Make Your First Music Track! - (Full Tutorial)

here is how to make a full music track even if you've never made a single song before you can make your first song today you can make it for free it's very easy everybody can do it and it's a lot of fun I'll walk you through absolutely every step of the process which software to use the basics of music theory how to set up and structure your song and how to finish it off in case you want to skip anything all of the timestamps are in the description first thing we should talk about is this software because music software is weird no it actually needs additional software called VST instruments and the main audio software itself is usually referred to as dog which stands for digital audio workstation the dogs basically your musician a musician that can play any instrument but in order to make sounds and music he needs instruments doors look like this and there are ton of different doors honestly I think they're all pretty similar they all do more or less the same and VST instruments are basically little plugins that are used by these doors in order to make sounds the next

step of this process is to actually download a door and the one we'll be using in this video is Reaper I'll put the download link in the description as well so head over to their website download Reaper for free technically speaking it's not a free software but there's a 60-day trial and believe me it's the best option we have for now I tried a couple of alternatives and when you first open Reaper up you'll probably be asked to change your output device if not you can go to options preferences and just change your output device there now here's where the fun part begins because now we can right-click in that area over here on the left and click on insert virtual instrument on new track here we can see all of our installed VST instruments and plugins even if you haven't installed any yet Reaper has a couple of included ones so there should already be a couple of them in here and the only thing you need to be careful about is not to select an effect because then we won't be able to hear anything you want to select an instrument I'll just go with this very basic synth here once you click OK what you'll see is the

VST instrument with all of its settings and controls this differs from instrument to instrument you can definitely play around with these settings but for now there's no point in doing that so let's close this window and let's click on insert new MIDI item now you should have a new element in this track that you can move around and you can open it by simply double-clicking it and as I simple but let's be real getting one of these doors under control is pretty challenging so don't be frustrated if it doesn't work right away you should be able to hear something when pressing these keys on the left if not then go recheck your output device and the VST instrument you selected if it does work then who lucky you you can start dragging in a couple of sounds you can do that simply by left clicking into the piano roll and dragging your mouse to the right once you're done with that you can click at the beginning of the track that will move the pointer to the beginning of the track and then you can hit space to play your track when you increase the size of this by dragging it towards the right it will automatically

be looped and now if we change one of these nodes it will be changed in every part of the loop in case you actually want to increase the size of this loop without looping it then what you've gotta move is this dark grey line here and as you can see that creates new empty space that we can use to put in more notes now what I do here is I select all of these notes with the right mouse button dragging a window with the right mouse button and then I hit control and moved them to the right while keeping control pressed and that duplicates all of these notes let's move them around a bit now we have a little bit of a longer melody and in case you want to listen to that in a loop without dragging it SuperDuper long you can just mark the area up here that you want to loop and then press the loop button down here and now this part of the track will just keep playing in an endless loop as soon as we hit play which is obviously done by hitting space

[Music] when you hit that little FX icon on your track you can open up the VST instrument settings again and now the cool thing is you can play around with them while your song is playing in a loop that obviously makes experimenting a lot easier [Music] [Laughter] [Music] the volume of each track can be controlled in the mixer down here obviously there's a lot more to learn and it requires a bit of patience to get used to all of this but let me tell you it's worth it so keep going and next up I want to look with you at instruments so basically the little software pieces that actually make the sounds when you type free VST instruments into Google you'll probably find a lot of cool stuff you can use for your music I think I have a good place to start which is Native Instruments they have a set of free VST plugins let's just see if they're any good spoiler yes I think they are actually pretty good and if possible I recommend installing your VST instruments into the

default install location because that's where it's easily found if we use a different install location you might have to link to it in Reaper this is how the native instrument installer looks like I had to create an account but as I've said it's probably worth it because they have pretty cool stuff for free you just download some of their main players and after that you can download some of their sound packs and synthesizers some of them are quite huge probably because they contain a lot of sound files and once they are installed they should show up in this VST instrument list in Reaper in case your visions from end doesn't show up you can go to options preferences and then here in VST you can just add the install location of your VST instrument with a semicolon after all of the other stuff that's already in here then just click OK and probably restart Reaper and after that it should work remember to click the little FX icon in order to bring up the VST instruments panel here let's open our contact player for example unfortunately a lot of these instruments have quite complicated interfaces by

