I always tell people that music has no rules but it has a form. Dont be at all afraid to get experimental with things, but always make sure that it's still musical
@@wolfmauler The "form" im talking about is like where he suggested learning the fundamentals of music and learning beats and the 4/4 signature, etc. Thats also what i mean by keeping it musical. When I say there are no rules, i meant it like where he said to take inspiration from everywhere and every genre of music. For example, if you're writing a Black Metal song, and you think a mandolin would sound good at a certain part, there's nothing stating that you cant do that.
I've just released my one-man black metal project first single. It is called Лесная Хладь. And I absolutely agree with Farvann about amount of songs that was writteen before.
@@DrageFabeldyr Hey, I can read Cyrillic. Yeah, I want to hear your album. I have an album but I need to improve it. Mine sounds hilarious but I want it to sound dark. 🤣
@@xjapan3 not sure about album, but three singles are on the way and i'm going to do a few experiments like using banjo and balalaika. imho if you want to make sound more dark just add a keyboards playing full minor chords from rhythm guitar part with femail choir effect or smth atmospheric, if you use keyboards, of course, if not... i don't have a solution, because i use keyboards =)
I think "get inspired" and "learning the fundamentals" is the most important. You'll figure out your DAW pretty quickly, if you're committed. I've been using FL Studio since 2009 and purchasing that/figuring that thing out has been the best decision I've ever made. Once you can make your creativity, guitar skills and what you do in your DAW all mesh together, you have a virtually unlimited, permanent outlet for catharsis. After a while, you might just find yourself with a rather explosive passion for it! Your favorite music and your hunger to create will constantly feed off each other. When you're on a roll, there's a great deal of fulfillment going on there. ALWAYS make sure that you're ultimately doing it for yourself, though. \m/ There's hours worth I've stuff that I've wrote over the years that nobody but myself has heard, that I wrote simply because I wanted something specific to listen to. hehe Anyway, good job covering the very basic stuff. I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW I LOVE MY CDS AND CASETTES, BTW!
Well said! I love my CD's and Cassettes too, tangible physical format should never go away for many reasons. Creativity, inspiration, and fundamental knowledge are VERY important, absolutely. Interfaces and DAW and VST's are good and very much the norm nowadays, I grew up with a lot of Analog and Analog fusion so I still Mic my amp for my solo projects, for other projects with people we use various programs like Pro Tools and MX Craft as two examples, learning them all to a degree and being versatile is very useful.
Being in the game for a while, I must say that when you finally release your first album it's such a great feeling. Also, DIY all of it makes you a much better all-around musician, and you develop your skills waaay faster!!
I can't even find a metal band in my town let alone anyone who would want to make metal music with me. I bought a drum kit yesterday and I'm learning that while working on some riff ideas on my guitar. I'm determined to make something sick and nasty. 🤘
This is pretty much a "How to start writing music" guide in general. My 5 cents: 🔴 Instead of an audio interface, get a cheap multi fx unit (like the Mooer stuff or maybe a used HX Stomp). These have pretty much all of the amps and effects you will ever need in one package. Also saves your computers DSP. 🔴 Also, try to make collabs early on. The other musician can make parts that you are not able to (yet) and you also start to make connections. Great list👍 greetings from Lotasticland
@slater666 Not necessarily. If you wanna use Plugins or wanna record vocals, then yes, but if you use a Multi FX unit like the HX Stomp or the Mooer units then you don't need one.
That 8th step is always the hardest. You will always find some way to improve your music or make small adjustments and changes to the point you will never be satisfied with your track. You will never make your music "perfect" but it doesn't have to be, it just has to be "good enough" and leave you satisfied with what you created. That said, if later down the track you realise you can do better, just re-record or remaster, and then re-release. I wholeheartedly agree with listening to lots of different music. It will give you a new perspective you might not get otherwise, and help open the doors to more experimentation.
I actually took your advice from one of your previous videos and started using reaper. Before that, I was amateur recording with Audacity. I realized how shitty that program was. But with reaper I was able to buy the kvlt drums 2 plugin, and stop using my Accoustica beatcraft program. Now my stuff sounds really legit. Ladies and gents, listen to this man.
