Learning music production via Ableton, as a classically-trained musician

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Views and opinions expressed are solely my own.

For those of you who want to hear what I’ve created:

Vocalise, which I originally wrote for voice and piano in March of 2025:

An untitled and not-yet-finished sketch for piano which I began writing in July 2026:

Why the interest?

I believe the core of what makes anything accessible - whether it be (in my experience) math, statistics, or music - is how much one can lesson the stress of the user.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the vast majority of people listen to music without studying music theory or playing an instrument. For years, despite my Classical training, it has been an interest of mine to learn how to take music beyond writing notes and hiring live performers to get one’s music performed in front of an audience.

I have been aware of the DAW space for some time, but only casually: GarageBand and a bit of FL Studio (way back in the early 2010s), but nothing serious.

As things have calmed down with my computer-science master’s program, I am finding that I’ve wanted to explore interests that I haven’t explored for the better part of two decades… and I figure I might as well make use of student discounts on software while I am a student.

What finally helped me start?

After returning to composing in 2025,¹ in December of 2025, I finally bought Ableton Live on a student discount. I knew absolutely nothing about Ableton,² had mostly been annoyed by the downfall of Finale ³ ⁴ in the notation world, and felt that I was starting over again in a space that once felt very familiar to me.

At least with the notation software that was out there, I knew how Finale worked and could figure out how to use it given my experience with Finale. Ableton, as I learned quickly, is not designed at all like notation software.

Music-Notation vs. DAWs

I had to learn, after looping through multiple instructors of Ableton, that audio-production software (or more specifically, DAWs (digital audio workstations)) simply don’t have the same goals as music-notation software. With music-notation software, the end product is the sheet music you create, which you’ll eventually give to someone to perform on an instrument. With DAWs, the end product is the sound file you create (e.g., .mp3, .wav). Thus, the goals of both types of software are completely different from each other, and the tools that they have to refine the end product are thus completely different.

Learning Ableton

One of the most difficult parts of Ableton for me was just figuring out how the user interface (UI) is designed. It took me a while to find an instructor that could explain the design of the UI concisely, but the gist of it is: Session View is for short clips of ideas, and Arrangement View is just a linear timeline of the audio file you want to output, which may or may not consist of clips from Session View.

Once you understand this general framework, the next issue is that of entering notes. You could use your mouse through the piano-roll mode. You could use your computer keyboard. You could use a MIDI keyboard (like the one I just bought last week). You could also take your notation software and output a .mid file. There are plenty of possibilities.

I highly recommend the Seed To Stage 11-day course, which is packed with incredibly valuable content for $17 at the time of this writing. (I am not affiliated with Seed To Stage; I am merely very pleased by their content.)

What I would have done differently

I am a classically-trained pianist and composer. Having notation software made this process easier, but at the same time I bought Ableton, I would have bought a MIDI keyboard with 88 weighted keys⁵. Otherwise, I’m very pleased about how this has gone.

What’s coming next

I plan on continuing through the Seed To Stage curricula, particularly through the sound-design and mixing courses.

Aside from that, stay tuned. I have a few more developments in the pipeline.

… after a 13-year hiatus.↩︎
Other than the little bit of signal/digital processing that I picked up from both computer vision through OMSCS and from my research back in 2012 with Dr. James Walker and Dr. Gary Don (both now former professors at UW-Eau Claire) on the interplay of math and music; see their book for some example as to what this was like. As a disclaimer: I am mentioned in the acknowledgements, but I do not profit in any way through sales of their book. At the time, we only used Audacity.↩︎
… which I unfortunately found predictable given the advances going on in the software-development world in the early-2010s.↩︎
I remember my first music-notation software was Finale Notepad 2005, which back in those days, was free! Anyway, I am now using Dorico.↩︎
I didn’t realize how much I’ve spoiled myself with weighted keys until I started trying out some MIDI keyboards without weight to them. It really makes note input a lot more difficult to use those.↩︎

music-production | Math, Music Occasionally, and Stats