Making Music: 74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers Hardcover – January 1, 2015

The book is straightforward advice from your friend who's "been there, done that". Really useful and even for the experienced, it provides confirmations for recurring moments of doubt and confusion, and for the new amlng us, grants permissions to be like everybody else, human, and take strength from doing so. I liked it!

I picked up this book having high expectations since I have digested a large amount of music production books, magazines and video tutorials. This book does a great job at addressing common roadblocks that I have encountered.Even though the author works for ableton, this book still does a fantastic job approaching the subject of digital music production while being software agnostic.With so many options for sound design and music composition in the digital realm, this book has been a breath of fresh air.I expect to read this book a few times over for inspiration and strategies when approaching music production. I feel that the subject matter will last the rest of time and will still be relevant for years to come.

It runs through the full gamut of problems and considered approaches to break through mental roadblocks, to starting, working on and getting done with your musical endeavors. If you have no roadblocks, just because you are no experienced hand at musical projects, you'll do lot of reading and learn a lot that may not connect. To get the full value of this book, you need to have "been there, done that"

Awesome book, full of useful suggestions, many along the lines of Eno's famed suggestions, but with good prose further explaining each idea/approach. A few are tailored to "making beats" or similarly tied to modern music production, but there's much useful material here for classical music composers (e.g. me), too.I got the kindle version, as the paper version look way over priced (probably more of a "coffee-table quality" book, but this is such a practical book that I'd buy a reasonably priced "normal quality" paper in an instant, even after owning the kindle version). I'd love to be able to make notes in the margins, and find these kinds of books more useful in physical form.

I've been making music for a long time & making music with computers since 1998. I wish I had access to this book in 1998. I'm going to be going back to this well again & again. Highly recommended. Also, even though the author works for Ableton, it's really in no way is a how-to for Abelton, it's much more DAW agnostic & really about the unique challenges making music with computers bring.

I'm going to find the time to come back and give this a proper review, but in the meantime, 5 stars.This book is everything I thought and hoped it would be from the previews at the Ableton site... and more, much more. Never before have those vague "unanswerables" about creativity been so well answered, at least as it pertains to electronic music production. This book is definitely focused on electronic production (not EDM genres in specific) - the composition side, the neglected one. Anyone who struggles with writing music in general, electronic or not, will benefit - but parts are definitely specific to music made by computers.I'm already demonstrably better as a composer and have an easier time getting started after reading through one time, and I expect I will be re-reading and referencing back to this book over and over for a long time to come.If you've got any doubts, read the preview chapters on the official makingmusic.ableton site - though many of the best are reserved for the book itself.Proper review forthcoming.Note: This is NOT specific to Ableton users in any way - no matter your DAW, this will not exclude you. I use Maschine and found zero conflicts in that regard. Ableton is used for screenshots of the sequencer patterns, nothing more.

The format of this book is quite intriguing. He sets up situations that musicians find themselves in and gives concrete, doable and creative methods to fix those problems. I’m still a newbie and his simple approach made so much sense. In the world of video everything, it was refreshing to simply sit down and read a chapter whenever I had time. It’s not a page turner like a novel but I did read it slowly so as to absorb his principles. Not sure there are other books on this topic to compare with but I’m certainly glad I invested in it and appreciate his sharing this gem with fellow musicians and music lovers. His writing style was comfortable and inviting; like someone you would love to meet in person.

So much great content and ideas, glad I found this, has me thinking about problems from a different perspective. While it is written from the perspective of electronic music, even as a guitar player, most all of this can be applied to any modern song creation.