Fruity Loops is good.. relatively cheap and easy to get into. I got a free copy of Cubase Lite with my mixer, and I'm liking it as well, still learning. Both are capable of mixing live tracks with soft synth.
yeah reapers a good choice. I think fruity loops is cool but its a bit wierd in its workflow...imagine zbrush in music form. Ive used cubase for a while, its reasonably simple once youve figured out what channels your using etc
Reaper is great for recording audio, but its midi (control of samplers/synthesizers/pianos/etc... with musical notes) is somewhat lacking.
Flstudio is a great program, and like Reaper, very cheap for what it does (and it has lifetime free upgrades!). It has a very specific workflow, much unlike other ones, though. It started life as a beatbox, and that's still at the core of the program.
I personally use Energy XT now, of which version 1 was an awesomely powerful modular program with a confusing interface and workflow, and version is (so far) a very simple, easy to get but slightly underpowered in the modular department little tool that boots up in under a second and is generally pretty great for people new to audio.
I'd compare it to Silo, I suppose. Also, it runs on mac, windows and linux.
If you'd be a bit clearer as to what you need, I can be more specific, as well. There are a shitload of tools out there, and which one you prefer is a very personal thing.
Err, also, Reaper isn't open source, and FLstudio is far from being anything LIKE zbrush. It's interface is dark, that's about the only connection there.
Don't blame an absolute lack of knowledge on music creation on the tool. Sure it could be made more clear where to start without consulting a manual, but I dare you to try that in Cubase, or Logic.
Ableton Live's another one I could suggest, and it comes with very nice beginner's tutorials, integrated into the program. These also come with the demo.
edit: snowfly: I personally love Guru for drumprogramming, but it is geared more towards electronic drums. Although the ones that are geared towards realism are often ridiculously over-detailed and cumbersome.
I also use shortcircuit (free!) 2 for drums, and most sampling duties. As I mentioned, it's free, and it plays soundfonts (sf2/sfz) and samples, and it's very easy to map your own samples to your keyboard.
I also use Wusikstation as a sampler, and they've just released WusikGroovebox, which is geared towards drums
As far as samples go, the samples forum at kvraudio.com/forum is a good place to check every now and again. It's also a good idea to buy a copy of Computer Music, as it comes with a dvd with samples and music creation programs/instruments/effects.
I've been promising a few people a good list of freeware instruments and effects, and how best to install and use them, so if you just post what you're looking for I'll start compiling that one here!
I just downloaded musagi after reading a bit about it in a recent tigsource post. Haven't really made my way around the interface properly, but it seems pretty full-featured for what it is, and it's completely free (Reaper is $50 for non-commercial, $225 for commercial, and not free).
I like Ableton Live. It's not only full featured, its FUN. Working with Live reminds me a bit of working with Zbrush in the sense that both can make art creation pretty darn fun. Fruity loops is another fine option. Both programs probably still have full-featured demo versions, so you can play around and see what moves you before spending any money.
Err, also, Reaper isn't open source, and FLstudio is far from being anything LIKE zbrush. It's interface is dark, that's about the only connection there.
Don't blame an absolute lack of knowledge on music creation on the tool. Sure it could be made more clear where to start without consulting a manual, but I dare you to try that in Cubase, or Logic.
Sorry my work mate uses reaper I thought he said it was open source, I was wrong, Ive never used it but my work mate likes it alot. With Fruity loops I mean its like zbrush in that it is very flexible and customisable but doesnt look much like other music recording software. I didnt mean it in a negative way actually, it just takes a little while to get used to. Personally I like to use fruity loops and cubase together, fruity for my drums and effects and cubase to do my instrument/vocals recording.
Haven't created anything musical for years but I used to love messing around with Brambos' Tuareg sampling drummachine. Allows you to add various effects and cut up ur beats for instant funky breaks.
i havn't seen it mentioned yet. Live. http://www.ableton.com/ allot of people write it off as being just for techno. pete townsend uses it. if it's good enough for him it's good enough for me. I love it.
it takes a totall new approach to recording. lets you record lots of clips and then arrange them on the fly so you can play around with the arrangement of your piece. it is also a full blown multitracking software as well. I bundle that with Reason and have tons of stuff available.
