Is there are a guide to learn how to make music

[TEITANBLOOD]

I am absolutely new at digital music creation. Is there an indepth guide or tutorial for getting started?

[TEITANBLOOD]

I just noticed a tutorial thread in the pinned section. I am guessing I will go through that first. Incase there are more tutorials for Rytmik please do share them here !!

[◢ k r i s ◤]

The previous iteration of Rytmik also had a tutorial thread, but I think most of the content from that was included in the revised tutorials you found on these boards.

Those tutorials will help with learning the interface, but that's really it. Music theory and rhythm and mixing and everything else is an entirely separate beast to tackle that you can spend the rest of your life learning about and mastering (and the science and technology and techniques surrounding it is constantly growing at both an academic and consumer level). Fortunately, you can probably learn a lot from just watching instructional youtube videos as there is a lot of learning material out there and when it comes to music concepts and arrangements it can be somewhat universal if you know how to translate it to your interface and work within the limitations and constraints of your given tools.

After you finish going through the Rytmik tutorials, I can recommend some videos that I think would be helpful for getting started.

First, you should learn about envelope shaping as this is the most fundamental and universal concept with all digital signal processing and will enable you to make new and unique sounds even with just the given default samples in Rytmik.

ADSR Envelopes with SynthSchool
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6pp6OMU5r8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9niampRkFW0

Next is some quick music theory, because I don't even know if you know what an octave is yet. There are many videos like this, but I think Guy here gives a really friendly and approachable presentation of the fundamentals.

Music Theory in 16 Minutes with Guy Michelmore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eKTOMhpy2w

And this might be a bit too advanced if you're completely unfamiliar with the human frequency range of 20Hz-20KHz, but this is also one of the better explained videos if you're looking to "fix" your sound after you've finished putting together a song with a drum and a bass and a lead instrument playing in beautiful harmony and rhythm only to feel like something is missing still with the sound quality.

3 Rules of #EQ with Joe Gilder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H3cHfV8rXI
The 5-band eq explanation in particular can be very enlightening, but it's one of those things you might struggle to utilize adequately in Rytmik without a visual aid if you aren't comfortable with it yet. You might even hold off on these sort of concepts for a very long time until you're really familiar with getting Rytmik to even produce sounds first as proper mixing and mastering and engineering can be considered beyond the scope intended for Rytmik.

The biggest hassle you will probably discover is that Rytmik makes chords a very tedious thing to work with and you'll probably end up avoiding them a lot. You'll want to learn about Scales and Modes though as it's easier to focus on harmonizing your instruments/channels in place of relying on chords a lot. There's an effective reference site here[www.basicmusictheory.com] that I sometimes use which can help you set a scale or mode in a particular key and it will provide a highlight view of which keys you should play (and avoid) on each octave of the piano - but this can be daunting to beginners and I doubt the majority of Rytmik users really know a lot about music theory if they just want to make "beats" and electronic or hip-hop music. Rytmik was originally just a Groovebox afterall.

Oh, but if you do start playing with Scales and Modes, you'll probably wonder what's the point of the Key note and for that I recommend this reference[ledgernote.com] which can help suggest what emotions are tied to which keys.

There's a lot here to digest, but I barely scratched the surface. Reasonably speaking, you should just learn to have fun. If making non-sense sounds while learning the interface and techniques is more of the pace you prefer then there is nothing wrong with that - and it's actually a pretty healthy approach to reinvent-the-wheel sometimes if you're looking for creative direction and definition.

----
The way I learned about music composition and production was mostly by copying music I liked (and also copying some music I didn't like). Not everyone can "play by ear" but if you're able to do that it can be a great motivation and learning experience to just try and adjust parameters and write notes while trying to mimic a sound that others have created. You'll fumble and fail a lot with this method (I can't overstate that enough), but it can be incredibly insightful and rewarding when you figure things out this way. If you do try this, I recommend playing back audio at very slow speeds to really break down what you're hearing while you're copying.

When copying, I would actually use VLC media player to listen to the material I was copying because I could tweak the EQ to focus on certain instruments while also slowing down the song and maintaining the right pitch. Something to be careful of with slowing down audio is most software will not automatically correct the pitch when playing back audio slowly - and if you watch the music-theory video posted above, you might realize that means the notes will shift downward depending on how slow you play the audio back without pitch correction.

[TEITANBLOOD]

thanks Kris. i will go over those lessons asap.
Btw one thing I noticed was the keyboard at the bottom of the software its too small !! A full sized keyboard has 88 keys. How do I play all the 88 notes on Rytmik Studio?

[◢ k r i s ◤]

There is an Octave parameter that you can set per note or as a default for the instrument. It should be in one of the tutorial videos - or maybe it's one of those things explained only in the Rytmik Ultimate tutorials and not in Rytmik Studio. Anyways, in the Clip Editor there is an "OCT" parameter near the top-left which has 4 values (each value includes two octaves to match the piano-graphic at bottom of the screen) - and similarly you can change parameters A, B, C or D to Octave as well and adjust which octave set you play in per note.

[TEITANBLOOD]

Originally posted by ◢ k r i s ◤:

There is an Octave parameter that you can set per note or as a default for the instrument. It should be in one of the tutorial videos - or maybe it's one of those things explained only in the Rytmik Ultimate tutorials and not in Rytmik Studio. Anyways, in the Clip Editor there is an "OCT" parameter near the top-left which has 4 values (each value includes two octaves to match the piano-graphic at bottom of the screen) - and similarly you can change parameters A, B, C or D to Octave as well and adjust which octave set you play in per note.

got it !!! thanks again dude :)

[Mechanite]

All that stuff is definitely helpful but I'll just throw in some of my 2 cents. I started on Rytmik without knowing a lick about making music (also it was on a DSi) and it definitely showed. If you're anything like me you'll probably make stuff that doesn't sound great for a long while. But that's fine, as long as you make progress here and there.

In more straightforward terms, I'd recommend making a basic drumline, then messing around with making a simple tune. You can worry about making it sound good later. In fact, usually after I finish a song, I'll go back to it in a few days and mess with the sounds (in terms of FX and whatever) to make it sound a little better. Though I didn't start doing that not for awhile afterward.
Alternatively, you could try messing with a preset song to understand what's going on. Or if not a preset song, check the cloud to see if there are any songs on there you know (or try sorting by Rating) and find an unlocked song you can view to understand. That being said I think it would be easier learning to just make a song from scratch.

In the app be sure to have the '?' button in the top right I believe turned on, it'll give you a description of what your cursor is hovering over. And of course, if you have any specific questions you can always ask here. There's a semi populated discord server too for Rytmik if you're interested, where help replies might be easier to get.

[◢ k r i s ◤]

Oh that's a good point I forgot about. Starting with the drums is ideal in Rytmik because they tend to hold the least clip variations and there's a particular quirk with Rytmik where the songs entire tempo is set by the clips sitting highest in the song-editor. Basically, you'll want to set up your drums (or at least an acting metronome clip) with your song's tempo and fill the top row with your drum clips so you won't need to mess around with tempo for each and every clip you place in the song after (since clips will always default to 120 BPM when new).

[TEITANBLOOD]

thank you guys

[Vinacious G]

I'll be returning to this later :)