# How common is it for a DAW composer to not play any instruments in real life?



## Lord Daknight (Dec 7, 2021)

I don't play any instruments at the moment, would you say it's really necessary to understand music?


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## chillbot (Dec 7, 2021)

There will always be someone that can and will (stubbornly) prove "necessary" to be wrong but it will be much more difficult and way less fun for you. Why would you do that to yourself and what have you got to lose?


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## KEM (Dec 7, 2021)

I’d say it’s only a plus, playing an instrument makes music so much more tactile and fun, and it will only help you be a better composer anyways


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## darkogav (Dec 7, 2021)

Lord Daknight said:


> I don't play any instruments at the moment, would you say it's really necessary to understand music?


I guess it depends what you want to do. I guess it doesn't matter. But I think if you don't play an instrument with other people it's going to be hard to understand other musicians. It's a learned skill.


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## Wedge (Dec 7, 2021)

I wouldn't say it's necessary, but it's not technically necessary to have a car in Los Angelos either. But it will take you a hell of a lot longer to get from point A to point B. And it will be a hell of a lot less fun.


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## CATDAD (Dec 7, 2021)

As someone who started composition first then started working in to playing instruments, it was like finding a part of me I didn't know was missing my entire life. _Who knew someone who thinks about music all day would maybe enjoy playing instruments?!_ Never felt more like a fool than when I discovered the joy of playing music.

Also if you learn keyboard/piano in particular it will likely speed your process waaay the fuck up.

It will also allow you to "feel" music theory almost as much as you already might hear or have studied on it. Some people just wouldn't write without being able to play because it speaks to our tactile nature.

Might even save you some time/dollars being able to just buckle up and record a part yourself instead of needing someone else to do it!

Necessary? No. 

Will it be more fun and make you a better composer because of myriad reasons? *YES.*

If you're gonno go to all the trouble of buying gear, watching hours of videos, reading books, and arguing about legato online, get ahold of some instruments and put a little time in to 'em each day! If you have a place you can rent some stuff, spend a week with an assortment of them and purchase whatever starts to speak to you.

If you can't play any instruments now, don't let it stop you from composition/audio engineering/production. But do whatever it takes to get started with exploring some playable instruments, even if you gotta cheap out or use a MIDI keyboard for it, or whatever. Learning instruments can be a slow process, but it DOES get easier if you put in a little time on a regular basis. You DON'T need to be a virtuoso to play decently or to help your understanding of music!


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## Pier (Dec 7, 2021)

It's not 100% necessary, but it will make your life much easier and will develop your musical intuition.

You don't need to become a concert pianist, but I'd seriously recommend taking some piano lessons and practicing to at least become moderately proficient.


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## Lord Daknight (Dec 7, 2021)

chillbot said:


> There will always be someone that can and will (stubbornly) prove "necessary" to be wrong but it will be much more difficult and way less fun for you. Why would you do that to yourself and what have you got to lose?


Instruments are very expensive, good mics are expensive, I won't play even nearly as good as the people in the sample libraries and maintenance, those are my main hesitations. I have a midi keyboard though, is that good enough?


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## proggermusic (Dec 7, 2021)

Here's a bit of anecdotal evidence from my own wee perspective. I'm a professor of jazz and contemporary piano, composition/arranging, and improvisation at a college in Austin. One of my wonderful composition students, who's studied with me for the past two and a half years, only "plays" Ableton. (And he's extremely good at it.)

Since I started working with him, we've worked on transcription projects as well as editing, developing, and... at last... arranging his original pieces in sheet music (using MuseScore because it's free and, at this point, pretty darn capable). He couldn't read a lick of sheet music when he started with me, and now he's doing excellent arranging work, as well as making phenomenal demos of his pieces in Ableton. His goal is to start booking recording sessions with studio musicians and having them bring his pieces to life so he doesn't have to rely on VIs, and frankly he's doing great, he'll be ready for that reasonably soon. 

He IS very interested in developing some piano skill, and he's started dabbling in that a bit. I haven't been pushing him in that direction, though. He's found very legitimate means of high-level artistic expression with Ableton as his instrument, and I respect that a lot.


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## proggermusic (Dec 7, 2021)

Lord Daknight said:


> Instruments are very expensive, good mics are expensive, I won't play even nearly as good as the people in the sample libraries and maintenance, those are my main hesitations. I have a midi keyboard though, is that good enough?


Yes, absolutely, a MIDI keyboard is good enough. I'm a professional pianist but I live in a small-ish condo, so my practice instrument is a Yamaha digital grand going through Keyscape most of the time. I far prefer that to having to maintain and tune an acoustic piano (at this stage of life, at least).