I just bought Kvlt drums 2 too. I used Drumkit from hell on my previous albums, but were never completely satisfied with the sound. But on the next album, I'm using Kvlt, and I've just started editing the drums, and it already sounds pretty good.
I started with making emo rap and trap metal, then I got introduced to black metal by watching your channel. now my project is mostly dsbm and dungeon synth sometimes combined with other genres
It‘s really so much about trying out and playing around once you got your software working. And you will improve so fast while time goes by. Honestly my First EP sounds like shit when I listen to it now, but back then it was a huge milestone for me. Just keep going🔥
Hey man, I gave your stuff a quick listen. You did improve very vell! Really cool stuff, subscriped to your channel. Keep going, would be happy to hear more music in the future.
For the Fundamentals of Music part it helps to go through different songs, from your genre and from other type of music and create Maps for the songs. Maps with the beats, and the information about when the guitars come in, drums, vocals, tags, intro, verse, chorus, outro, speed changes, etc. It'll open a whole new world and make you look and listen to songs differently. It'll also train you to build and create songs far more easily by giving you a catalog of different types of Song Structures and Song Parts to draw from. It also pays to listen to different genres of music. If for nothing else than to help you with ideas, writers block, and give you a larger pallet from where to get your inspiration from. Listening only to the one genre of music can cause Music Inbreeding. It'll basically make you into a clone and nothing else. So even if you're making Black Metal, try injecting it with something else or look at it from a different perspective and angle. Through a different filter if you will. Who knows? You might end up stumbling into something completely new and awesome and original.
I think the next level of making the album is when you become critical of your own sound. You make improvements and then you need to re-record everything because there's a lot of positive changes. Suddenly there will be new energy in your music. You'll become obsessed with capturing this new energy. But then! Then!! You'll be motivated to push your boundaries and your limitations. But will it still sound like Black Metal? This becomes a complicated topic. This guy has a good channel. I'm subscribing. Thank you for your videos. You do an excellent job.
Make some CDr's with your scratchy tracks and whip up a sleeve in Gimp with a logo your scribbled up, art you want to put on there and all the song names then leave a stack of those at local record shops, gear shops, music schools, coffee shops ect. It's a great feeling when you come back next time and see a few of them are gone or you run into another musician to exchange with and throw tips back and forth. Take the next step and get some low cost Jewel Cases CDrs made from Kunaki for like $2 a piece and sell them on Bandcamp or a small label, I opened my own small label that has done a few releases here and there for a couple bands around the world and I've gotten some great memories with the musicians and bands I've worked with who some of which I became friends with and still talk to here and there. Black metal is the perfect genre for getting into starting a solo project because it's a genre that doesn't have a wall of big name labels and high production studios standing in your way from getting into the genre, seeing musicians like Satanic Tyrant Werewolf and Malefic in the late 00s just recording and releasing their own stuff inspired me to try recording stuff on my own and a few years later it was a few different projects, a label, a few open mics, another label doing a release for one of my projects, ( an endless pile of 90% written songs on my computer I haven't finished or recorded. . .) and overall just a lot of great memories and many more to come!
Good overview video brother. Love my Focusrite Scarlett Solo interface for Vocal and Guitar work, though I did grow up doing things more Analog and fusion format (as well as on the live sound crew side at venues on and off), so I do Mic my Studio Amp for several solo projects and other bands, sounds great and learning how to properly mix and balance your recordings are half the battle with the recording process. There's many great DAW's and VST's out there, definitely don't be afraid to toy around with multiple to figure out which one is best for the individual artist. Playing to a Metronome can be really annoying but is very important to work on timing and beat count, after that skill development if one doesn't want to use it and play to drum tracks, that's a good route to go as well especially if one is aiming to play live at all/ in any capacity or with another musician or two. And absolutely right, being able to write/ program good drum tracks is essential to making a song sound good and "stand out" as much as knowing good songwriting skills overall alongside fundamentals. Being a one man project doesn't necessarily mean that you'll always do solo stuff, many opportunities to collaborate will come along as you build an audience and a network. I have just as much fun working with others as doing solo projects when everyone is apt and skilled at what they do and contribute. And sometimes working with others will produce music that's better than working alone, just depends on the individual levels of creativity and a number of other things. I still collect CD's and Cassette, will never stop either lol, a physical/ tangible format is important for many reasons (and I just enjoy them).
