I want to try to make a song, but I don't know how to start. - General

I have FL Studio 10, and I figured out the layout pretty well, I just need help with composition. I don't know much of good beat or rhythm, and I don't know how to start. I do have a basic beat, which you can hear at my soundcloud, which you can access through the link under my user name.

there are loads of great tutorials on youtube for this kinda stuff, since it's difficult to explain it in one single post [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq9_UJPGZZ8[/media] your beat sounds alright eq wise at the moment, all you can do at this stage however is just try to practice as much as possible using the stuff you learn from these.

Ah, alright, thanks for the help, then. :smile:

Get Nexus its a plugin. Its like a internal Synthesizer its got all sorts of sounds for trance and other things. Also download some sound packs for FL Studio. Remember to use Piano Roll for tweaking.

I don't know if OP cares about learning synths, but don't start with Nexus if you do. It's all presets you can only slightly tweak.

These skills have to be learned through lots of practice. You don't learn how to make music that sounds good, rather you learn to recognize what sounds good and what sounds bad.

I understand that I need practice and lots of it, I don't think I can do a tutorial and be Deadmau5 within the day. All I was hoping for was some tips.

I don't have any tips, but I can share one of my favorite methods of composition. Make a short story. Make it simple. Write it down. Imagine a music video for this story. Make the video as vivid as possible in your mind. Now imagine the music that would go to it. If you are having trouble at first, don't worry, it'll come. Start writing the music out. This will be tough at first, but it'll get easier.

[QUOTE=healthpoint;37164789]I don't know if OP cares about learning synths, but don't start with Nexus if you do. It's all presets you can only slightly tweak.[/QUOTE] NeXus and similar plugins are great for learning though. It's better to have a good starting point with lots of presets, in my opinion. However, "proper" synths such as Z3ta+ or Zebra 2 also come with a lot of presets. I would recommend starting out by remixing some simple tunes of your favorite games from when you were young, or any other simple tune. I usually do this by simple loading a simple saw-wave preset in any of my plugins, and then figure out the chords and melody from there.

[QUOTE=Mordi;37193282]NeXus and similar plugins are great for learning though. It's better to have a good starting point with lots of presets, in my opinion. However, "proper" synths such as Z3ta+ or Zebra 2 also come with a lot of presets. I would recommend starting out by remixing some simple tunes of your favorite games from when you were young, or any other simple tune. I usually do this by simple loading a simple saw-wave preset in any of my plugins, and then figure out the chords and melody from there.[/QUOTE] Nexus isn't really a synth though, it's more of a sampler. It just has basic effects, ADSR and a filter. I'd start with Massive. Real easy to modulate and start making sounds in, simple one page interface.

[QUOTE=Mechwarrior;37161108]Get Nexus its a plugin. Its like a internal Synthesizer its got all sorts of sounds for trance and other things. Also download some sound packs for FL Studio. Remember to use Piano Roll for tweaking.[/QUOTE] I suppose Nexus would be good for starting out if you just want to jump into producing songs, but for the love of god get a proper synthesizer along with it so you can learn how to actually design your own sounds (either that or play around with 3xOsc and the other plugins that come with FL). I personally recommend [url=http://www.u-he.com/cms/zebra]Zebra 2[/url], because it's fantastic for bread-and-butter sounds as well as pretty much anything else you could imagine.