For some of you, this will be your first time playing around in a DAW.   For others this may be the first time doing something focused and intentional in a DAW.  Digital Audio Workstations (DAW) are amazingly powerful tools that let you create music with simple step by step tasks.   While the simplicity makes them easy to access,  the number of tasks required to produce meaning full musical results prevents many users from brining their musical ideas to fruition.    The number of steps and tasks can also be easily multiplied if you are still exploring, unfocused or are not hungry for efficiency.

Below are a few linked videos that may help you get up to speed at home or when you come in to use the music labs outside of class.  To focus these lessons, we are going to use Dance music as an example.  Once you walk through these two tutorials, you will have the basic skills necessary to explore making music in other generes.   Please do not feel obligated to use the samples they use.

1. Creating a Drum Beat in Ableton Live.
2. Creating a Bass line in Ableton Live

If you have never seen a DAW before.   Maybe you will want to watch these videos showing the basics of Ableton Live

1.  Session View in Ableton
2.  Arrangement View in Ableton

For those of you who also have not played around with anything to do with audio before,  there will be hundreds of technically specific terms used in these videos.   This will be a chance for you to flex those vocabulary learning parts of your brain.  It can be slow at first, but you will eventually become comfortable with dozens if not hundreds of terms specific to audio and computer music.