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## Double Helix (Dec 7, 2021)

I simply wonder why/how you acquired a midi keyboard in the first place--obviously, you are entitled to follow any path your heart desires, but that indicates a burgeoning interest.
Does your keyboard have any onboard sounds?
Are you using it to trigger any external sound modules? (probably not at this point, but that might be a future possibility)
My YouTube feed is awash with midi chord pack advertisements that could get you started making "music," even if you don't yet have any idea why pressing "this" key makes "this" happen.

Check with your local community college and see what texts the bookstore has for Class Piano for Adult Beginners--you will be knocking out "Cubby Goes to School" by the weekend.
Have fun!


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## Jeremy Spencer (Dec 7, 2021)

Lord Daknight said:


> Instruments are very expensive, good mics are expensive, I won't play even nearly as good as the people in the sample libraries and maintenance, those are my main hesitations. I have a midi keyboard though, is that good enough?


Depends what you mean by expensive. You can also make a "cheap" instrument sound pretty decent. Mics? I have recorded two albums with a $60 mic. What instruments would you be interested in learning?


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## Jeremy Spencer (Dec 7, 2021)

Pier said:


> You don't need to become a concert pianist, but I'd seriously recommend taking some piano lessons and practicing to at least become moderately proficient.


This 1000%. Taking piano lessons later in life opened up a whole new world for me. Even if you're not that good, it does wonders for composition skills and understanding theory. The only possible downside (for me) was that there were suddenly rules. This kind of threw a wrench into my programming techniques, but for the better. Plus, I began writing in different keys and got out of my typical chord progressions.


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## PedroPH (Dec 7, 2021)

Lord Daknight said:


> I don't play any instruments at the moment, would you say it's really necessary to understand music?


No, it's not. In general, I don't consider myself as someone who plays an instrument. But I did have piano lessons as a child. I also played the soprano recorder. I had other music lessons too and I know how to read music, even if not fluently. All that helped when I started composing, but many things I figured out by ear and practice.


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## rgames (Dec 7, 2021)

The answer to the question in the thread title is, at the professional level, it's not very common. Nearly every professional who works as a composer has some proficiency on some instrument. In fact, most are very good on some instrument.

However, I'll offer up a better question: of the composers you most admire, how many are proficient on an instrument?

For me the answer is 100%.

rgames


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## Nova (Dec 7, 2021)

CATDAD said:


> As someone who started composition first then started working in to playing instruments, it was like finding a part of me I didn't know was missing my entire life. _Who knew someone who thinks about music all day would maybe enjoy playing instruments?!_ Never felt more like a fool than when I discovered the joy of playing music.


This was me. I played campfire guitar by ear for years and started messing around with DAW composing 4ish years ago. After writing a couple of (bad) pieces I said "I need to learn piano" and started taking lessons. I became obsessed with it and really wish I had started younger, but remind myself that the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago and the second best time is today. As someone else said above, if you love music learn to play an instrument. It is immensely rewarding and you won't regret it. 

Plus I get the last laugh on Spitfire because I've spent so much on piano upgrades (P45 digital --> U3 upright --> G3 grand) that I can't afford libraries.


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## NoamL (Dec 7, 2021)

You probably can't be productive on film/tv/games deadlines without keyboard skills.


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## NoamL (Dec 7, 2021)

But you don't have to actually play an instrument to write great music for it:


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## dhmusic (Dec 7, 2021)

proggermusic said:


> He's found very legitimate means of high-level artistic expression with Ableton as his instrument, and I respect that a lot.


Love this


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## Pier (Dec 7, 2021)

NoamL said:


> But you don't have to actually play an instrument to write great music for it:



Yeah but JW has been playing piano for many decades.

Very different from someone who has never played any instrument.


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## averystemmler (Dec 7, 2021)

"Necessary" is usually a strong word, and I'm not about to tell anyone how to spend their time, but I do think playing an instrument is an important part of developing your musical intuition. The kinesthetic immediacy of "muscle movement = sound" is the most natural way to form an instinctive understanding of music, and has been since prehistory.

That instrument can absolutely be a MIDI keyboard, especially if you intend to spend most of your time in a DAW. It can also be your voice, a ukulele you found in a dumpster, or the resonant nodes on your kitchen table. Once you start to get comfortable playing, I think you'll understand what all the fuss is about.


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## Lord Daknight (Dec 9, 2021)

Jeremy Spencer said:


> Depends what you mean by expensive. You can also make a "cheap" instrument sound pretty decent. Mics? I have recorded two albums with a $60 mic. What instruments would you be interested in learning?