themselves but hey I was able to figure it out you will be able to figure it out as well it basically comes down to having a list over here where you can just select an instrument and then once again have the settings next to it in case there's nothing in here you might want to have a look at the settings and just insert the correct path to the install location here I've said it before but I'll say it again music software requires a lot of troubleshooting a lot of patience sometimes things do not work do not let that hold you back find a workaround skip the step you don't need any additional VST instruments ok you can just skip this step if it doesn't work for you just go ahead with the next step I just wanted to give you an example of how you can install additional VST instruments this is how it works in theory now what you do with it is up to you [Music] [Laughter]

[Music] [Music] before we get started with our actual song it would probably be a good idea to have a little bit of a dive into music theory it's not gonna be a super deep dive but we'll cover the basics the piano roll using your software is basically a representation of the piano keys that's why it's called piano roll the distance between two notes that are right next to each other is called one semi tone there's a one semi tone difference between those two notes that's one semi tone that's one semi tone if you go up twelve semitones so 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 that's one octave that's one octave and

usually those two notes go very well together because they are technically the same note whereas if we put them right next to each other if that's just one semi tone difference between two notes and you play them at once usually doesn't sound all that good so that it's probably something you should try to avoid if you go from this C to this see with own by only using the white keys then you've played the C major scale there are different scales you can play on different scales doesn't really make a difference for example if a play I can also play that same melody two semitones further up so you can really move melodies around and anyway want as long as you move every part of the melody it should release those aren't the same once again these are all of the notes and the C major scale as you can see they're only use the white keys in the piano roll right here the white keys

are a little brighter the Black Keys are a little darker if we move all of that one semi tone up or down we're in a different scale the distance between all of these notes is still the same so it's still pretty much sounds the same so that is possible you can move notes up or down if you move all at once usually if you want a melody to sound somewhat good and reasonable it's a good idea to stay in one scale and as long as we stay in that scale were relatively safe everything will sort of sound fine if we use other notes that are not in that scale it usually doesn't sound quite as good or it released it's a lot harder to make something that sounds good I just recommend only using white keys and then at the end when you're done composing you can still move all of your notes up or down wherever you want them

to be that's probably one of the easiest way to make sure that you stay in one scale and usually melodies are complemented by chords there are a lot of different chords but the two most important ones are major and minor major sounds pretty happy and minor sounds kind of set a major chord is formed by taking one note then going for semi tones up 1 2 3 4 and then going another 3 up 1 2 3 and those 3 notes together form one major chord a minor chord is formed by going 1 2 3 semi tones up and then going another far up for semi tone difference here and there's a 3 semi tone difference here so that is a major chord and I put a main

minor chord behind that which first has a 3 semi tone difference and then on top of that there so far as I my tone difference there are 3 major chords in the C major scale so of course there are a lot more major chords but those three are the only ones that only use white keys like if you want to play a major chord here that is not in the same scale because it uses a black Keith the 3 chord serves you right here are the 3 major chords in the C major scale all of these cards use only white keys so they're all in the same scale [Music] they go together pretty well you can rearrange them pretty much in any way you want they will still sound pretty safe [Music] and the minor chord there are also three

minor chords on the scale so in total that makes six carts you can use for your chord progressions three different major chords three different minor chords if you're a professional and if you know what you're doing then there are a lot more chords you can use but for now just stick to those six and when in doubt just use those four [Music] and these four cards go so well together you can pretty much rearrange them in any way you want [Music] and now what's cool about these cards is

that you can move any note an octave up or down it doesn't really matter it will still be the same card so for example if we grab this the C right here and move it to 12 semitones up to the next C that will not change the chord whatsoever so that's one more way we can vary our chords [Music] I can maybe do the same here we'll just move that note an octave up and then I don't want this court here to be so deep one thing I could do is to move this entire court one octave up 12 semitones then it would be here but that once again looks a little too high so what I can do is just grab those two notes and move them an octave up and now

