So, after messing up a bunch of things on my computer and losing the drive to update this site after only one post, I’ve got things back on track.

So far in 2014, I’ve upgraded Ableton to Suite 9, downloaded KORG Gadget, played around with Syntorial, tried in vain to get MIDI by Wifi working between Ableton and my iPad, and started a few new songs.

I’m going to use this space to go through some tutorials to reinforce new and old techniques, help people I know with my theory chops, and explore synthesizer and sampler techniques from a variety of sources.

I’m still figuring this stuff out, building up my library of materials, and learning how to do things many other people have figured out, such as posting pieces of musical notation, and subtitling screencasts.

In the meantime, I’m bucking myself up with Neil Gaiman’s advice:

The most important thing, when you’re just starting out, is ‘Write the next one.’ Assume that you have a million words inside you that are absolute rubbish and you need to get them out before you get to the good ones. And if you get there early, that’s great. That’s really my biggest advice: Read everything you can, read outside your comfort zone, and write a lot.

• Neil Gaiman @ Google, 09 Jul 2013

Thanks, Neil. Here we go.

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Beat-Boogie.com. Here, we’re going to go through a whole bunch of tutorials, a little at a time. The material here is gleaned from a variety of sources, although never lifted verbatim. The three-fold process we’ll use here should help build skills and techniques, while this site serves as a storage locker of things we’ve learned.

The process:

1. View, read, or hear some tutorial, masterclass, or course snippet.
2. Practice the technique described and duplicate the source techniques as closely as possible.
3. Cover the technique from scratch, using our original source materials, synthesizers, instruments, and effects.

The act of working through new techniques and writing them up after practicing them in this way can help us retain the things we’ve learned. Additionally, the write up can serve as an archive of practiced techniques.

At first, there will simply be screen shots and sounds. Since this blog is built in HTML5, we’ll be using an audio tag plugin. (Thanks, Anton!) That may render the audio unplayable in any browser without support for HTML5 Audio. Most of the snippets will be short, in WAV and MP3 formats.

For the rundown on the software we’ll be playing with, visit the About Page.

We hope you find some of the things posted here useful.