and advanced reading studies for guitar
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Studies-Guitar-William-Leavitt/dp/0634013351/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1311235782&amp;sr=1-3
The methodology for learning was to start ridiculously slowly, with a click at about 30bpm, and to do one note per click. This may seem insanely slow, but it helps you to become relaxed about sight reading, and also trains you to read ahead because you get bored.
This was part of the sight reading task, then after a while of doing this we moved onto sight reading notation from tunes from real books. I learned a few tips from doing this, I'll list the ones I can remember here.
2.Work out the structure for the piece, AABA ABAB etc, this will help you to minimize the amount of other analysis you need to do.
If you follow these tips, then sight reading will eventually become easy for you, but it takes quite a lot of work to achieve this.
Of course you can. I'd highly recommend working with some music that is not written for guitar as well. Try and get copies of some simple violin music (great to play on guitar) and if it helps, maybe also a book of drum rhythms. I have used this book a lot to help me over the years with rhythms: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Reading-Text-All-Instruments/dp/0769233775/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=60016439504&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIjvX9_OKT5AIVCLrtCh2vTQroEAAYASAAEgKadfD_BwE&hvadid=259063575552&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1007072&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=e&hvrand=11601031072553266974&hvtargid=kwd-299782540779&hydadcr=24433_1816114&keywords=modern+reading+text+in+4+4&qid=1566383964&s=books&sr=1-1
You mean you're weak at reading rhythms? Or you're weak at keeping a rhythm while you play?
If it's the latter, just be disciplined and use a metronome for everything.
If it's the former, I'd recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Reading-Text-All-Instruments/dp/0769233775
Learned about this in music school-- it's a ton of fun to just clap or drum thru the different patterns and really helps you to visually recognize common rhythms and get them in your fingers.
Modern Reading Text in 4/4 for All Instruments by Louis Bellson has been pretty good to me. Starts simple, gets rough.
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Reading-Text-For-Instruments/dp/0769233775
+1 for
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Reading-Text-For-Instruments/dp/0769233775
persistence/patience is a golden when it comes to establishing internal time ...
& never feel stupid: it is all a question of time ...
a piece of advice that was given to me was to take bars from drum workbooks such as this and incorporate it into your playing while being utilized as a fill.
these books are reading exercises so the notes given are more for time value than anything else.
People gush about this book.
Play around on Mike's Lessons and look at what changing the notes up does to the drum notes.
This is the book my teacher used when teaching me site reading and improving my timing: Modern Reading Text
Be patient and it will start to make sense!
Since this post hasn't gotten any responses, I'll do my best
You've covered a TON of ground in one post, it comes of as a bit scattered, and therefore pretty hard to respond to, but I'll do my best.
>Are there any recommended books with or without accompaniment (I need recordings since he isn't here)? I bought this book, https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0769233775/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1 .
I have no experience with that particular book. There's a frequently referenced book, Klose's 25 daily exercises for saxophone, that I'm fond of and is held in high regard. Also look on the sidebar on that top link for some ideas.
> I think that I've adopted a double lip embrouchre; when I try putting my teeth on the mouthpiece pads the vibrations sometimes kind of hurt my teeth.
Okay. Some people do better with that, I hear, just be sure that you are staying in tune with all your notes and that your tone is good across the range of the horn. I've always found that I sound best with the standard embouchure, and people I've played with tend to have the same experience, but there are people out there that do the double lip embouchure and sound good.
> So right now I'm trying the 2.5 orange box reeds on my Yamaha YAS62. I just recently bought Hemke 2 reeds because I wondered if it was the reed.
I also own a YAS-275 which is sharing this problem.
I'm assuming this is about your lip hurting. A common problem that this sounds related to could be that you are using too much pressure on the lower lip and pushing on the reed. A symptom of this is that your upper range will sound sharp and the lower range comparatively flat. If that's the case, push in your mouthpiece and try to use less pressure from your jaw on the reed.
> When I play the notes don't sound smooth they sound a little bit abrupt. They sound a little bit restricted like the notes are singular or alone with the other notes around. Am I playing too staccato?
I have no idea what you're saying. You could be dampening the reed by pressing on it with your lip like I've mentioned above. Without hearing your sound, I won't know. "playing too staccato" doesn't make sense to me. Typically, you're maintaining air pressure when you're playing, and staccato is tonguing in such a way as to stop your tone put space between your notes. Given that tonguing in such a way is deliberate, I don't think that you're doing that?
> I can play the C Major scale and it sounds fine legato. When I play the arpeggios it sounds really bad at the top going back down. I play the lowest C, E, G, C, E, G, C going up. The problem is going down from the C when you are pressing your middle finger with the octave key then transitioning to the G. It almost sounds like a little bit of vibration or it is going inbetween the notes. I tried looking up online and it says that I should increase the speed of my air stream. I did this and the problem largely went but was still slightly there. It just made this kind of fluctuation shorter and less obvious basically. I think this thread means what I mean: https://www.saxontheweb.net/SOTW_Archive/alto/08-04-02/boardset-saxweb-boardid-alto-thread-83-spec-4558793.html
Also I left it on the stand for like a month last year when I was thinking of getting back into it and my mum hit it off the stand a while ago which I was wondering if that would ever need to be checked again (the other suggested solution to the weird st I found online was taking it to a tech). I'm thinking that I'm just out of practice but I do remember the YAS-62 used to sound really good.
