+ Welcome to Soundfly! We help curious musicians meet their goals with creative online courses. Whatever you want to learn, whenever you need to learn it. Subscribe now to start learning on the ’Fly. Mark Cuban has this terrifying saying that I once heard him throw at a budding entrepreneur on Shark Tank: “Work like there is someone working 24 hours…
Hello there! We’re trying something new here. For one entire calendar week, we’re pausing our regular schedule of irrefutably awesome, can’t-live-without-them, like-nothing-else-out-there articles on Flypaper in order to bring you a week-long, free course on how to make a beat in Ableton Live using the Drum Rack! At the bottom of each article, you’ll be able…
This is the second lesson in our multi-part course series, How to Make Your First Beat in Ableton Live. To follow along from the beginning, click here, or check out our Mainstage course, Beat Making in Ableton Live, for a more in-depth mentor-assisted experience! Let’s start by familiarizing ourselves with the beat-making tools in Ableton. First, I’d like to point…
This is the third lesson in our multi-part course series, How to Make Your First Beat in Ableton Live. To follow along from the beginning, click here, or check out our Mainstage course, Beat Making in Ableton Live, for a more in-depth mentor-assisted experience! In the video below, we go through a quick overview of the basic controls of the Drum Rack…
This is the fourth lesson in our multi-part course series, How to Make Your First Beat in Ableton Live. To follow along from the beginning, click here, or check out our Mainstage course, Beat Making in Ableton Live, for a more in-depth mentor-assisted experience! Making a Sound Ready to make some noise? Let’s get started. One way to start making sound is…
This is the fifth lesson in our multi-part course series, How to Make Your First Beat in Ableton Live. To follow along from the beginning, click here, or check out our Mainstage course, Beat Making in Ableton Live, for a more in-depth mentor-assisted experience! The performance you’ve recorded is stored in what Live calls a MIDI Clip. In session view, it looks…
This is the sixth lesson in our multi-part course series, How to Make Your First Beat in Ableton Live. To follow along from the beginning, click here, or check out our Mainstage course, Beat Making in Ableton Live, for a more in-depth mentor-assisted experience! Adding Other Elements Let’s hop back to that kick-and-snare loop from earlier. What if we wanted to…
Welcome back to the dance floor, Quick Trackers! Once a month, we hook you up with a short production or songwriting challenge, aimed at helping to up your musicianship. To respond to the challenge, just email us, leave a comment, or post to social media with the hashtag #quicktracks and tag us @learntosoundfly. Beats are the best. Whether…
I remember the first time I tried writing a song — it was a mess. I had no idea where to start, no idea how to come up with melodies (let alone match them with lyrics), and no idea what to write about. Songwriting can be an extremely daunting mountain to tackle if you’ve never written…