Edit: sorry. i guess someone did already mention it
Lotekk: Yeah, it's interesting, but I never really gave it much of a go since its interface was TINY on my screen. Along similar lines, there's Temper, which also just drove me away with its interface
Seriously though, check out Energy XT2.
And Reaper's by Justin Frankel, him of Winamp and gnutella, and you can use Reaper without paying for it. It's an honour-system. If you get anything out of it, he expects you to pay.
I just fired up the energyXT2 demo, and you weren't kidding about the interface. World of difference from the musagi interface.
Might take a crack at Reaper as well.
While we're on the subject of music, does anyone have any MIDI keyboard recommendations? I'm thinking something decent, but pure MIDI controller (ie, no audio, as I'll do everything through software synth/sequencer). I've looked around a bit, but the variety is pretty daunting.
While we're on the subject of music, does anyone have any MIDI keyboard recommendations?
I use an Optimus MD-1200. It has some synth functionality that I never use, but the nice thing about it is that it's old and totally non-professional, so it's cheap, but it's got pretty many keys, with variable touch-response, and a modwheel. I picked up a MIDI cable and an Edirol UM-1SX MIDI-USB interface to get it hooked up as a controller, and it's been working great.
Also, if you're looking for a good VST softsynth for whatever tracker you end up using, Crystal (freeware) has a lot of options, and KVR's plug-in database has loads of stuff.
I'm a fan of Reason, I was lucky enough to score a free copy of Reason 3.0 a little while back. I've been using it since 2.0 and have loved it since. I generally use it for creating drum loops, as I've never really tried to compose a full track with it (but something I do plan to do eventually). It has a huge library of sounds/drum samples and there are tonnes of additional libraries available to purchase/download to add to it.
A little tricky to use at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's actually quite easy.
I also use GoldWave for basic sound editing and comping (Its funny how little the website design has changed). I've been using it since I was 13 to make shitty mixes and kept using it for all my music creation/editing/comping.
Zephir: yeah, Protools and its handicapped midi-functionality are really awesome. I love how it uses a far less common plugin-format, as well, so that often you'll be waiting for ages untill a developer ports his synth or effect to it... if they do at all.
Seriously, how could you put it like that? "If you have the money, get the software that's focussed mostly on recording audio, otherwise get this program that basically can't really record audio, or get this software that's geared towards an entirely different, live workflow."
Each serves a different market, so some info on that would've been helpful, I imagine.
On midi keyboards, the one I ordered, paid for and didn't receive is the Novation Remote SL 61. Fun story that. Ordered it with the largest store in England, had to pay for it in advance, never heard from them, called them... they went belly up. 300 quid down the toilet.
I pretty happy with my Edirol pcr-m80 keyboard. Cheap, simple, midi only (no synth). It weighs about 1/5 as much as the last big hardware keyboard/synth I bought years ago(yay)!
Another fan of ableton here
I never had any rack mounted synths/effects modules, so I dont really get along with plugins that pretend to look like one - full of 'pretty knobs' with obscure acronyms and 'pseudo LCD' displays. FFS, your on a computer now - make the text full words, and if you need a display make a proper display window, not a pretend LCD one >.<
Anyway, enough rant - Ableton FTW!
Not A Musician but used it a year ago. if i remember correctly it was buggy as all hell and hard to get good results but i enjoyed way it worked(when it worked ).
Had hella fun passing a synth keyboard through a negative Delay with Audio Degradation (Think Chunky Crunchs echoed by a toy keyboard)
The original Dev has picked up development again (Bug fixes Yay)
And you can't argue with zero dollar price tag.
Fine If You just want something to tool around with.
If you have a Mac, you can't really beat Logic for it's all-round abilities. Pro Tools is good for recording, Cubase is good for MIDI, and theres a whole buncha other fun things like Reaper, FLStudio and Audacity for lower level stuff, but IMO Logic wins hands down.