Work on your intervals. If you can hit the note just fine on a scale but you're having issues with arpeggios, then there's a couple of things that can go wrong. Things that could go wrong include:
> Also if I do have to take it to a tech, I'm in London what is the best value one (not priced, best value)? I really hope I'm just shit and I don't need to take it to a tech but tell me what you think thanks.
Sorry, can't help here.
> Also my mum is only paying for half of my lessons since she would only pay for every other week and I think that I probably should have weekly lessons. What is a fair price for lessons (I'm guessing half an hour)? I don't know if I could get a discount since I'm paying for half of it; is that a reasonable reason to ask for less?
Respect the people that are trying to teach you. If you can't afford their rate, then either find someone else or explain that you can't afford their rate. Not sure how old you are, but if you're in middle or early high school, you might be able to get someone a few years ahead of you to give you lessons, and that should be somewhat cheaper.
> Thanks for reading and getting back to me (if you do)
Not sure if it is the reed hardness since I can play the low Bb and B okay.
Edit: Oh wow the PDF links for the real book in the FAQ are actually legible Another dumb question, when sheet music has chords like Bb7 or whatever is that transposed? If someone was trying to play guitar accompaniment could they just play those chords?
If the real book does not specify what key it is written in, it's likely C. You'll have to transpose the chord if you want to read it as a saxophone. For instance, a Bb7 would be played as a G7 on alto or a C7 on tenor. A guitar could just play them.
> Also does the dent in the neck matter?
Probably not if it's small. I'm assuming it's small because you didn't mention it till now.
hey buddy, a couple years ago i took a whole bunch of LSA and then couldnt eat or sleep for 3 days ( lsa in the form of morning glory seeds which i did not properly clean :( ).
during the night into the second day, while i tried to sleep, i went into my minds eye, passing dots that turned to shapes that turned to fractals that turned to galaxies and then constellations. i just kept on going and going and going.
So I put on a Deep Sleep binaural beat, to try and help me sleep. It didn't. It woke me up. or my soul or whatever you'd like to call it (i'm not very good with human words lol)
Every thing came rushing back to me. All those "weird" experiences during a trip. all those "coincidences". everything just seemed to click. the universe started spiraling, or so it felt. it felt like a cosmic or spiritual baton was being passed to me, and then i passed it back to whoever, and then so on until the end of time lol (or whatever. again, bad with words lol).
then i went outside. there was snow on the porch, and i was feeling like a weirdo. so I made a triangle, and made a circle touching the points of the triangle. i then went into the triangle and meditated, and i had the most wild feeling. whether it was in my head or not, i don't know. but it felt like i was doing something i shouldnt be doing. the universe was getting mad or concerned or something lol. (ps i might have gotten inspired somehow by the book "quadrivium" https://www.amazon.com/Quadrivium-Classical-Liberal-Geometry-Cosmology/dp/0802778135 )
I dont exactly remember the thoughts I was having. It was more of this feeling of pure light/energy/whatever the universe is made of.
Before I say more, what exactly is it that you need help with? or is it just a strange feeling and thought process so you're kinda freaking out?
OH yeah the predictions. On the second day, I was with my girlfriend, who was sober, and she started getting annoyed and freaked out because i was saying and doing weird things that had to do with what was going to happen next. whatever that might have been.
I thought I had this prediction that there is this world/universe wide conspiracy meant to keep people/souls in the dark about certain things that would benefit them. and only certain people can notice. or perhaps everyone can, but they're blind for some reason.
but yes to calm down just remember you're human and everything that is going on in your head is a human thing. heavy foods and meat can bring you back down to earth if you're done chilling up there lol
but i may or may not know what im talking about at all. this is all from experience
It looked like it could be this:
https://www.amazon.com/Quadrivium-Classical-Liberal-Geometry-Cosmology/dp/0802778135/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?adgrpid=54743277103&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQjwvo_qBRDQARIsAE-bsH8K8faPNXHYoPOEA4J9BZ0SaS3LEs6jvN5EMFNBWgwbqTfNT80AQ9IaAhm8EALw_wcB&amp;hvadid=274734433918&amp;hvdev=m&amp;hvlocphy=9005109&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvpos=1t1&amp;hvqmt=e&amp;hvrand=18076968320986255187&amp;hvtargid=kwd-297341386281&amp;hydadcr=29919_10734888&amp;keywords=quadrivium+book&amp;qid=1564807527&amp;s=gateway&amp;sr=8-1
If not that, perhaps Trivium, which has a similar appearance.
I got my little brother these two books for Christmas.
Sciencia
Quadrivium
They're pretty awesome at outlining the basic concepts of these kinds of topics, and they are both small, well-bound and very detailed.
Thank you! And, Quadrivium is only $17 on Amazon! Quadrivium. Amazon Quadrivium
Q U A D R I V I U M
It's really hard to explain, but basically it's a book with a lot of really cool ideas and patterns found in numbers and nature. It talks about Sacred Geometry and alternative music theory. I like to have it because it's a good table piece and starts conversations. Found it on Amazon, it's called The Quadrivium :)
I would heavily recommend the book Noad's book for classical guitar.
He does a really good job covering a lot of the basics, but you really want to pay attention to technique here. Classical can be a little more rigorous than modern and a bad habit now can really hurt you in the long run.
Otherwise, check out /r/classicalguitar for more resources and discussion. The subreddit is a little slow, but more activity would be greatly appreciated.
