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toblix

Making Music

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From what I understand there are guys and girls here with experience in the field of music-making on the computer. Do any of you have experience with MIDI sequencers, and have any to recommend or warn me about?

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I mainly use Audiomulch - http://www.audiomulch.com/

It's fun to toy around with and you can get some very interesting sounds if you go a bit mad and chain lots of things together. This is what I tend towards. Free 60 day trial too.

Otherwise, you've got your classic Reason, Fruity Loops etc

Also Hammerhead's a nice easy and fun drum machine but not really midi (but it is free) - http://www.threechords.com/hammerhead/download.shtml

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Ableton Live is one of my favorite pieces of music software. It's mostly oriented towards loops and samples, but you can do a lot with it in terms of midi and even convert your samples into midi so that you can do midi sequencing with samples of all different kinds (whatever you feel like using) so you're basically able to create your own keyboard voices. The only drawback is that it's very expensive so I don't know that I can recommend it. I have the lite version which is pretty limited but not nearly as much as you'd expect which ran about $150. I pirated the deluxe version back in my pirating days and goddamn it was nice. But because of the high cost of entry on music production software I'd recommend starting out with some freeware to get a feel for what's possible with midi sequencing on the PC and what kind of features you're looking for. Unfortunately, I can't make any recommendations on that front. I suppose this post was not very helpful at all, and yet it's such a long post.

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That looks intimidating. Do you guys have any tips on how to go about learning this stuff?

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Ableton Live is one of my favorite pieces of music software. It's mostly oriented towards loops and samples, but you can do a lot with it in terms of midi and even convert your samples into midi so that you can do midi sequencing with samples of all different kinds (whatever you feel like using) so you're basically able to create your own keyboard voices. The only drawback is that it's very expensive so I don't know that I can recommend it. I have the lite version which is pretty limited but not nearly as much as you'd expect which ran about $150. I pirated the deluxe version back in my pirating days and goddamn it was nice. But because of the high cost of entry on music production software I'd recommend starting out with some freeware to get a feel for what's possible with midi sequencing on the PC and what kind of features you're looking for. Unfortunately, I can't make any recommendations on that front. I suppose this post was not very helpful at all, and yet it's such a long post.

I would absolutely love a freeware alternative, as I'm able to tolerate a fair bit of wonkyness in free things, but I've yet to find a free application that can reliably host my VST instruments. I've tried Sonar for a bit, but I'm thinking there must be something better, so now I'm going to try Cubase. I want something that's focused on MIDI sequencing and not just supports it. I hear great things about Ableton Live, but I also get the impression it's more geared towards mixing hip hop or whatever, and I'm probably wrong.

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I would absolutely love a freeware alternative, as I'm able to tolerate a fair bit of wonkyness in free things, but I've yet to find a free application that can reliably host my VST instruments. I've tried Sonar for a bit, but I'm thinking there must be something better, so now I'm going to try Cubase. I want something that's focused on MIDI sequencing and not just supports it. I hear great things about Ableton Live, but I also get the impression it's more geared towards mixing hip hop or whatever, and I'm probably wrong.

Reaper handles VST instruments well and has pretty deep MIDI features, take a look at that. I used to use Cubase but I prefer Reaper these days - the routing is actually better. My projects tend to be a mixture of recorded instruments and several soundfonts and synths controlled by MIDI, demos for my band and other odd little instrumentals I put together...

It's free for a while and then it will remind you to pay ($60) although it lets you carry on using it until you get round to that.

Do you have any of your music I can listen to? I'd be interested.

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Reaper handles VST instruments well and has pretty deep MIDI features, take a look at that. I used to use Cubase but I prefer Reaper these days - the routing is actually better. My projects tend to be a mixture of recorded instruments and several soundfonts and synths controlled by MIDI, demos for my band and other odd little instrumentals I put together...

It's free for a while and then it will remind you to pay ($60) although it lets you carry on using it until you get round to that.

Do you have any of your music I can listen to? I'd be interested.

Thanks, that looks interesting. As an added bonus, it is made by Cockos. I'll give it a whirl.

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My friend uses "Frootyloops"

Can't provide much info, sorry, but he rates it.

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Listen to this shit. Music has a new name, and it's http://tgdahle.com/masterpiece_1.mp3

In case you can't tell, it's inspired by Lord of the Rings.

I can see what you're doing wrong here. What you need to do is bash keys at random for half an hour and then bury the whole lot in distortion and unpleasant samples.

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A happy tune. It's like for walking around goofy on a children's TV show.

Awesome work.

Edited by syntheticgerbil

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If you're serious about making music it pays to get a second dedicated machine, and the best machine for music is a Mac. I fought an uphill battle for years trying to get great music from a PC. I tried SoundForge, CakeWalk, Cubase, FruityLoops, Finale, and finally Sibellius 5.

While they were good, they all had hiccups and layers upon layers of problem in making them interact with eachother (especially when it came to using VSTs). Finally I plopped down the money for a MacBook Pro and Logic Studio 8 and haven't looked back since. It really isn't a simplest and way to go.