Back in the early 90s I recorded my solo project bowel movement on a dual cassette karaoke machine and it actually sounded decent 🤣. Wow technology has changed with computers and software. Now I use a tascam 24 track to record. Find what works best for you. But yes definitely learn the fundamentals of music . Timing is everything 😁God bless you 🙏
my advice to solo project peeps too is dont be afraid to stay super lofi/diy either if you want. i personally prefer cheap instruments and a messy recording room with methods that feel like they come from the early 2000s when you have no other workaround. i also somewhat understand the "raw for the sake of raw isnt good and you should try to be organic" argument but i disagree with it. i much more find enjoyment and value out of the creation process. what im trying to say is dont feel pressured into becoming more polished and needing your own high end home studio. dont be super minute about how your stuff sounds either, chances are someone is going to love it even if you yourself dont.
I love this video, and your channel generally! I'm a latecomer to black metal at 34, but have been into post-punk music - from Joy Division to Dead Can Dance - for years. I really want to try and blend those two styles, but have no idea how. This video has got me one step closer.
About Reaper... It's not free but they let you use it after the trial expires, which is great for learning and then you can buy it before you start using it for real.
@@wolfmauler I believe I've tried it. I say every professional DAW is good as long as it doesn't cost you 1k every year. Just try them and see which one you find more comfortable to use. What matters is the audio you put into them, as much as they're not random non professionals apps they're all going to do the job.
I've already done lots of the basics, but my biggest problem is making an actual song out of riff ideas; I'm at the point where I can take a riff idea, record it, put drum and bass and sometimes some other stuff (synths or smth) in it and it'll sound half decent. However, it's not going much further than these snippets, only very rarely I actually got something with structure and different riffs. I have all these ideas and I don't think they're bad ones, but I just don't know how to connect them. It's like having the ingredients but not knowing what to cook...
If you're playing by ear, use a tuner if necessary to figure out the root notes of what you're playing, then learn the progessions of the chord (The only Chord Book you'll ever need is great for finding that obscure sound to make things interesting!) arpeggios etc. Then you can start piecing things together.
This is the part where creativity comes into it. I will always try, if i can, to have a good idea for a song and write the rifts around the lyrics, however if this doesnt work I will try to write melodies, (chorus, verse, intro) then build rifts and drums around the melody. If this doesnt work I will just listen to a bunch of music until i find something that is inspiring. It's not easy but when you get the idea right everything falls into place.
Yeah bro learn about the circle of fifths and the different scales. That’s how u can figure out where to go and build progression in the song. Chord progressions in a harmonic minor or any other combo but u gotta know the rules before you break em
Excellent video Farvann, I wish I would have been able to see this video like 8 years ago. The only thing I would add is to not stress over the quality of the mix at first. Making my bands first record, being the guy recording and mixing it, it was stressful. I was trying to make it the most highest quality mix possible. I was trying to please the elitists (some of these people I use to associate with and call friends) that would say things like “the songs good but the mix is bad so I don’t like it”. I was chasing a sound that I wasn’t able to achieve at the time and it probably took a few years off my life from the stress of it. Don’t be like me. Make your mixes and mastering to however you want. Be happy with it. It may not have the level of mix of what’s on the radio and that’s more than okay. Don’t let elitists bully you for not having that diamond polish sound. This why I gravitate towards black metal. As an adult I still do. Go out there and make some black metal. And enjoy the journey. 🤘
Cool material! Thanks for the tips. I have been doing music stuff for years (with some minor and major breaks) but I never released anything except for few tracks maybe. You inspired me to get my sh*t together and get the things done :)
I think it's also good to build your image as an artist as well. Think about your logo, art/photography and even what you want to look like to other listeners (ESPECIALLY if you're willing to put on corpsepaint).
Cool. I wish this had been up when I started my extremely dodgy one-woman black metal (which has turned a lot goth) project almost two years ago. Still, it's reassuring to know I kind of have been doing things correctly as per your list. Apart from firing myself from my one-woman project, when do people think is the best time to start releasing music via Distrokid et al rather than putting up efforts on YT? I'm kind of interested in doing so, but am not sure my crappy songs are good enough.