Right. Though, I was referring to this statement:
> sheet music for guitar is ridiculously hard to learn,
That is, if you wish to learn to read for guitar, it's not that bad if the music you're reading from is arranged for guitar. For example, I started with took a few classes with this book and I'm able to read the later stuff just fine. I might not sight-read perfectly, but I'm usually able to get it within a couple of reads.
Anyway, I wasn't advocating for sheet music or against tabs. Just mentioning that learning to read guitar music isn't too difficult if the music is indeed arranged for guitar.
I recommend Noad. There are two volumes. This is a classical guitar book, but covers almost everything.
You'll also need a dedicated fingerstyle blues/folk book. These tend to be more fast and loose, and hence they can be light on actual instruction. Best is probably the Tommy Emmanuel technique book.
I also really like Pumping Nylon by Scott Tenant.
The all-time best right-hand exercises are by Mauro Giuliani and Fernando Sor. Some of these are included in PN.
The Art of Bop Drumming
The Art of Bop Drumming is a great place to start http://www.amazon.com/Art-Bop-Drumming-Manhattan-Publications/dp/089898890X
learning jazz is the same as learning pop punk is the same as learning any other style you can think of. Think of how you learned to play stuff like Coheed (not exactly simple music), you can take a similar path to learning jazz. Here's what I would suggest,
Listen to lot's and lot's of jazz. Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, as well as Workin with the Miles Quintet, Steamin' with the Miles Quintet, Cookin with the Miles Quintet and Relaxin with the Miles Quintet are great places to start. (check out the musician's that played on those records and check out their records)
Learn how to write drum music and write down the things you hear on those records. Listen to what the other musicians play and think about how the drummer reacts to those things.
Play lot's and lot's of jazz. Put some head phones on and play the ride cymbal pattern along with your favorite records. Play the things you write down while listening.
These things alone will give you a ton of stuff to work on and will improve your playing a ton.
If you want to work with a book I suggest this one buy John Riley, http://www.amazon.com/Drumming-Book-Manhattan-Music-Publications/dp/089898890X
good luck and have fun!
Sure. Check out The Art of Bop Drumming.
The Art of Bop Drumming: Book & CD (Manhattan Music Publications) https://www.amazon.com/dp/089898890X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_E9xPzbQTHZFZS
Try this publication: http://www.amazon.com/Drumming-Book-Manhattan-Music-Publications/dp/089898890X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1333522711&amp;sr=8-2
Jazz is where it's at, especially when it comes to training your non-dominant hand. In the book, you'll learn keeping time with your dominant hand, and developing independence with your non-dominant hand.. along with jazz beats.
Worked for me. Now able to apply the independence gained from studying the book to all kinds of music that I want to play
Also, rudiments.
Drum Programming by Ray Badness!
Music Theory for Dummies is great if you're just starting, and continues to be a good reference, especially if you don't have a musical background. Also, this might help with drums.
You may find this book to be helpful. There is a free PDF of it on the internet as well, I believe.
You may also want to have a look at Renoise, which is what Venetian Snares uses to program his music. Aphex Twin has also used tracker programs for years, and I'm certain that is one of the many secrets to his complex drum patterns.
Ableton and FL Studio especially have a large following, and YouTube tutorials are plentiful (and often very specific to the style of music you're trying to make), so take advantage of those if you end up going with either of those software packages. Also, it seems a lot of USB midi controllers come with lite versions of Ableton, so it might be a good entry point.
You said below you were a drummer, so I'm not sure if this will be as beneficial to you as it was to me, but there's an excellent book on drum programming that I learned several techniques from which apply to pretty much any DAW or hard/soft drum machine you may choose:
http://www.amazon.com/Drum-Programming-Complete-Program-Drummer/dp/0931759544/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1324166524&amp;sr=8-1
It's dated but it's still very applicable to most software you'll end up working with for techno, dubstep, or hip-hop.
If you're into Linux at all, I'd also like to plug one of my favorite compositional tools, the Hydrogen drum machine:
http://www.hydrogen-music.org/hcms/
You should read this book by Ray Badness. It helps tremendously, regardless of genre.
(if you DM me, i may or may not know someone with a .pdf copy ;)
https://www.amazon.com/Drum-Programming-Complete-Program-Drummer/dp/0931759544
Recommended:
http://www.amazon.com/Drum-Programming-Complete-Program-Drummer/dp/0931759544
When I was first starting out I bought a little cheap book on laying drums. It was actually helpful, I kept some techniques and use them from time to time.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0931759544/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1
There is a great book called "The Mix Engineers Handbook"
https://www.amazon.com/Mixing-Engineers-Handbook-Bobby-Owsinski/dp/128542087X
It has a lot of guys who did famous records in the 60s and 70s talking about how they did things.
I think that era of sound engineering being a black art that is passed down from master to apprentice is pretty much gone, at least reserved for a very small elite.
As much as you and I will never get the chance to learn from a master in a big studio, we now have very similar technology to them, at least to the point of just making a decent sounding recording.
There are definitely a lot of young producers emerging from their bedrooms now and challenging the establishment.
Checkout Flume for instance, he produced his debut on a laptop, and he just got a Grammy. So that whole professional industry is in the middle of a major disruption, just like the whole music industry.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no expert, but my mixes have a basic level of cohesion, competitive loudness, and they sound OK on different speakers.
If you don't feel like your mixes are cutting it, I'd definitely recommend working through a book (the other one that comes up a lot is The Mixing Engineers Handbook I've worked through that one too ) or go YouTube if you prefer, just make sure that you are working through a start to finish introduction. That is key to me, that you learn all the basic techniques as a whole set of tools, and apply them together. I thought I had worked out as much as I could from the internet too, but I had a lot to learn, and still do.
