I wanna get into producing, i've been thinking of playing a musical instrument to learn more about music theory. Should I? And what instrument should i learn?

u should learn how to play drums... drums are very important in dance music.. playing them live is an essential thing.. u would need great stamina.. cause those drums are indeed very fast..

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http://soundcloud.com/subtara

Piano? Easiest instrument to start playing, hardest to master. And enough theory to drive song ideas for however long you play.

I don't find it really necessary to know a whole lot of theory. You don't need to site read , thats reading from a score and playing what you see. Depends on how far you want to go. If you want to work with a vocalist then having a great deal of musical knowledge is a must (as far as Trance goes). Knowing how to read notation is always a plus and is a bit more professional. The problem is you don't really need to play well with edm (unless you want to be like Infected Mushroom).

Someone here said that playing drums is
a good thing to know as well. I've never really gotten into it beyond fooling around with a kit. But it'd be nice to sample from! I suppose to develop a sense of rhythm.

I guess it depends on how you approach production. It can be musical, technical, a step toward being a sound engineer, or a whole bunch of other things.

Oh and production is beaucoup expensive.
Lots of toys. And companies keep on coming out with goodies every year. Get a job. If you dont have one already.

If you're seriously thinking about getting
into production I would fork out some dough for a synth (not a midi controller).
And then fool around with it. Then you get to learn about all the synth kinda stuff and that translates well into production software.

quote:

Originally posted by Subtle u should learn how to play drums... drums are very important in dance music.. playing them live is an essential thing.. u would need great stamina.. cause those drums are indeed very fast..

lol, you're kidding

/me sequences something in his drum machine and sets the tempo to 165 bpm

there! done! it was really hard

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quote:

Originally posted by DJFreaq lol, you're kidding /me sequences something in his drum machine and sets the tempo to 165 bpm there! done! it was really hard

u must be very stupid.. (sorry) but didnt u know that for instance Armin van Buuren, Ferry corsten and even Tiesto play there own drums.. not live off course but in their studio..

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naw, not stupid, just ignorant, lol, i had no idea, but that's friggin sweet

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You should learn to play piano not drums. Its very hard to describe but you wont be able to make a good melody in my opinion if you wont know which tons go together.. You can experiment but i prefer other way.
You dont need to play drums to know how to make a trance beat because its a lot different then in other genres.

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quote:

Originally posted by DJFreaq naw, not stupid, just ignorant, lol, i had no idea, but that's friggin sweet

Sarcastimeter confused

piano / keyboard will teach you a lot about theory, and is possbily the most versatile in the long run.

guitar is really good for musical theory also, and you'll probably be able to use the guitar on your tunes, unless this current wave of guitars-in-trance dies out...

actually, just learn piano / keyboard. it is essential.

btw, if getting lessons, keyboard lessons are different to piano in that in keyboard you'll learn more contemporary techniques, esp. improvisation which will help you compose melodies etc.

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anything i learned on piano carried over to what i know on guitar.

but knowing how to play guitar is useless, IMO for trance/dance.

i realy wish i would have stuck with piano, but you cant carry one around with you most of the time like a guitar.

i think if you want to invest in some midi drums it might be worth a study. i saw this guy preform a whole set once on Roland V-drums. it was the most provocative thing ive ever seen. he programed the synth leads to trigger off a certain pad, and just did everything else on the fly. (forgot his name, darn!)

the piano is the basis for all instruments... learn the piano and you can understand and easily learn another instrument.