Not sure. Does a Midi keyboard count?


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## JCarlsen (Dec 9, 2021)

My two cents would be that its not necessary, but very helpful. I play guitar and piano at a basic level. Both of them add something different to my skillset however, learning some basic piano, which in all honesty is dead easy to learn, has been the most beneficial to me especially when it came to my understanding of music theory. Compared to say guitar, the piano is a lot easier to understand because its layout is more straightforward for beginners. Its difficult to explain but when I play piano i "see" aswell as hear what im playing, and i can look at the keys and know what my options are. So learning particularly the piano if that is something you think you would enjoy, will imo only help.

Ps. If you apply yourself, getting to a point where you can compose on the piano takes weeks, not years(depending on the level you aspire to ofcourse)
I started with a keystation32. Not ideal in any way but i managed to learn on it an confirm that it was very helpful for me. Later got a CASIO PXS-1000. Speakers are horrible but it has USB to play on monitors(through daw) or headset jack and the sound becomes wonderful then.


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## Alex Fraser (Dec 9, 2021)

I'm a piano player.
When I'm knee deep wading through guitar loops, I wish I was a guitar player too.


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## gordinho (Dec 9, 2021)

Alex Fraser said:


> I'm a piano player.
> When I'm knee deep wading through guitar loops, I wish I was a guitar player too.


I suspect there countless guitar players willing to play some riffs for you. Speaking as a better guitar player than piano/keys player  Now, if you actually want a guitar player that can read music, that is much harder to find compared to other instruments


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## Faruh Al-Baghdadi (Dec 9, 2021)

I was in both camps, but in the end realized that I like both ways. I've noticed that I tend to do things with drawing that I wouldn't do while playing, and the opposite is true - there are things that would be really painful to accomplish without playing them.
Also, sometimes I just don't want to play, I want to seat and explore midi editor 💅

By the way, you don't have to be an expert at playing an instrument. Mid-level woud be more than enough for studio work. 

But the main problem is that you can hold yourself back by sticking to this belief that you "are not that pro without playing skills", and not lack ot the skills itself 🥲


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## SyMTiK (Dec 9, 2021)

You don’t need to be a master at an instrument, but knowing how to play well enough to execute your ideas is an extremely useful skill. And I will say that I know tons of up and coming producers who create great music with no instrumental background. Hell, even when I was at Berklee they introduced recently a principal instrument focus in Electronic Digital Performance now due to the rise in musicians who grew up plugging notes into computers or playing Novation Launchpads vs playing traditional instruments. So I will say that it is definitely not impossible to make great music without knowing how to play an “instrument”, but there are definitely a lot of plusses to having atleast some knowledge of playing (not to mention its just fun!!)

When I started playing around with DAWs when I was 14, I had only previously played drums, never really had any experience with piano or other instruments. I could get by making crappy dubstep loops and music just with sequencing, and to this day I am very quick at sequencing parts I hear in my head. But, picking up some skill playing piano and guitar has helped tremendously in writing. I am by no means an excellent performer, but I can along to songs I enjoy, and know my instruments well enough to sketch out my ideas.

Also, I definitely use technology to my advantage to assist with anything I struggle with. Recording difficult passages at half speed, quantize is my best friend, and I often go back through and clean up my playing after the fact. But, being able to have ideas and play them out is an incredibly important and useful skill in my opinion.

You don’t need to be at the level of a session musician, but understanding an instrument certainly helps with musicality and ability to write faster and better, in my opinion.


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## SyMTiK (Dec 9, 2021)

gordinho said:


> I suspect there countless guitar players willing to play some riffs for you. Speaking as a better guitar player than piano/keys player  Now, if you actually want a guitar player that can read music, that is much harder to find compared to other instruments


Hahaha I was working with a client the other day recording guitar parts for a song and we changed the key, so I tuned my guitar down a half step. She asked if she should transcribe the lead sheet for me, and I was just like “you’re assuming I know where any of the notes are located on this instrument, I just press the right frets” 😂😂😂


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## Paul Grymaud (Dec 9, 2021)