Also make sure you are constantly comparing your mixes to commercial mixes you like, on your system. Get a set of reference tracks, and run them alongside your mix and A/B them. That is one technique everyone recommends and you learn so much that way.
Good starting point - https://www.amazon.com/Mixing-Engineers-Handbook-Bobby-Owsinski/dp/128542087X
Regarding speakers for your studio, you don't need the huge hi-fi speakers that big studios have, they use those mainly to flatter artists and industry reps. For mixing, you should get a set of speakers with a relatively flat frequency response that spotlights the midrange and has low distortion. The Avatone Mix Cube is good for this. You only really need one because a lot of mixing is in mono. The Yamaha NS10s are also good (these are more expensive and are pretty standard in most studios. The thing about these speakers is not that they sound good, but that, on first listen, you'd probably think they sound bad; they highlight problems in your mix.
I imagine if you're doing hip-hop a lot of your listeners will listen on headphones so it's useful to do some mixing on headphones (you might do mono mixing on your nearfield and work out panning and stereo stuff on headphones, for example), so get two good pairs of studio headphones-one for you, and one for people you record (unless you're building this to record yourself, although if people know you have this cool studio they might want to get in on the action and it'd be good to be prepared for that if it does happen-you might also want to record a feature on your track or something).
Get a DAW and know it back and forth. I would say for your purposes, unless you're already well-versed in Pro Tools or already have a copy of it, don't get Pro Tools-there's a huge learning curve and it's by far the most expensive. Reaper has a free demo that you can use indefinitely and FL Studio and Audacity are free. Ableton is what most producers use but it's not really made for tracking or mixing, so what some people do is they produce in Ableton and bounce the track to another DAW to mix.
Microphone-wise, ideally for vocals you want a large-diaphragm condenser. A small-diaphragm will work too but LDCs are standard. You can record on a dynamic mic but they usually need a lot more gain which might mean more noise and you'll need to be handy at mixing to get the sound you want out of a dynamic mic.
If you're investing in a big project like this, read a lot and know what you're doing. This book will get you started on mixing techniques and the basics. This one is a must, it starts out with some chapters on how to acoustically treat the room you're working in which even though it isn't glamorous or fun is totally vital to a good studio.
I HIGHLY recommend this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Mixing-Engineers-Handbook-Bobby-Owsinski/dp/128542087X
You'll end up using it for a reference guide, so get yourself some of those colored sticky bookmark things. It's incredibly useful to have nearby when mixing - and for the over all knowledge in it.
Mixing along is a massive subject/job on it's own.
I've removed this thread as this is all pretty broad, easy to find, hard to answer in a comment, or covered here plenty of times before.
> What loop/sample sites offer free samples/loops
You can find this with search
> What is the best way to fill in the buildup?
Listen to tracks you like and do what they do
> Anything to take into account with vocoders and vocaloids?
Learn how they work and where vocals sit in a mix
> Is there anything I should know about mixing&plastering as well?
There are entire books about this, such as this and this and this ;)
You're welcome to post all of these in our regular "there are no stupid questions" threads; there should be a new one today. Best of luck and don't be afraid to research and just try things!
edit: new mix! please take a look at this one: https://soundcloud.com/pali_m/candied-sprites-1 (electronic dream pop)
Most importantly though is I figured out I've been sitting too close to my monitors! I've been super frustrated trying to figure out why when I bounce the track the low end is SO much more prevalent and muddy, and it's because I haven't been hearing it properly at all. Standing outside your door to listen to your mix is also really helpful. Bought "The Mixing Engineer's Handbook" and have been learning tons. Very nice to finally have a single resource to work from.
Still not totally up to par but would love your guys' thoughts on how to make it better.
__.
Hey fam, would love your thoughts on this guy: https://soundcloud.com/pali_m/candied-sprites
Electronic dream pop, saccharine dancey refrain to sate your sweet tooth. Just an exercise to work on structure and comp techniques sorta, but I'd really appreciate some input on how to make it better, especially the mix.
Will do my best to return feedback in kind.
You really need to either hire someone to consult you on this, or do a crap load of research, and I mean a lot because if you don't you'll just end up wasting money with on a room that behaves no better than your average room.
This book is has just about everything you'd need to learn to do it right.
https://www.amazon.com/Home-Recording-Studio-Build-Like/dp/143545717X
Treating a space is one thing and doesn't take a lot of planning to get good results, but PROOFING a room takes a lot of planning and specialized construction to make it actually work, miss one thing and have leaks and all the work you did was for nothing.
Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:
Amazon Smile Link: Home Recording Studio: Build It Like the Pros
|Country|Link|
|:-----------|:------------|
|UK|amazon.co.uk|
|Spain|amazon.es|
|France|amazon.fr|
|Germany|amazon.de|
|Japan|amazon.co.jp|
|Canada|amazon.ca|
|Italy|amazon.it|
|China|amazon.cn|
This bot is currently in testing so let me know what you think by voting (or commenting). The thread for feature requests can be found here.
https://www.amazon.com/Home-Recording-Studio-Build-Like/dp/143545717X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1524062230&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=home+studio+like+the+pros
oh my god I found this at a used bookstore for 10 dollars so I figured I'd pick it up not thinking much of the book at the time. Thanks for calling it the bible. What an epic synchronicity.
https://www.amazon.com/Home-Recording-Studio-Build-Like/dp/143545717X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1487605995&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=home+studio+recording+book
My recommendation.
