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Comment by the_only_law | Hacker News Reader

I’ve thought about this a lot, but music theory seems so foreign.

Last HN discussion I saw on the topic earned software engineers not to test music and music theory like say learning a programming language.

I ask don’t think I have the talent for it. One night over the holidays him and I were up late screwing around with GarageBand and he was composing interested tracks while I struggled to do anything. Granted he played the trump years ago but that can’t give him that much of an advantage?

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You don't actually need a lot of music theory to get started and make something. I also used to play an instrument (guitar, classic and electric) before producing music with a DAW. While that helped me learn faster, I also realized you just need some basics to produce music that sounds good enough. Here the most important factor, imo, is practice.

I guess part of my problem is I have very strong music opinions on what I like and don’t like. It’s easy for me to listen to something and break down (albeit mostly in laymans terms) what exactly I like about the combination song/genre/era. But for some reason when I sit in front a DAW I’m complete lost at how to compose sounds into something I like. And there’s all sorts of strange knobs controlling something(decay, gain, idk it differs between instruments) and I have no clue how to use it all without brute forcing.

I have a similar issues with front end web design. I can have everything pictured in my head and even and idea of how to achieve it but somehow it never ends up looking like what my brain envisioned.

I think it's definitely ok to feel like that when you first open a DAW. Some things that worked for me to go over the first overwhelming phase:

- Watching tutorials/following courses on a musical genre you like

- Picking a reference track before you start composing

- Using sample packs, then maybe replacing/recreating sounds you don't particularly like

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