surprisingly this is still the same chord this is still an F major chord [Music] I wonder how all of that sounds when we move it a little further down [Music] very nice this is probably where I want it to be we got the first part of our song done chord progression make sure your chord progression has a length of 4 or 8 chords and right here is where you can change the speed if you would like this to be a little slower or faster you can just type in a slightly higher or lower number [Music] actually like that speed better for now so let's keep it don't forget to save

every now and then now that we covered the very basics of music theory and have a chord progression to work with let's start building a loop okay okay next up I'll try to find some Zig drums for that I'll just click on insert virtual instrument or new track no why does it create so many tracks no no no no no okay this looks like a drum kit let's see if we can actually use this oh nice so usually these drums are just on this piano roll as well so every key will represent a different drum sound I just want to go for a very simple drum track [Music] and you can actually change the volume of these notes down here that can be quite a useful feature as well especially for your drums obviously there are a lot of different things you can do you can go very experimental but

if you're just starting out and using a beat that is pretty simple and straightforward it's probably your best bet or you can just expand this a little bit as well just adding a little bit of variation here and there [Music] and you can already see the way I built the strike is basically you start out with a very simple beat something like this and then you build a little bit of decoration on top of it and always make sure the simple version of your beat already works kind of well and then you can still make it more and more complicated until you're happy with it the next thing I decided to add it at were these little high hats right here [Music] just give it a little more flow

[Music] and now what's interesting is that oftentimes we can still kind of change this instrument while it's playing which allows us to see if you can maybe find a little bit of a better sound for this [Music] okay next time let's add a bass track I have no idea what this is but let's try it out for the bass I just want to use the bass note of every chord keep in mind that remove this node up this was originally here so the bass note in this case is an 8 here the lowest note the bass note was the G and here the bass note because we move those DF let's move

those one octave down that does not really sound nice sometimes it takes a little bit to find one that fits fitting those two an octave up and you can also break those chord notes once you have them down can break them down into a little bit little smaller notes to give them a little bit of a rhythm as well [Music] sometimes it can be cool to have some slight transition in these pest notes

but for the most part these best notes should support the main chords and play the base notes of the main chords small transitions like that are okay and usually have a little bit to make it sound more interesting [Music] okay now it's time to add the main melody so let's add a new instrument track now if we want to see the cards in the background can we select both of those at the same time oh yeah we can so that's pretty useful now we can if we like both of those tracks and then double click this one you can see the chords in the background and then obviously if we use those chord notes and our melody that obviously beneficial to make it sound straight usually it's nice if your melody is the highest part [Music]

I think we can make this quite a bit more interesting by varying the length of these notes a little bit can obviously try to vary the volume here a little bit this one makes it a little more interesting that's not it's not a super good lead melody so guess we need another lead melody so for now let's meet our other melody as you can see here finding a good melody sometimes just a bit of trial and error can really explain how to build is notice it's a

pretty intuitive process as I said the only thing that you definitely need to keep in mind is to use notes that appear in your chords which is definitely the case here this is a note that appears in the chord this is a note that appears in the court and then these transitional notes work well and then I just make sure not all of the notes have the same length and then one thing I did here is that I used the same rhythm to twice [Music] it's the same rhythm but it's different notes so that can work very nicely as well then maybe you vary it the second time around a little bit now obviously that melody is still a little short so let's increase the size of our loop let's double the length of this now if we move

this gray bar here to the side you can make our melody a little longer one of the easiest way to extend the length of your melody once again just duplicate it and then vary it a little bit and then like at the end of your melody you want to have a little bit of a longer note or a little bit of a break definitely remember to include a couple of breaks in your melody but this pretty much how all the melody looks like now also try to keep these notes more or less close together don't put them too far apart a good melody is one that you can still sing along come along and if these notes are too all over the place for example if I put this up here it will just not be quite as catchy if

used well can have a nice effect just the right general rule of thumb if you're a beginners keeps us a lot closer together okay now I wonder how well the two of our melodies go together let's check it out [Music] yeah and as I thought the two melodies don't really go all that well together it sounds a little too crowded a little too noisy when both of them are playing at the same time but that's not really a big deal because we don't have to play them at the same time no no no we don't have to okay now that we have a finished loop it is time to start building a full song and now the easiest way you can actually build up your song structures just oops make it start out with something that already counts kind of cool by itself which in this case I think these chords by themselves already work quite well maybe next up we can add the drums