I build a similar room a number of years ago for playing and recording drums. If your clearance allows for it, you will get the most isolation using a 'room within a room' design like /u/Bolockablama said. If you can build a box that everything will fit inside comfortably that does not attach to the surrounding structure it will be easier to contain.
It will also help to add as much mass to your walls and ceiling. Using two layers of drywall instead of one will help, adding rigid insulation like Roxul will help a lot. There are products like resilient channels and Green Glue that work to help decouple drywall from other layers of drywall and the studs behind it as well which will all help keep sound contained.
I had a lot of help perusing the 'Studio Building' threads on Gearslutz as well. I've also heard great things about Rod Gervais's book.
Once your room is built, your on to room treatment!
Buy this book - http://www.amazon.com/Home-Recording-Studio-Build-Like/dp/143545717X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1425908164&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=build+it+like+the+pros
Basically, lots of drywall, and as few physical connections to existing structure as possible. Get a dB meter if you can, and measure the existing situation (use a PA or something) to see what kind of reduction your existing structure gives you.
i forgot, ray has a book took. its really great. it has info on synths, some info about ray, about synth diy, and a very detailed build of the noise toaster. also the appendices have great info on common chips and common op amp circuits:
http://www.amazon.com/Make-Analog-Synthesizers-Ray-Wilson/dp/1449345220
he also did a MAKE video lecture on TL0x op amps you should watch once you know a bit more about op amps and circuits (due to lingo).
Have you looked at Ray Wilson's book?
https://www.amazon.com/Make-Analog-Synthesizers-Ray-Wilson/dp/1449345220/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1367955744&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=make+analog+synthesizers
I did not build my own synth, but I really enjoyed reading this book about how to do it. There's a lot to it.
You could start with this book: https://www.amazon.com/Make-Analog-Synthesizers-Electronic-Synth-DIY/dp/1449345220
It's written by Ray Wilson, who is the guy behind Music From Outer Space, where you will find tons of synths and module circuit, parts, pcb.
The book explains all the wizardry behind the Noise Toaster, and guide you through the build.
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Or you can start with eurorack, there is tons of DIY modules, you can have complete kit, so you "just" need to solder the parts, or you can buy a pcb and source the parts yourself. For eurorack, you will find "through hole" modules, aka classic and "big" components, or SMD, which are tiny component, usually made to be soldered by robots. You might want to avoid SMD as a first build if you don't have a lot of soldering experience (and tools).
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Do you have any background knowledge in electronics? Because I would seriously start there.
I realize you are an adult, but Make: Electronics (Learning by Discovery) was a really great book for me (an adult). It gives you a good foundations in electronics and has fun projects as well.
Make: Analog Synthesizers was particularly fun for me.
Any interest in either of those books? They're both great starting points.
This book is awesome: http://www.amazon.com/How-Rap-The-Science-Hip-Hop/dp/1556528167
Keep hustling!! You've got it.
Hi Audio_Byte,
I posted this in the "I cringe at my own lyrics" thread, but it seems like you might benefit from it as well:
I'm actually working on a web app to help people with this very problem: Rhymecraft. It isn't ready yet but in the meantime my #1 tip for you is to read How to Rap Volume 1 and Volume 2. If you want me to email you when my app is done, send me a private message with your email address or just let me know you want me to send you a PM on Reddit.
What I've learned from studying lyrics is that usually there isn't one thing that makes lyrics good or bad; it's a collection of lots of different things, and your job as a lyricist is to understand what all of those factors are and make sure they're all working in your favor. Reading "How to Rap" will give you a good intro to what some of those factors are.
Not feedback for your track but I have a book to suggest. I know the title make it sound super-cheezy, but it's a full of interviews with great rappers on how they work, writing and performing live and in the studio.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Rap-Art-Science-Hip-Hop/dp/1556528167
Root For The Villain: Rap, Bull$hit, and a Celebration of Failure by J-Zone (who, if you're familiar with his music, is equally funny in his book)
Hip Hop Family Tree by Ed Piskor (it's a graphic novel focusing on the early days of hip hop done in the style of 90s Image comics)
How to Rap: The Art and Science of the Hip-Hop MC by Paul Edwards (this is full of interviews with some of the greatest of all time discussing every single aspect of rapping)
There's also The Wu-Tang Manual and The Tao of Wu, both by RZA and both very good for Wu-Tang fans.
If you think she may be interested in books on specific albums, the 33 1/3 series has quite a few on some of the genres greatest albums: Illmatic, Paul's Boutique, Donuts, People's Instinctive Travels And the Paths of Rhythm, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. She may enjoy Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas's Illmatic, which is a more scholarly approach to Illmatic, although admittedly not for everyone (if critical theory isn't her thing probably pass on this one).
Whoever is interested in learning more about rhyming and rap techniques I highly recommend How to Rap: The Art and Science of the Hip-Hop MC book
How To Rap has a lot of interviews with different rappers on their takes. I'm only part way through it but it has been interesting so far.