You get an INSANE amount of stuff for your money with Logic. Huge amounts of software instruments including a pretty damn good sampler, a selection of great synths and a ridiculously powerful drum machine, even if it is, graphically speaking, incredibly confusing (Native Instruments Battery 3 is a good one for old fashioned MPC style drum composition, otherwise Izotopes iDrum is probably the best bet, being cheap and ridiculously easy to use).
It's got awesome routing capabilities, a brilliant user interface and (possibly one of the coolest new features) quick-swipe comping, where you can splice the best bits of multiple takes without having to manually add cross fades and fuck about with extra, redundant tracks.
On a recording audio level, Logic is on par with Pro-Tools. I don't care what people say, it handles audio just as well as PT. The quality of the audio itself comes from the hardware you use and the skill of the person recording it, NOT the software. Plus Pro-Tools requires proprietary (and expensive) hardware to run, whereas Logic will work with just about anything that can be plugged into a computer.
Oh, and it's cheaper than anything else out there offering even half of this stuff.
However, I do use Ableton for a lot of composition stuff, as it's workflow is amazing. It's more like a video game than a tool, and it's really really fun to use.
Protools doesn't require the expensive hardware like it used to, there is a consumer version known as Protools M-Powered and Protools LE, the only hardware needed for those is just a audio input/output device, can PCI, USB, ect.. they have a whole list of supported manufacturers.
Personally I like Protools, but would recommend Cubase because its really easy to learn. However, that depends on what type of music and recording you intend to do.
If you want to do rock music, or music with live instruments and vocals, you'll need an audio multitracking software such as Protools or Cubase. The major downside of this is that they don't include sounds you can use, but there are many high quality 3rd party plugins known as RTAS (for protools) and VSTi for Cubase. While your soundblaster card may be just decent for audio recording, you may want to look into an audio card specifically for audio recording, M-Audio has a line of very affordable and great sounding cards. Attempting to record with an entertainment sound card can often produce audio "lag" or latency, but is tolerable to some extent.
If you want to do mostly electronic based music such as trance, hiphop, music that doesn't need to record audio, then Reason or Fruity Loops are great choices. I like Reason but it doesn't support 3rd party plugins, but its library and sound capability is humoungus. Both have a TON of built in sounds. However, you'll need to buy a midi controller keyboard in order to "control" these sounds. Same goes for any RTAS or VSTi instrument plugins you may get.
If you're looking for a pretty slick program for drums, check out beatCraft from acoustica. Thats all I use now for drums, its a bit of a pain at times when you're trying to get more complicated beats going, not to mention time signatures, but for the most part it has done a good job so far. Also, you get a good amount of control when mixing.
As for mixing and recording guitar / other instruments, can't go wrong with Acid, been using that for years and it hasn't let me down yet, really powerful... as long as you get all the 3drd party plug-ins, and you have like a simple mixer, 6 channels is where it's at
By any chance has anyone picked up any Korg Synth Keyboard, I've been dying to get one for while... its either that or an electronic drumset :P
Also, for those using regular consumer audiocards (even those integrated on your motherboard), use http://www.asio4all.com/ to combat the latency/lag Steviant mentioned. Asio is a standard driver that comes with professional soundcards that is aimed at realtime audio, and asio4all provides such a driver in a more generic form, so all cards that don't have one of their own can use it. It makes a DRASTIC difference.
For those who aren't into music-making yet, let me tell you that it's the perfect way to unwind after doing arty stuff, while still feeling creative. In a way it's the opposite of visual arts, and it's great fun to do.
Sonar is pretty good as a low cost solution. I've not used it to do anything massively heavy (don't do that sort of stuff) but it's more than capable as a sequencer.
Seriously, how could you put it like that? "If you have the money, get the software that's focussed mostly on recording audio, otherwise get this program that basically can't really record audio, or get this software that's geared towards an entirely different, live workflow."
Each serves a different market, so some info on that would've been helpful, I imagine.
Dude, he wants to make, record, and mix music. I believe I covered all the bases, and I think he'd actually do a little research before dropping hundreds of dollars on a program.
