I love electronic music. I love making it, listening to it, promoting it and of course, helping other people create it. While I didn’t write these myself, I thought I’d share some helpful PDF manuals and guides I’ve compiled to get you started.

In writing this, I’m also assuming that readers have some kind of multi-track recording program (like Protools, Logic or Cubase) or a nice sequencing program (like Reason or Fruity Loops). Ableton is my program of choice as it handles a bit of both recording and sequencing. Which ever platform you choose, a nice music making program will help you try out some of the things covered in the PDFs below.

Hopefully these guides will inspire some of the same passion I have for electronic music in you:)

Free beginner PDFs at Computer Music
This page has a really great set of downloadable PDFs including:

• Click to download The A-Z Of Digital Music Making, Part 1 (17MB)
• Click to download The A-Z Of Digital Music Making, Part 2 (12MB)
• Click to download 101 Recording & Mixing Tips (10.7MB)
• (101 Recording & Mixing Tips tutorial files (2.6MB))
• Click to download Recording Made Easy (6.2MB)
• Click to download The CM Guide to Monitors (3.8MB)
• Click to download Super Synths (6.7MB)
• (Super Synths tutorial files (2.6MB))

See the complete listing of PDFs (about 20 in all!) on how to use different kinds of effects (flanging, vocoders, eqs etc.) here.

List of tutorials over at Create Digital Music by Francis Preve
This came in my feed reader a while ago and is a compiled list of tutorials developed for Beatportal by Francis Preve. I only listed the first 3 tutorials in each category. Visit the complete (and very awesome) post over at Create Digital Music.

Subtractive and analog synthesis

• Introduction to Synthesizer Programming, Part 1
• Introduction to Synthesizer Programming, Part 2
• Some call it analog: How subtractive synthesizers work

Introduction to sampling

• Sampling Essentials – Part 1
• Sampling Essentials – Part 2

Tutorials on Reason’s Thor synthesizer

• Stealing Thor’s Thunder – Part 1: Oscillators
• Stealing Thor’s Thunder – Part 2: Filters
• Stealing Thor’s Thunder – Part 3: Modulation

Introduction to effects (series in progress)

• Tutorial: How to use compression
• Tutorial: How to use a delay
• Tutorial: How to use a noise gate

Production Master Classes (tips/tricks roundtables with established producers, series in progress)

• Production Master Class: Intros and Outros
• Production Master Class: Kick and bass
• Production Master Class: Hi-hats and top-loops

Thanks to Taylor, Yogi and Joe for asking me about getting started!