Read this: all the theory is there. http://www.amazon.com/How-Rap-The-Science-Hip-Hop/dp/1556528167
Oh, I just remembered something dude! Check out the grade 1-8 music theory books by ABRSM. They're super useful. Also, the AB Guide to Music Theory is a great companion for grades 1-5, then vol. 2 is great for grades 6-8. :)
I recently bought: 'The AB Guide to Music Theory' by Eric Taylor. It comes in two parts. I find it to be well written and easy to follow - very handy in understanding the rules of music, for a novice too - it starts from the very beginning and includes references to baroque, classical and jazz.
https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Music-Theory-Part-Pt/dp/1854724460
https://www.amazon.co.uk/AB-Guide-Music-Theory-Part/dp/B00D7JCTE6/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=abrsm+part+2&amp;qid=1566413271&amp;s=gateway&amp;sr=8-4
https://www.amazon.co.uk/AB-Guide-Music-Theory-Vol/dp/1854724460/ref=pd_bxgy_267_img_2/262-0798234-3159250?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_i=1854724460&amp;pd_rd_r=e9378e58-bc27-4eb1-a3c4-35e081d82b32&amp;pd_rd_w=ur61m&amp;pd_rd_wg=vaPlF&amp;pf_rd_p=07e3e597-b71b-4701-a3fd-d79c50f48406&amp;pf_rd_r=BXQM93ANRYQ0QCRF6YVE&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=BXQM93ANRYQ0QCRF6YVE
Is that any help?
I used these:
https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Music-Theory-Part-Pt/dp/1854724460/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1466623651&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=ab+guide+to+music+theory
https://www.amazon.com/Music-Theory-Practice-Grade-Abrsm/dp/1860969429/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1466623560&amp;sr=8-3&amp;keywords=abrsm+music+theory
But note that I didn't shop around - don't really have anything to compare it against.
To be honest the best thing is to get a teacher. I don't know what the equivalent is wherever you live but in Britain lessons usually lead to doing grades/exams on the instrument, after a certain level they're worth Ucas points which help with getting into universities etc. The same is for music theory.
Also, people who just teach composition do exist, contact teachers in your area and they or someone else will know someone.
Otherwise, something along the lines of this.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/AB-Guide-Music-Theory-Vol/dp/1854724460
EDIT: As for recording/writing music, Sibelius and/or Logic. Sibelius is great for actual sheet music/scores and logic for manipulating sounds.
Sounds like you need a better understanding of some music theory, not the piano, to help you write songs. I'd say look up some music theory basics, for example major scales 'come together' through the circe of fifths and they are all constructed the same way using a different starting note. Look for information about chord progressions and think about how they sound one after another, such as I, IV, V chords; I'd say it'd be more useful for you to understand this sort of thing instead of improving piano technique.
In terms of a book, when I did music theory I used the Theory is Fun grade 1 and 5 books. They look like childrens books but they were immensely useful to me. Also the AB Guide to Music Theory is great, although more complex. Keep in mind though that I live in the UK and these are books from here, so if you're from the US some of the terminology is a little different and these books might not be as helpful, sorry.
Get a copy of the AB Guide to Music Theory
It is a really good introduction and while it is geared towards more traditional forms of music having a really solid knowledge of the fundamentals will see you well in any genre you are interested in.
I found out this is all part of a book:
http://www.amazon.com/Weird-Scenes-Inside-Canyon-Laurel/dp/1909394122
And there's more parts available on this site (which includes more images and videos!):
http://informationfarm.blogspot.com.au/2010/02/inside-lc-strange-but-mostly-true-story.html
Archive.is link
Why this is here.
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this is the official story... evidence exists however that the military actually synthesized LSD from LSA(i think... LS-something... cant remember) based on Hoffmans previous work.... even if this isnt true however, it is clear that Hoffman did have a relationship with the US military, the OSS, and later the CIA....
I havent looked at this info in a while and was trying to find sources for another guy earlier but he pissed me off with his ridicule... cant remember the authors name.... ill try to search thru some youtube channels for the interviews i remember he was in and get his name.... ill post some links in this comment latter for you.... the guy really did some indepth digging into this and provides source material... check back at this comment in a hour or two....
Found it: http://www.amazon.com/Weird-Scenes-Inside-Canyon-Laurel/dp/1909394122 - the book focuses primarily on the 60s but includes information on Hoffman.
https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Scenes-Inside-Canyon-Laurel/dp/1909394122
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o2GjY8DN-7I
http://dangerousminds.net/comments/classic_rock_conspiracy_theory_weird_scenes_inside_the_canyon
Silk and steel strings may help you achieve your technical goals. You don't need a nylon string guitar to learn the method. The most significant gain of going that route is the generally larger string spacing.
If you do go for a classical guitar, a pro setup on the least expensive solid top guitar you can find, with some really good strings should hold you over for a long while. Just make sure it has an adjustable truss rod. Upgrading to a bone saddle/nut will improve the tone of the best or worst guitars for a very low price.
This book: Solo Guitar Playing - Book 1, 4th Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0825636795/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_6XrmDbNG3FF0H
Probably the most commonly(successfully) taught/learned classical method book ever to have existed and is geared towards a total beginner.
Rock on dude. \m/
Hit up the dude Bobby Owsinski, those frequency references came from this book. Let him know he must of made a mistake lol
Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon by David McGowan
Here is an interview with the author: Sofia Smallstorm Interviews Dave McGowan
I don't need to "sound" smart. I'll leave that up to the scholars, such as Harvard Professor Steven Pinker. Here's his TED talk about the violent nature and yes, barbarism of the so-called "noble savages" in a pre-Colombian world.
If that doesn't do it for you, I invite you to check out anthropologist Lawrence Keeley's book, "War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage"
Or perhaps "Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage" by the archaeologist Steven LeBlanc (also of Harvard!!).
