About Beat Boogie

Are you an electronic musician? Are you using the same techniques over and over again? Do you gravitate toward the presets and free sample packs? Yeah? So do I.

It’s time for us to do a ton of tutorials together and get out of this rut. What do you say? Are you with me?

I believe that talent is the first step, but skill is the rest of the journey toward mastery. I also believe that, no matter how skillful I think I might be on any particular day, all I have to do is take another step. I’ve taken two or three timid steps so far.

After many years of writing music, I find myself heading almost automatically to the same three keys, the same rote patterns, and trying to get away with layering presets with effects chains. There are numerous tutorials out there I could be doing, but I’ve traditionally just grabbed an empty file and started to doink around. It’s time for some deliberate practice.

We’re going to be using a small arsenal of software here, along with a few low-cost or free VST/AU plugins. I’m just doing these for me, because I’ve bought a ton of tutorials and guidebooks, but the only real way to learn any particular skill is to try to teach it to other people. Even if, by “other people”, I mean this blog.

Here’s what I’m going to cover here. If you can apply anything I write to other things, rock on. I use a Mac, but you don’t have to (unless I’m doing a thing in Logic Pro).

The tools:

Some plugins:

I’m not going to be doing any tutorials for Lennar Sylenth1 or the Native Instruments suite just yet. They’re exceptional pieces of technology, but when I find tutorials for them, I’ll do myself (and you) the service of first trying to adapt the knowledge to something cheap or built into the DAW.

Are you ready for the next few steps? Come on, friend. Let’s go.