Hey! New to music making but I’m hooked. Work by day, consuming Music production YouTube tutorials by night. Using Ableton for my DAW. Mostly focused on electronic/edm/hip hop but enjoy all sorts of genres. It’ll be cool to check out other peoples stuff here.
Hello. Is it me you’re looking for?
White_Noise
#2
You came to a great place to learn man. I’m not kidding when I say I learned more my first day here than in a year of looking up youtube tutorials for myself. If you want to program synths I recommend you start here:
relic
#7
Hello! Welcome : ) Look at you, you sweet summer child all new to to this rabbit hole of DAW music ;p
NimaJ
#8
The level of frustration hits critical levels sometimes lol. Finish something I’m semi proud of then go to my car and it sounds like ass. Go to YouTube see that my problem is basic and shared among newbies alike and yet find no solace. << This scenarios in various permutations. For the longest time I couldn’t understand why rendering and exporting music changed the way it sounded compared to in my DAW. Read and tried all sorts of things to no avail. Finally stumbled on resampling, which at least let me kind of circumvent the problem in a way. It’s pretty addicting crafting new sounds though.
White_Noise
#9
I think the first year or two are hardest as far as that goes. After that, it gets a lot easier, but it never really ends. You’ll always have that one sound that doesn’t quite translate like you want it to. I’ve been at this for seven years, and I hate the way most of my stuff sounds outside of my studio, but it apparently works well as I universally hear back that it sounds good. And that’s the important thing about mixing etc, that it’s working on other people’s systems for them as well as it is for you on yours.
NimaJ
#10
Yeh I guess it’s nice to know at the same time that it gets easier and experienced people still struggle. Can’t help but feel like it’s just some secret I have yet to discover to make everything sound like the pros as opposed to years of dedication and honing skill.
My current self imposed assignment is to learn how to more optimally sidechain my bass to my kick in edm tracks. Debating on getting the LFO tool i see a lot of YouTube tutorials use versus just playing around with the stock one in ableton. It’s been nice searching this forums older threads for some pearls. Anyway appreciate the welcome.
makeuswhole
#13
This will start to go away with time. You will get the hang of it more quickly than you think, the trick to never stop trying and learn as much as you can from others.
Like @White_Noise said above, there will always be some barrier to hurdle over that never goes away, it just changes with your experience level. You’ll be quite at home here with the rest of us in that regard. 
If you ever have specific questions about production or anything else you’re working on, create a post in the studio, or drop a link to one of your tracks in the listening booth (once you’ve posted enough to do so 
). There are lots of people here willing to geek out and talk / provide suggestions and feedback or tips / tricks.
Lastly, don’t be afraid of sharing your work, even if you think it sucks. We all had to start somewhere and personally, I wish I would have been more open to feedback back when i first started.
Sorry, lots of advice you didn’t ask for. I hope it is helpful regardless.
Cheers
Artificer
#14
Every profession studio I’ve ever recorded in had multiple sets of monitors/speakers set up to A/B mixes on. Even hardened pro mixers will dump a mix to an iPhone and listen to it on some shitty earbuds. You do get to a point where you know “this is going to sound thin in the car” or whatever, but nothing beats hearing your mix in different settings to build up that intuition. Even if you know what you’re doing, it’s a good thing to spot check it from time to time.
There’s no such thing as a perfect mix for all settings. It’s a zero sum game of compromise every single time.
NimaJ
#15
Yeh I’m looking forward to posting my questions and my tracks for roasting/feedback. I’m <1yr in so I have zero ego or expectations. I do wonder sometimes though if there’s a limit to how professional you can sound with a semi budget amateur acoustically untreated home setup. And if hypothetically, can ones skill fully compensate? Anyway nice too hear from a bunch of you guys off the intro post.
1roomstudio
#16
@artificer has it right… I’ve learned that once the composition has gelled its time to start listening in different contexts. Different set of headphones, cheap earbuds (the way most people will hear your music once it’s out in the world) and most importantly… on monitors… different sets if you’ve got them… and a good one I learned from this forum… walk away while it’s playing to hear what it sounds like from a distance… from another room… all of this will point out weaknesses in the mix and give you ideas about what to do about it.
By the way… the ideas will almost always be Less Reverb/Delay, Subtractive EQ, Compression, or Automation.
Looking forward to hearing something soon 
1roomstudio
#17
Yes you can… these days you are not limited much by your setup… if you are creative, and work hard to gain some techniques… you can make amazing music.