I agree with the Vic Firth site. Also, after a few weeks of practice or so, get the rudiment you are practicing up to the fastest you can go, with maybe a little sloppiness. Practice at this level for a bit, and think of it as exercise to make you faster. There should be a little burn, and you'll be able to play slightly faster at the same level of control next time you practice. Then, dial it back to the fastest you can play while still remaining in complete control, and practice at this level the most. This is where control and good muscle memory will be built. (EDIT: But if you happen to find yourself getting sloppy at that speed, do not hesitate to slow it down further if you have to. Make sure you're doing every movement correctly and mindfully. When it's perfect at a slow tempo, then you can start taking it up a couple notches at a time until you're able to play it perfectly at a fast tempo. Remember to stay within your limits and watch your form for the most part, but there is benefit to be found in pushing those limits a bit in order to -gradually!!- get faster, as long as you aren't spending all your practice time in a sloppy speed-fest.) You will find that both your control and your speed will improve with each practice session, as long as you are properly applying yourself.
In terms of method books for this sort of thing, I would recommend Edward Freytag's The Rudimental Cookbook and Just Desserts. Both of these books start out simple and the solos get more complex and challenging as you progress, allowing you to expand your vocabulary and abilities along the way. Plus the solos are fun and oh-so-tasty. After a few months of proper practice, you could go from the simple stuff at the beginning to shredding through the crazy stuff at the end. It'll looks scary and intimidating, but once you've played your way through the book, reading even the most advanced solos will become a cinch and playing them will be pure enjoyment.
I would also recommend Scott Johnson's Progressions because, like the others, it starts out easy and the solos get more challenging as the book goes on. The idea is that you start out as a beginner and progress (geddit?) up to the level of a competent, DCI-quality player. And Scott Johnson definitely knows the skill drummers need to succeed at a DCI level.
Oh yeah I almost forgot Bill Bachman's Rudimental Logic. This book has like a zillion exercises, so it can be overwhelming, but it is still a great place to woodshed a rudiment and it actually shows you how to play the rudiment by breaking down the individual strokes involved, rather than just giving you exercises and telling you to "get to it". It shows you a bunch of hybrids as well as the standard 40 rudiments, and is supremely useful for introducing to your system of practice the concept of "the grid", which is itself a supremely useful practice tool for stick control and rudimental proficiency.
I would also recommend starting to youtube various drum corps to find exercises and pieces that interest you. That way you have something fun to work towards. I started with this video of the Concord Blue Devils playing The Ditty. This is what got me hooked. I had no idea that level of coordination and precision was possible. I thought there was no way I would ever be able to play that. However, after only a few months of practice, I was astonished to find out that I could. It's immensely rewarding. Plus, when you get these rams and such up to the proper level, you can play along with the youtube video of the drum corp playing it, which is really fun. The sheet music for most of the exercises you'll see is available from the specific corps for purchase, but if you can't find it or are poor, there are usually a bunch of transcriptions floating around the interwebs for your edification.
A few years ago, I purchased the Santa Clara Vanguard audition packet. I never auditioned, unfortunately, because real life and financial realities got in the way, but it was still one of my best purchases which I still use even today. It even comes with a DVD explaining the exercises (Progressions also has an immensely useful DVD and the Freytag books have an audio CD which is really useful to figure out tricky phrasing and rhythms). Anyway, the exercises in the audition packet are essentially what you need to have down pat in order to make it into whichever corps for which you're hypothetically auditioning, so they are incredibly good for you. Again, most of these exercises can be found in "in the lot" youtube videos, so once you have it memorized and down cold, you can play along with the videos, both for fun and to make sure you can play up to the appropriate tempo, while listening to the rest of the drumline.
I would also highly recommend Jim Chapin's classic Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer. This is a drumset method book, not a rudimental one, and it teaches you the "coordinated independence" necessary for jazz and bop playing. Once you get through this book, you will not only be a competent player in the jazz style, one of the trickiest idioms to learn and master, but your abilities on drumset across the board will increase dramatically. This book will give you the ability to play different, independent rhythms on each hand and foot, both separately and coordinated, and this ability will shine through, no matter which style you're playing. Being able to play with independence is one of the trickiest and most beneficial things to learn, from complicated polyrhythms on double bass to just getting that hi-hat chick on the two and four while your hands and other foot are doing different things.
It's like learning a basic drum beat. Many people tell me they can't even learn a basic beat because they can't do that many things at once. I tell them that the hi-hat pattern is just eighth notes, so just lay that down and forget about it, then you can focus on the rest of your limbs. Later, once you have that down, you can start varying up your hi-hat patterns. Same thing with the left foot in jazz. At first it may seem ridiculously difficult to keep the same pattern with the left foot while your other limbs are going all over the place, but eventually you can just do it without thinking about it, freeing up your brain to focus on your other limbs. Then you can also control and change up the pattern as your creative instincts dictate.
Anyway, I would really highly recommend any of these books. I went from someone with no rudimental chops and absolutely zero jazz vocabulary to someone with, at the very least, fairly good control and a decent vocabulary. The jazz part is especially great because I had no idea how to play jazz and really struggled until I found the Chapin book. Again, even if you don't play jazz, it is a tremendously useful thing to learn, and one of the trickiest. It's really, really useful. Trust me.
Also I just dug up a comment I made a month ago on the question "What rudiment(s) helped you progress most?" where I had a few ideas for stick control exercises and such. It's also really long, but I hope it's useful.
