Making Music - Dennis Desantis

Making Music

By Dennis Desantis

  • Release Date: 2015-04-22
  • Genre: Music
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 145 Ratings

Description

For many artists, nothing inspires more existential terror than actually making art. The fear that we’re not good enough or that we don’t know enough results in untold numbers of creative crises and potential masterpieces that never get realized.

Electronic musicians used to be able to hide behind clunky, emerging technology as an excuse for inaction. But musicians today live in a golden age of tools and technology. A ninety-nine-cent smartphone app can give you the functionality of a million-dollar recording studio. A new song can be shared with the world as soon as it’s finished. Tutorials for every sound design or music production technique can be found through a Google search. All of these developments have served to level the playing field for musicians, making it possible for a bedroom producer to create music at a level that used to be possible only for major-label artists.

But despite all of this, making music is still hard. Why?

Making Music was written both to answer this question and to offer ways to make it easier. It presents a systematic, concrete set of patterns that you can use when making music in order to move forward. It will teach you how to make music using technology, with a specific emphasis on solving musical problems, making progress, and (most importantly) finishing what you start.

Reviews

  • Key Production Techniques

    5
    By Mikey93333
    I was impressed by how much this was not necessarily a how-to book. Such a manual can discourage a newer or even a novice producer into believing their work is unoriginal. This book challenges that theory by introducing long used and alternatively used techniques to help a creator finish what they intend to start. It’s pivotal for anyone using any of these highly inconceivable DAW’s with more features than actual help with workflow, but more specifically, any Ableton user (as that is the Company who published this book) could find use in this book, and for $10 (hardcover is way more) even if it just on your iPad as a handy tool. You can literally search for your creative issues, and you will effectively find something that progresses you further along. The book intends you to follow it exactly the way it was written, while you might add these techniques to your own or modify them, you want to primarily follow the structure of the chapters closely to achieve the results.
  • Excellent book!

    5
    By DrewBerg
    This book answered so many of my questions I thought it was written just for me.
  • Unique and Powerful Look at the Creative Process of Electronic Music

    5
    By Payjob
    I bought this book on the hope that it would make me a better producer, and after buying it and flipping through the sections I not only realized that this book is talking to me, specifically, but it actually has many many solutions to problems I run into all the time. There are solid details, examples, references and solutions. If you are an electronic music producer - or any producer for that matter, and someone who struggles with their music making, this book is a God send! This book DOES require that you know HOW to produce with a DAW, in other words you have to have at least a basic working knowledge of a DAW to get the most out of this book, so I would classify it as “intermediate” for that reason. The DAW used for the examples is Ableton Live, but the examples are generic enough to apply to pretty much any DAW. Worth the $10 for the electronic version or $30 for the actual book? Don’t even hesitate. This book is gold!
  • No tech.

    5
    By n2o1ne2
    This is a solid book on avenues of creativity, changing your workflow, experimenting with new ideas, and ultimately changing your brought process when you approach your DAW. Warning, this is not a book that explains your gear. That being said, this book changed the game for me. I now approach music creation differently. I definitely recommend this to all electronic music producers.
  • Insightful

    5
    By Blake Raymond Harrison
    This book isn’t really about how to use certain techqniques but more about workflow and getting things done. It’s basically telling you to stop making excuses and just do the work because in the end producing music is a form of work. If you have any metal blocks in creating music I highly recommend this book I’ve grown as a musician and a producer 10 fold.
  • Ashton McCreight

    5
    By AshtonBeats
    Excellent book for music producers who are struggling with their craft.

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