Fair enough, It was just a bit as if you said: this one's best, this one a bit less, and this one's number three.
And I just personally don't really like Protools. Although that new transfuser or whatever looks pretty sweet, quite Guru-like.
Lev: Anyone with more than one reverb pedal can make ambient
Mostly kidding there.
Seeing how reliant Ambient can be on effects though, I'd go with something that can handle effect-chains easily, and save/recall entire chains of effects.
arsh: hahaa. Max is cool, but confusing! At least, I find that it kills my inspiration by being quite so open. I'd love to get into it some day, though. And I'd love for the pc pluggo runtime to be less buggy. There are some wonderful vst's made with it, but they eat my system alive, and then crash, quite often.
I'll give a more recent version a try though, maybe they improved it.
So, has anyone got any music to share? I'm especially interested in Arsch's now
Oh! Check out createdigitalmusic.com, by the way! It's a marvelous blog.
edit: having mentioned reverb, I thought I'd share some free reverbs, as well:
Ambience - http://magnus.smartelectronix.com/#effects (By Magnus, part of the Smartelectronix collective, who have quite a lot of marvelous free plugins between them)
Boogex - http://www.voxengo.com/product/boogex/ (primarily an amp-simulator, but if you turn off the amp-section -by turning down drive, dynamics etc...- you can load impulse responses, which are wav-files of echoes resulting from a loud click or pop being played in a space. The plugin then pretends the signal you're feeding through it is that pop, and applies the echoes to it, thereby emulating the natural reverb of that space. It's a wonderful technology, and can be used for everything from echoes to delays to amplifier-simulations. Try loading a sound you like (a sample of a note being played by a tuba, for instance), and see what that does to your sound. Often, long samples make for insta-ambient
Oldskoolverb - http://www.voxengo.com/product/oldskoolverb/ Another one by Voxengo. Haven't used this one much yet, but since It's voxengo I imagine it'll be good.
Classic Reverb - http://www.kjaerhusaudio.com/classic-series.php An entire suite of free plugins by Kjaerhus.
Replies
Flstudio is a great program, and like Reaper, very cheap for what it does (and it has lifetime free upgrades!). It has a very specific workflow, much unlike other ones, though. It started life as a beatbox, and that's still at the core of the program.
I personally use Energy XT now, of which version 1 was an awesomely powerful modular program with a confusing interface and workflow, and version is (so far) a very simple, easy to get but slightly underpowered in the modular department little tool that boots up in under a second and is generally pretty great for people new to audio.
I'd compare it to Silo, I suppose. Also, it runs on mac, windows and linux.
www.reaper.fm
www.energy-xt.com
www.image-line.com (flstudio)
If you'd be a bit clearer as to what you need, I can be more specific, as well. There are a shitload of tools out there, and which one you prefer is a very personal thing.
Don't blame an absolute lack of knowledge on music creation on the tool. Sure it could be made more clear where to start without consulting a manual, but I dare you to try that in Cubase, or Logic.
Ableton Live's another one I could suggest, and it comes with very nice beginner's tutorials, integrated into the program. These also come with the demo.
edit: snowfly: I personally love Guru for drumprogramming, but it is geared more towards electronic drums. Although the ones that are geared towards realism are often ridiculously over-detailed and cumbersome.
I also use shortcircuit (free!) 2 for drums, and most sampling duties. As I mentioned, it's free, and it plays soundfonts (sf2/sfz) and samples, and it's very easy to map your own samples to your keyboard.
I also use Wusikstation as a sampler, and they've just released WusikGroovebox, which is geared towards drums
As far as samples go, the samples forum at kvraudio.com/forum is a good place to check every now and again. It's also a good idea to buy a copy of Computer Music, as it comes with a dvd with samples and music creation programs/instruments/effects.
I've been promising a few people a good list of freeware instruments and effects, and how best to install and use them, so if you just post what you're looking for I'll start compiling that one here!