Listen constantly to the songs that put you into that genre and that motivated you to start one man band and you will never lose faith . Find your strong points and in the “worst case scenario” start international projects with people that play the music you like. Either it works or not you will experience that later will help you with creating your own one man band . But most importantly listen to the stuff that got you into wanting to start playing music
i am learning to play drums, but i have no idea: how musicians connect to each other, what i must do in future with my drumskills. i was searching simple advice for begining and your channel is what i need!!! thanks!!!
I don't make a lot of black metal (yet), but I've made a lot of EDM and Trap in the past. The thing that helped me the most with my production skills is understanding how scales work and how to use them. It sets the foundation for the emotions and feel of your song. Naturally, from there, you move to understanding chord progressions and how to build them in your scales. Then, from there, you learn how to write melodies that follow your chords. Both are easy to grasp once you understand how to use a scale. Though you may not be an EDM fan, EDM Tutorials on youtube are great for this. Most use FL Studio (which I recommend because it's easy to understand) or Ableton.
I’ve no idea why no one ever mentions this: learn to play your favorite songs, if you can do so by ear then even better, a lot of tabs, especially of unknown bands or songs, are either non-existent or just garbage, slow down the song by parts and loop them to figure out what's being played and literally play different frets of different strings until you hit the right note, even if you have to literally go note by note, chord by chord, make your own tabs, not only you'll learn a lot about different tunings, notes, beats and time signatures like you mentioned, jamming to songs you love will serve as much needed practice but will also inspire you like you have no idea, and from there, you'll be jamming and making new riffs in no time, mixing different band styles or riffs or playing them backwards or changing some notes here and there, using the notes from one riff with the rhythm of another, etc. but above all, after learning a bunch of songs (preferably from as many different bands and styles as you can, within black metal), you'll automatically start mixing up everything and creating new stuff from the things you learnt, our brains are like an AI, you feed it stuff by learning and it'll surprise you by spitting out a mix of everything
No beer, no jokes, no black metal, no Joops...🤔 It's not Farvann! JoJo hired revenge hackers! 😲 Actually, it's good advice. Especially don't worry about having gear you can't afford and don't worry about how you sound next to your favorite bands. There is time for that later. 🤘🙂
I live in forest and I look like a Troll . It's snowing all the time. How I exist I don't know because I have never seen another human until I found this phone in the snow. I need to know how to create Grim music with nothing but a phone. I have to do it for 1 hour daily when the northern lights bring in the open wi fi from the tiny village on the other side of mountain
getting started with recording had something "magical" for me back then. I started to learn guitar and recording simultaneously in about 2015/16 and even I just played few powerchords over super simple beats I felt like archiving something big. And in 2017 I released my first record on tape, which sounds like crap but still has that "spirit" or passion, like my inner voice told me, I have to record this and I felt awesome and still does. When you would ask me for advice I would say " just do it". Watch videos like this, and try out what works for you the best. But most importantly, do ist with passion and have fun!
Only thing that remains a mystery, is how to practice and record vocals while maintaining good relations with your neighbours. Anyway, pretty good video. I watched it out of curiosity, and realised that i had taken some of these as obvious things as i had gone to music classes in elementary and high school, but of course they are not. The beats and bars also help with reading tabs too.
I started my own black metal project a while ago called Nekravol. It's not just black metal, but also has elements of math metal, tech death, sludge metal and noise!
im really thinking of starting my own project and honestly, this is really helpful, thank you and yes, theres no one to make a black metal project with, lol
I'm someone that still buys cds from time to time and I stream music also. Streaming music is nice most of the time for doing chores or school but cds and listening to them are so much better
I recorded with a acoustic guitar. I had money for a cheap set of pickups from amazon, reaper and guitar rig 4. An imagination to go off of and bam! Belial berith was born. I this next record will be much better.
i want to start a black metal band with my bros. we even came up with a name and designed a logo. and i came up with a pretty good riff, I just gotta look that it doesn't exist already I also use reaper. it just wants to be paid, and complains about it one or two months long, but after that it shuts up and you can use it. there are no benefits of buying it.