At any rate, I have a ton of useful exercises and tricks I use, some of which I even made up myself. If you're ever looking for ideas, feel free to message me. Hope this helps.
EDIT: Also, just as an aside, learn triple-stroke rolls. I didn't even know these were a thing until like five years after I'd started playing. Hell, I didn't even really know the difference between a crush roll and a double-stroke roll until way later than I should have. But triple strokes provide you with so much more opportunity to creatively vary up your playing and practicing. I would also recommend learning quadruple strokes, although I ended up learning those because a piece I was currently working on had them, so I was "forced" to learn them in order to play the piece. This also brings up the significance of what I said earlier about finding youtube videos and exercises and such that seem fun and that you want to learn. These exercises will contain rudiments and sticking patterns that you are unfamiliar with. While you might shy away from tricky things like this during regular practice, you are "forced" to learn them if you want to be able to play this fun piece, thus expanding your vocabulary further, so that the next time you see that rudiment or whatever in a different piece of music, you've already played it 10,000 times, and you can just sight read it and get to learning the things you haven't seen before.
EDIT 2: Also, 32nd notes seemed really scary to me until I figured out that they were just 16ths, but twice as fast. Fivelets and septuplets also seemed really intimidating at first, but once you start playing your way through them, you learn to feel them and eventually you'll be able to play them without even thinking about it. My point here is: Don't avoid something just because it appears scary. Dive right in and vanquish the beast with your sword of justice. It will be a bloodbath at first, but i guarantee that if you keep practicing it will eventually become second nature. If you avoid it, you'll never learn it, and it's remarkable how the things that seemed impossible a few months ago quickly become so easy, so practiced, so natural that you can do them at will, without effort. Muscle memory is the incredible gift from the gods to our nervous system, and it is a sublimely powerful tool. It would be a massive shame to let something of such awesome potential simply go to waste.
Seriously? This is anthropology 101. Just what part would you like backed up?
slavery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_among_the_indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas
cannibalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibalism_in_pre-
Columbian_America
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_Wash ( one site, there is now many more sites with evidence of cannibalism and full on massacres)
genocide/war
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/thanksgiving-guilt-trip-how-warlike-were-native-americans-before-europeans-arrived/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Empire aztecs by most descriptions were more brutal than european nations could have dreamed, they conquered much of mexico in only 2 centuries. They expanded their empire with brutal force. Less than a million aztecs ruled over 20 million subjects. They would routinely execute/sacrifice their conquered foes. Estimates range from as little as 5,000 a year to more than 100,000 people sacraficed a YEAR by the aztecs and mayans.... Was probably closer to 10,000 year on average. Though there were "special" years and festivals. One alone is estimated to have killed between 4,000 and 80,000 people in a four day period.... Totally not brutal or war like at all...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_Civil_War Possibly as many as half a million soldiers and 100,000 deaths. Probably not the biggest war to happen in native Americas, but the one we've got the best evidence for as it happened at the same time the spanish were first starting to explore south america, but happened before they'd reached the andes, though small pox had already reached that far. Mind you they had such a big empire too because they conquered and exterminated their rivals.
http://westerndigs.org/evidence-of-hobbling-torture-discovered-at-ancient-massacre-site-in-colorado/
This is all things that have changed in the last 20 years or so, its still not "common public knowledge" exactly because of the reactions and downvoting im getting here actually. It's "racist" and unPC to say this shit, but the people actually studying it discuss it all the time. What other sources would you like exactly? Would you like me to dig into my text books, and my field logs? I think i actually might have pictures here of human bones with butcher and processing marks.
If you're interested in not being a PC jackass that avoids inconvenient historical and cultural facts. This book isn't perfect, but its not a bad start.
http://www.amazon.com/War-Before-Civilization-Peaceful-Savage/dp/0195119126
I am also a white devil and tbh I think only morons idealize the culture and advancement of whites without looking at the blood that was spilt to propogate it, white people colonized and enslaved millions throughout history to get to where we are today. However the only people that think 18th century china were backwards are also morons and I doubt that they opened a single historical textbook.
That being said, human nature is violent and opportunistic, you can't judge our ancestors with the world view of today, their simply wasn't the infrastructure in place for people to be co exist peacefully in the same manner as today. There was no antibiotics, no internet, no welfare, no democracy, limited legal and policing systems, no easy transport, no supermarkets the list goes on and on. Without these systems in place, people become greedy and mistrustful of each other.
If one cut on your knee can get infected and kill you, leaving your family destitute and the average life expectancy was 30 then people are going to act alot more sociopathic, it becomes about survival, like actual life or death survival.
The reality is human history is dirty and messy and violent, and pretending that any race or ethnicity is innocent from that is completely ignorant, its in our genes to be opportunistic and violent, its evolution and natural selection at work. We only became largely peaceful in the last 50 years because a) we developed to such a degree that working together economically was in our better interests than military and b) the deterrant of nuclear war and mutually assured destruction
I recommend you read the following books: http://www.amazon.com/War-Before-Civilization-Peaceful-Savage/dp/0195119126
Basically how all human societies are violent and
http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393317552/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1449043242&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=guns+germs+and+steel
This book gives the reasons why civilizations rise and fall and why European culture became the dominant one post 19th century
Essentially there are deterministic factors that are needed for any culture to prosper and white people inherited them all just because of geography and luck
This looks like a pretty good book!
https://www.amazon.com/Make-Analog-Synthesizers-Electronic-Synth-DIY/dp/1449345220
for further reading