All you need is a DS,
KORG DS-10 Synthesizer
&
Electroplankton
Oh, on the topic of DS music stuff, there's also the old-school NitroTracker
Sorry my work mate uses reaper I thought he said it was open source, I was wrong, Ive never used it but my work mate likes it alot. With Fruity loops I mean its like zbrush in that it is very flexible and customisable but doesnt look much like other music recording software. I didnt mean it in a negative way actually, it just takes a little while to get used to. Personally I like to use fruity loops and cubase together, fruity for my drums and effects and cubase to do my instrument/vocals recording.
it takes a totall new approach to recording. lets you record lots of clips and then arrange them on the fly so you can play around with the arrangement of your piece. it is also a full blown multitracking software as well. I bundle that with Reason and have tons of stuff available.
Edit: sorry. i guess someone did already mention it
Seriously though, check out Energy XT2.
And Reaper's by Justin Frankel, him of Winamp and gnutella, and you can use Reaper without paying for it. It's an honour-system. If you get anything out of it, he expects you to pay.
Might take a crack at Reaper as well.
While we're on the subject of music, does anyone have any MIDI keyboard recommendations? I'm thinking something decent, but pure MIDI controller (ie, no audio, as I'll do everything through software synth/sequencer). I've looked around a bit, but the variety is pretty daunting.
If you decide to get Reason and need any help, PM me since I know the ins and the outs of the program really well.
I use an Optimus MD-1200. It has some synth functionality that I never use, but the nice thing about it is that it's old and totally non-professional, so it's cheap, but it's got pretty many keys, with variable touch-response, and a modwheel. I picked up a MIDI cable and an Edirol UM-1SX MIDI-USB interface to get it hooked up as a controller, and it's been working great.
Also, if you're looking for a good VST softsynth for whatever tracker you end up using, Crystal (freeware) has a lot of options, and KVR's plug-in database has loads of stuff.
A little tricky to use at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's actually quite easy.
I also use GoldWave for basic sound editing and comping (Its funny how little the website design has changed). I've been using it since I was 13 to make shitty mixes and kept using it for all my music creation/editing/comping.
-caseyjones
Seriously, how could you put it like that? "If you have the money, get the software that's focussed mostly on recording audio, otherwise get this program that basically can't really record audio, or get this software that's geared towards an entirely different, live workflow."
Each serves a different market, so some info on that would've been helpful, I imagine.
On midi keyboards, the one I ordered, paid for and didn't receive is the Novation Remote SL 61. Fun story that. Ordered it with the largest store in England, had to pay for it in advance, never heard from them, called them... they went belly up. 300 quid down the toilet.
I never had any rack mounted synths/effects modules, so I dont really get along with plugins that pretend to look like one - full of 'pretty knobs' with obscure acronyms and 'pseudo LCD' displays. FFS, your on a computer now - make the text full words, and if you need a display make a proper display window, not a pretend LCD one >.<
Anyway, enough rant - Ableton FTW!
BUZZ
Not A Musician but used it a year ago. if i remember correctly it was buggy as all hell and hard to get good results but i enjoyed way it worked(when it worked
Had hella fun passing a synth keyboard through a negative Delay with Audio Degradation (Think Chunky Crunchs echoed by a toy keyboard)
The original Dev has picked up development again (Bug fixes Yay)
And you can't argue with zero dollar price tag.
Fine If You just want something to tool around with.
You get an INSANE amount of stuff for your money with Logic. Huge amounts of software instruments including a pretty damn good sampler, a selection of great synths and a ridiculously powerful drum machine, even if it is, graphically speaking, incredibly confusing (Native Instruments Battery 3 is a good one for old fashioned MPC style drum composition, otherwise Izotopes iDrum is probably the best bet, being cheap and ridiculously easy to use).
It's got awesome routing capabilities, a brilliant user interface and (possibly one of the coolest new features) quick-swipe comping, where you can splice the best bits of multiple takes without having to manually add cross fades and fuck about with extra, redundant tracks.
On a recording audio level, Logic is on par with Pro-Tools. I don't care what people say, it handles audio just as well as PT. The quality of the audio itself comes from the hardware you use and the skill of the person recording it, NOT the software. Plus Pro-Tools requires proprietary (and expensive) hardware to run, whereas Logic will work with just about anything that can be plugged into a computer.
