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Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

124 points akktor | 1 comments | 09 Jun 25 12:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.211s | source

This question's for all those cool projects or skills you're secretly fascinated by, but haven't quite jumped into. Maybe you feel like you just don't have the right "brain" for it, or you're not smart enough to figure it out, or even worse, you simply have no clue how or where to even start.

The idea here is to shine a light on these hidden interests and the little (or big!) mental blocks that come with them. If you're already rocking in those specific areas – or you've been there and figured out how to get past similar hurdles – please chime in! Share some helpful resources, dish out general advice, or just give a nudge of encouragement on how to take that intimidating first step.

Let's help each other get unstuck!

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pigcat ◴[10 Jun 25 19:31 UTC] No.44240501[source]▶
Making electronic music. Any recommendations for where to start?
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1. ofalkaed ◴[10 Jun 25 19:46 UTC] No.44240681[source]▶
I would buy a synth and learn it as you would any other instrument, something on the simpler side and not a work station or the like so you can focus on it more as an instrument. Modern technology makes it all to easy to just have an entire electronic music studio which is a great deal to learn and few are going to ever learn any of it well if they start with a full studio. Build out from there, once you are getting the hang of the synth install a DAW or something to record with on your computer and start learning that, record an entire album worth of songs with just that one synth. I always liked using SoX as a multitrack recorder, ecasound was nice as well, kept things more about making music instead of being an engineer.

Back when I was more active with electronic music I would do an entire album worth of tracks with each new synth I got, software or hardware, good way to learn a synth.