There is a technical reason why Macs are better for music, not just some abstract artsy elite-ism crap. OSX's "Core" audio drivers are designed from the ground up for latency free music playback. That means the moment you hit a key sound comes out! Sounds simple enough, but DirectSound and MMS aren't built for that kind of thing. With Vista, MS introduced WaveRT to try and compete, but it will be a long time until that standard is supported (if ever).

You don't have to go with Logic 8 like I did. There are a lot of great music programs available for Mac, and many PC programs have Unicode standards, so they'll work on Mac as well. In fact, Mac also support Open Source Linux music programs which are typically free. So any way you want to go, you're covered.

Of course you should keep a PC around for games, but music is still best on Macs.

PS. (sorry for the lengthy post)

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If you have more recordings, please post them, Toblix. Were you playing live drums (well...cymbals)?

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I'll post everything I make, although I'm quite sure I won't be able top my first masterpiece. The cymbals were not live, as I don't have cymbals.

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There is a technical reason why Macs are better for music, not just some abstract artsy elite-ism crap. OSX's "Core" audio drivers are designed from the ground up for latency free music playback. That means the moment you hit a key sound comes out! Sounds simple enough, but DirectSound and MMS aren't built for that kind of thing. With Vista, MS introduced WaveRT to try and compete, but it will be a long time until that standard is supported (if ever).

I won't argue that mac or pc is better for music engineering, but latency on windows is pretty much non-issue due to ASIO drivers that are supported by practically every soundcard and every professional music/audio software.

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Hey that was pretty awesome as well.

Fucking hell, toblix, 3 days ago you're asking about programs you can make music with and already you're doing as well as someone who I'd expect would only this capable after about a year of hard work fooling around with the music making programs.

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I won't argue that mac or pc is better for music engineering, but latency on windows is pretty much non-issue due to ASIO drivers that are supported by practically every soundcard and every professional music/audio software.

This is true. ASIO is a great option, especially if you have a desktop unit. My problems with it came mostly from manually configuring everything to work with ASIO when it isn't your default audio driver. Often times my programs, and especially my plug-ins, would have to be reassigned each time I restarted them. Also its rare to find any laptops that have good built in audio, and I got sick of toting an external unit around.

At the end of the day, where there's a will there's a way. Some of the biggest artist in electronic music still use equipment from the 80's and 90's because they took the time with it to learn how to get what they want out of it. Find something you like and then stick with it!

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I hear great things about Ableton Live, but I also get the impression it's more geared towards mixing hip hop or whatever, and I'm probably wrong.

That's sort of true, but one of the greatest things about Ableton Live is its versatility. For what it's worth, When I was making a lot of music I was using Sony Acid Music Studio for recording live instruments and Ableton for fucking around with midi and samples. I don't think Sony Acid is particularly brilliant software by any means, but it was the first thing I had, so I really learned all the ins and outs of it, so I think a key thing is that it doesn't matter what you use as much as it matters that you take a lot of time learning everything about it and mastering all the options with which it provides you. I'd say pick what appeals to you on a gut level (use trial versions or even temporarily pirate if a trial isn't available). Since the creativity involved in music is so nebulous, I believe it's more about what feels right to you than what is considered the best software by a bunch of computer nerds...but then again I know jack shit about technology so you might not want to listen to me. By the way, what have you been using for the stuff you've posted here?

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If you're into electronica, I'd recommend FL Studios. I've been using it for a while. As for other genres, I've heard good things about ProTools, but it won't work on my computer. Why? Only Cthullu knows.

Also, if you get the $50 version of FL Studios, it comes with a good drum plugin with a crapload of high-quality samples.

Example: http://tindeck.com/listen/vnck

EDIT: Apparently, Tindeck doesn't stream anymore. Sadface.

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Also, I haven't had any problems with ASIO other than having to select the right output whenever I start an application for the first time. I guess support for it has matured slightly the last twenty years.

By the way, what have you been using for the stuff you've posted here?

You mean what have I been using for the amazing stuff I've posted? Cubase 5, actually. It seemed much like Sonar, only that it didn't take me half an hour to set up a simple VST track. I'll definitely try out the others suggested in this thread, although I can't really say I'm into electronica.

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Also, if you get the $50 version of FL Studios, it comes with a good drum plugin with a crapload of high-quality samples.

As far as drums are concerned, the best thing you can do is to buy Toontrack's EZ Drummer toolkit, which you can "integrate" in and use with almost any program out there, FL Studios, Ableton Live, Reason, Cubase...you name it.

Besides they have various different drumkit features, or drum sets (independent packs you need to buy), like Electronic, Jazz, Funkmasters, Drumkit From Hell (my personal favorite, ofc :)), Latin Percussion, Vintage Rock etc...crazy stuff...

And all sounds are recorded with real acoustic drums...as far as i'm concerned, it's the best (by that i mean absolutely real sounding) drumkit program i've seen and used so far.

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