Oh, and it's cheaper than anything else out there offering even half of this stuff.
However, I do use Ableton for a lot of composition stuff, as it's workflow is amazing. It's more like a video game than a tool, and it's really really fun to use.
Personally I like Protools, but would recommend Cubase because its really easy to learn. However, that depends on what type of music and recording you intend to do.
If you want to do rock music, or music with live instruments and vocals, you'll need an audio multitracking software such as Protools or Cubase. The major downside of this is that they don't include sounds you can use, but there are many high quality 3rd party plugins known as RTAS (for protools) and VSTi for Cubase. While your soundblaster card may be just decent for audio recording, you may want to look into an audio card specifically for audio recording, M-Audio has a line of very affordable and great sounding cards. Attempting to record with an entertainment sound card can often produce audio "lag" or latency, but is tolerable to some extent.
If you want to do mostly electronic based music such as trance, hiphop, music that doesn't need to record audio, then Reason or Fruity Loops are great choices. I like Reason but it doesn't support 3rd party plugins, but its library and sound capability is humoungus. Both have a TON of built in sounds. However, you'll need to buy a midi controller keyboard in order to "control" these sounds. Same goes for any RTAS or VSTi instrument plugins you may get.
Confused yet?
As for mixing and recording guitar / other instruments, can't go wrong with Acid, been using that for years and it hasn't let me down yet, really powerful... as long as you get all the 3drd party plug-ins, and you have like a simple mixer, 6 channels is where it's at
By any chance has anyone picked up any Korg Synth Keyboard, I've been dying to get one for while... its either that or an electronic drumset :P
For those who aren't into music-making yet, let me tell you that it's the perfect way to unwind after doing arty stuff, while still feeling creative. In a way it's the opposite of visual arts, and it's great fun to do.
http://trac.zeitherrschaft.org/aldrin/wiki
which is somewhat similar to Buzz.
Dude, he wants to make, record, and mix music. I believe I covered all the bases, and I think he'd actually do a little research before dropping hundreds of dollars on a program.
And I just personally don't really like Protools. Although that new transfuser or whatever looks pretty sweet, quite Guru-like.
http://thecandyhat.net/this.mp3
?
its completely node based, similar to hypershade
http://www.cycling74.com/products/max5
Mostly kidding there.
Seeing how reliant Ambient can be on effects though, I'd go with something that can handle effect-chains easily, and save/recall entire chains of effects.
arsh: hahaa. Max is cool, but confusing! At least, I find that it kills my inspiration by being quite so open. I'd love to get into it some day, though. And I'd love for the pc pluggo runtime to be less buggy. There are some wonderful vst's made with it, but they eat my system alive, and then crash, quite often.
I'll give a more recent version a try though, maybe they improved it.
So, has anyone got any music to share? I'm especially interested in Arsch's now
Oh! Check out createdigitalmusic.com, by the way! It's a marvelous blog.
edit: having mentioned reverb, I thought I'd share some free reverbs, as well:
Ambience - http://magnus.smartelectronix.com/#effects (By Magnus, part of the Smartelectronix collective, who have quite a lot of marvelous free plugins between them)
Boogex - http://www.voxengo.com/product/boogex/ (primarily an amp-simulator, but if you turn off the amp-section -by turning down drive, dynamics etc...- you can load impulse responses, which are wav-files of echoes resulting from a loud click or pop being played in a space. The plugin then pretends the signal you're feeding through it is that pop, and applies the echoes to it, thereby emulating the natural reverb of that space. It's a wonderful technology, and can be used for everything from echoes to delays to amplifier-simulations. Try loading a sound you like (a sample of a note being played by a tuba, for instance), and see what that does to your sound. Often, long samples make for insta-ambient
Oldskoolverb - http://www.voxengo.com/product/oldskoolverb/ Another one by Voxengo. Haven't used this one much yet, but since It's voxengo I imagine it'll be good.
Classic Reverb - http://www.kjaerhusaudio.com/classic-series.php An entire suite of free plugins by Kjaerhus.