Interesting question. Let's say that if you want to play synthesizer then just play synthesizer! On the other hand, if you want to play the violin or the cello from a keyboard, there is a minimum of knowledge: 4 strings (so impossible to make plated chords with ten fingers) played in solo or at most in double strings. Also bowing, positions, glissendi and vibrato. Useful before being able to reproduce anything artificially. It's the same (but easier) for drums. As soon as you know the elements (bass drum, snare drum, toms, hi hats and the ride and crash cymbals) you can, with a minimum of understanding of playing and styles, do a good job. From experience, I can say that there are good to excellent banjo libraries but if you are not a banjoist it will be difficult to make it sound like a real one. Not the sound itself but the way you play it. You have to know the limits of the instrument or you risk playing unplayable notes or passages! Therefore, a minimum of theoretical knowledge of the possibilities of the instrument (including the tessitura) can compensate for the lack of practice of this one. This is the reason why I am considering learning to play the triangle


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## Macrawn (Dec 9, 2021)

rgames said:


> The answer to the question in the thread title is, at the professional level, it's not very common. Nearly every professional who works as a composer has some proficiency on some instrument. In fact, most are very good on some instrument.
> 
> However, I'll offer up a better question: of the composers you most admire, how many are proficient on an instrument?
> 
> ...


Is that the correct question? One should also ask how many people who knew other instruments failed to make it in the composing business..... a ton.

Every advantage counts that's for sure (so long as one can actually take advantage of the advantage) but probably 95 percent of would be composers wash out anyway. I bet if one looked at percentages they might be surprised that the failure rate of people who don't know a lot of instruments might not be dramatically lower. There are just way less of them out there.


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## chillbot (Dec 9, 2021)

I would take it even further. Sorry to be harsh/blunt. But if you find it particularly difficult to pick up and learn an instrument, then writing music is not the job for you. Find something else.

Like I seem to have a language blockage whereas I want to learn Spanish more than anything and I've been studying it for the last 10+ years but I can't get much past basic kindergarten sentences. My brain seems unable to grasp any sort of foreign language. (Probably too old as well.) Other people naturally pickup multiple languages with ease. So anyway, much as I'd love to be a translator, that is not the job for me. It turns out it might not even be the hobby for me.


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## el-bo (Dec 9, 2021)

Lord Daknight said:


> I don't play any instruments at the moment, would you say it's really necessary to understand music


Not necessary at all. However, imo, being able to have a direct, hands-on interaction with an instrument to create music is a joy that everyone should get to experience.


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## Tralen (Dec 9, 2021)

el-bo said:


> Not necessary at all. However, imo, being able to have a direct, hands-on interaction with an instrument to create music is a joy that everyone should get to experience.


And not only to create music.

Your instrument will always be there for you, when you face those moments in life.


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## el-bo (Dec 9, 2021)

Tralen said:


> And not only to create music.
> 
> Your instrument will always be there for you, when you face those moments in life.


Yeah! I think my guitar has saved me on many occasions


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## rMancer (Dec 9, 2021)

Lord Daknight said:


> Instruments are very expensive, good mics are expensive, I won't play even nearly as good as the people in the sample libraries and maintenance, those are my main hesitations. I have a midi keyboard though, is that good enough?


I've been getting by on an $80 second-hand guitar for years now. Granted, I learned to set it up, shield the cavity, fix a wiring issue, try new pickups ($8 on Amazon...). My second-hand Samick bass was $60, and it has had the same tape-wound strings on it for four years (I even stripped the frets off myself with some needle nose pliers). My "mic locker" has a $20 Behringer and a $25 Behringer that both get regular use, probably more so than my King Bee. I've played probably a hundred shows with a drum kit that I pieced together for maybe $400, cymbals and all. I may have a lot of problems in life, but never once has the cheapness of my gear stopped me from making music.

(okay, one exception... the mod wheel on my $100 second-hand 88-key controller stopped working after a couple years)

It's not about playing "as good as the people in the sample libraries." I didn't grab a free violin out from out by the dumpster to replace a Kontakt library. I did it because ideas come differently from different instruments, and because I had an itch to mess around with a new toy. (also it gave me an excuse to buy a cheap bow that I could do the Sigur Ros-style guitar drone stuff with)

If you tell me to play a song in C major, what I do with a keyboard is going to sound way different than what I do with a guitar, or with my dumpster violin, or with my $20 ocarina, or with my $5 thrift store kalimba, or with my untrained singing voice, or by tediously clicking all the notes into the piano roll. Each one is going to take me down a completely unique path. And even what I play on a grand piano patch is going to come out way different than what I play on a wurlitzer patch, or what I play on a polysynth patch, even with the exact same brief/concept/prompt.

So in that regard, I think it's beneficial to pick up an instrument or two, even if you are no good at it. Hell, especially if you are no good at it. It changes your approach. Sometimes I'll compose by strumming a guitar and recording the skeleton of the song that way, even if the resulting track ends up with no guitar at all. It's all about the *feel*.

Necessary? No. Fun? Hell yeah!


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