Could you explain the USB interface a bit more? I mean, what's the function of it, what can it do? It is only for connecting your guitar to your soundcard, or does it act as an amplifier as well, or it can add effects like distortion? Or those can be added only by DAW software? One of the things keeping me back from plunging the money and finally buy an electric guitar is that I wouldn't have money for an amp and a fuzz pedal as well, and without those it can't really be used for metal, UNLESS there's a way to emulate those with software, but I don't know how. A small tutorial on these things would be greatly appreciated :)
So, the interface is a way for your computer to record and play back audio. The input channels are a way to record the guitar signal (or any other signal you plug in) and the output channels and headphone jack are a way to listen to any audio. Without an interface, there is no cheap and reliable way of recording your guitar signal in a high quality - you'd even use one when using mics on a real amp. For the effects you can use software emulations which most of the time are much cheaper than the "real deal" (or even free) and mostly don't sound worse. Basically, you open a channel in your DAW of choice, assign the channel of your interface you plugged the guitar in to that DAW channel, press the "instant replay" button on that channel and put the amp and/or pedal sims of choice on that channel. With the right buffer size (as low as possible without audio artifacts) it should feel extremely close to a real amp. The whole signal chain/setup might need some getting used to but once you get the hang of it, it really isn't that complicated. For an entire setup that you can use to get the hang of it, you can get away with 300€ (~100€ for a new interface, ~200€ for a new guitar and cables - the DAW reaper has a free trial and the Neural DSP plugins have a 2 week free trial period each. You could even get used gear for even cheaper but there's always a risk of getting damaged or really bad stuff). Though keep in mind that you need a half-decent computer with enough processing power to handle a DAW and a few plugins (a cheap 100€ laptop from Walmart might not cut it; although mine is now 7 years old and still works, kinda - it was upper middle class when I got it).
Very helpful, I'm getting into Ableton rn and it's quite easy to work with. I can also recommend Ugritone as a Drum VST, they have a few that are specifically made for black metal and they cost like €30 each; also TuxGuitar instead of GP since it's free and about as good for writing songs (and exporting drum tracks as MIDI files to use in the DAW). I recorded and released a demo song (which I wrote back in 2017) in 2019, style has changed a bit by now (darker, more atmospheric but still as brutal and heavy) but I'm nonetheless proud of it. I don't wanna jerk myself off here ofc, but maybe it encourages others to release their humble demos as well. Recorded it with Audacity of all things, through a cheap amp, TuxGuitar drums, uncompressed vocals and a metric fuckton of mistakes. Here's the product: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-37la66bf43g.html I'm looking forward to record new stuff (and potentially re-record that song too) with better equipment, more knowledge and skill and more passion in the near future!
Understanding drums is for sure the part I'm stuck on most and probably the main thing that prevents me from bringing ideas into fruition. There's something that's just not clicking with me because the drum tracks always end up either hard to follow or sound off. I'm usually just making some kind of blast beat thing, so I have no idea if I'm doing something subtly wrong with the composition or with the programming.
I'm a horrorpunk with no friends to make music with 😂 nonetheless i still wish i heard these tips a few years ago. It wasn't until recently i understood writing to beats and how to program my drums or even note divisions haha. Also wish I had bought an interface way sooner instead of putting my practice amp and phone in the closet trying to record that way with no way to hear the drums
thanks, i am currently working on a black metal project and i've already bought a guitar with an amp but its not a big deal because i just love playing it and come with new riffs, i feel kinda lucky to know how to use a daw because at the moment im a producer and rapper and i've been doing my thing for around 5 years, 3 years ago i got deeper into black metal and felt like i wanted to work on something as another artist so people wont know that the black metal project is made by me, i was wondering if instead of buying the interface i could just put the mic in front of the amp, i'm not searching for a high quality sound but for a raw and crappy one for some reason, it's just the way i feel like i want it to sound
I had no intention of starting a project at all but this thought me alot! And I was kinda hurt by "nobody buys cd's nowadays".... I buy flipping cd's! :D
I've been making music in FL studio for 3 years and i really want to get more into playing instruments and making metal projects. I've made some projects now with FL slayer (hate me) and it makes me feel so much better to express my emotions in this way (with dsbm and black ambience). I'm probably going to buy a guitar in about a month and start learning to play it. Just a question. Is an interface the only way of connecting your guitar to your computer? Is is not possible with the things in a beginner kit?