[Music] and maybe not the drums how about this melody it's a very easy way to stretch your song just starting your instruments one after another and it also helps to raise the tension and keep your song interesting [Music] sometimes having a couple of small breaks in here where just one instrument is playing can be quite refreshing as well that makes whatever comes after that break feel even more impactful so remember we I didn't want those two melodies playing at once because they don't really go well together know that

this melody has stopped I can go with the other one maybe that is not the part that should people should keep playing maybe we can make this more some more impactful by doubling it basically just duplicating it moving in one octave up [Music] yeah that's kind of how you start building the song structure and it's already almost 1 minute long already 48 seconds long it's pretty good ok now I found a little bit of a better sound for these drums they still have the same rhythm here that's the beat in the first section and then here in the second section the beat sounds a little different small variations like that

just had to keep your track interesting and now we obviously want this track to be even longer [Music] and now just by rearranging these five pieces we got a pretty reasonable song structure already song is already one minute long so I don't think we can stretch it any longer without it being boring and repetitive so what you do now is adding a B section which means we'll compose an entirely new melody with a slightly different chord progression and I think I want to catch a little bit

of a break from this synthesizer here [Music] [Music] and I'll keep that rhythm but I'll keep developing the melody I want to make this melody even longer because I just want to make put in an end note here well this is called be part just because

it changes things up a little bit if we ever listen to this now [Music] you can hear that it's just a nice change of events we gotta make sure that this transition sounds a little more reasonable but we can do that as soon as our song structure is done [Music] [Music] [Music]

and then maybe you can have a little bit of a build up again after the B part is over [Music] okay and now this is where I decided as long as over its 240 has a length of 240 so that's almost three minutes that's a pretty good length sounds already pretty decent some of the transitions still sound a little man so what we'll do next is rounding this song out a bit with a couple of rudimentary basic techniques the last thing missing for our song are some transitions for example when these drums start right here that feels a little ZAPPIN so what I want to do is just create a new MIDI clip right here and the main purpose of this is just use this as a start up sequence for the beat

and to make things a little easier we can just use that now whenever the beat starts up again we'll just have this in front of it this little startup sequence same when the beat ends we don't want it to end super appropriately so like one final beat here and now we can use that as the end section whenever that beat ends we'll listen just to the beat then here we need the end section again and you need the N section again okay one thing that also feels a little weird to me is when this melody right here ends that feels unfinished so I kind of want to have an end section for that as well [Music] and the end section in this case is just

a single note let's put that to whenever that melody ends and we can also use this as a startup section now let's have a look at these transitions from a part to be part [Music] I feel like the drums before a big transition like this could have a little bit of a bigger build-up what I'm gonna do is just copy this the last section and here I'll just add a little bit of a bigger build up at the end here if you

like that build up works quite well and then here where we have another big transition maybe we can simply use the same build up although the sound of this synthesizer still a little dry so perhaps we can add a little bit of reverb on top of it by adding another VSE effect on top of this we can add an effect [Music] there are so a couple of transitions that don't really sound super awesome like this one right here that one could definitely use a bit of love there are still a lot of tricks you can do to make the sound a lot better yeah but this

videos already long enough so let's not go into that too much for now and I think the way you export this is you just move that beginning point beginning this end point to the end leave a little bit of extra space at the end and then just hit file render and actually just want to render this to a desktop and keep all of this at the default settings I guess and then it render one file and now it's rendering very nice seems like it's finished let's close this and here's our finished song our rendered song and next up just keep making music keep experimenting keep learning making music is definitely one of the greatest hobbies it's so much fun and it is only topped by making video games but nothing tops that I really really hope this helps you to get started with music production and I'll link you a couple more useful things in the end screen thank you very much for watching and let's keep listening to the finished

track hell yeah [Music]

[Music] [Music]