This article covers some basic advice if you want to start making some dark electronic music. You can treat it as a starting point, place where you will get enough information to start your further research. The information contained here is simplified to make it easy to grasp.

Industrial – how to make

Being an electronic musician is rewarding and this is something you are likely to do for the rest of your life, once you get hooked up on it. The subject, and its technicalities seem daunting at first. This article aims at giving you practical directions, that will get you going quick and let you achieve satisfactory results before you get bored and give up.

Choosing a DAW – your main tool

DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) is a program where you compose your music. It allows you to insert and control synthesizers, write the actual musical pieces, perform a mix, add vocals and finally master your finished song.

There is a couple of contenders on the market – Cubase, Sonar, FL Studio, Abelton and so on. Which one is the best? The one you have handy. Start using the one you have or can have now. If you engage in research trying to find out what DAW will give you the best results, you will just waste time. It is you who makes the music, not the DAW.

The sound quality you can get out of any of them is the same. It is possible to make professionally sounding song in each of them. I know guys who had been comparing DAWS, synths, plugins and other stuff for years, and they have not released a single song yet. They are not going to make any music, if you ask me.

In your chosen DAW at first you will be confronted with a mind-blowing amount of options, it may be difficult even to get some sound out of the thing. You have tor prioritize your research to get the result fast. Try learning your DAW from youtube, videos are in my opinion the fastest way to learn. This is as if you had a friend to show you everything.

Once you know how the sound flows within your DAW, you have to learn how to insert synthesizers and create the score for it. Each DAW has a way of creating so called patterns, they are like building blocks, you use them to create and re-use certain parts of your songs – bassline, drums and so on. You have also to learn how to process the output of the synthesizers by the means of effects (plugins). Find out the difference between send and insert effects.