music making programs

[fly boy benny]

ok sumbody suggest some good programs to knock up sum tunes from scratch.

 

no need to mention acid pro already no of that one thanx

[kevob]

cubase

[craig.w1599968638]

forget cubase,

 

what you need is a copy of Reason from Propellerhead software, Its a full studio in single app,.....http://www.propellerheads.se/

 

its a sequencer with loads of samplers, synths etc, lots of effects machines and its fully cofigable to be used with outboard kit and go as far as you need. Theres shed loads of synth sound refils and samples for it out there and the who package is easy & all there ready to use, you wont need to much knowlegde to get up and making stuff either

 

It also sounds really good.

[defcom]

fruityloops

[Morb]

forget cubase,

 

 

It also sounds really good.

 

Reason is good, but it sounds like reason. But if you are just getting into this sort of stuff its ok for a fiddle about.

 

imho, you cant beat a room full of good old fashioned synths and boxes that beep.

 

 

 

 

 

[KaptainKremmen]

fruityloops

 

An easy app to learn. One of my vids used a demo tune from Fruityloops

[Mr. F]

Fruity Loops (Studio or Producer Edition)...You'll be knocking out tunes in no time at all.

[Rackham]

Max/MSP!

[d0dgey]

fruity loops studio edition

[super.rad]

another vote for reason, great for messing around on and if used properly can make some great songs

[Chris L]

Reason gets my vote..ace

[kiter_ryan]

Dance Ejay! lol

[sym170]

quick question, say with cubase sx, if i got a midi keyboard do some come with instruments and can they be used on the program?

im looking at http://www.gear4music.com/Keyboards--Modules/Controller_Keyboards/Alesis_Photon_X25_Controller_Keyboard7.html

it says it has virtual instruments, my current cubase sx only has drum and synth VSTs. will these virtual instruments off the midi be usable on the program? thanks

[Rackham]

quick question, say with cubase sx, if i got a midi keyboard do some come with instruments and can they be used on the program?

im looking at http://www.gear4music.com/Keyboards--Modules/Controller_Keyboards/Alesis_Photon_X25_Controller_Keyboard7.html

it says it has virtual instruments, my current cubase sx only has drum and synth VSTs. will these virtual instruments off the midi be usable on the program? thanks

 

There are loooooads of free VST plugs available, instruments and effects.

 

Check out http://www.kvraudio.com they have a great searchable database of what's available.

 

Then when you're serious buy a Mac and get Logic Pro:p

 

It's teh shizz;)

[peeter_]

mines another vote for reason! cannot beat it when making music, there just so much you can do with it, more that you could even need!

 

cubase is good, and a lot easier to understand, but then it is meant mre for its recording facilities rather than synths and midi.

 

fuirty loops is a great little program to start on, cant go too wrong with it, and is a great laugh

 

but if you plan going further once youve learnt the basics i would suggest reason.

[Morb]

 

but if you plan going further once youve learnt the basics i would suggest reason.

 

 

why?

 

kids nowadays eh?

 

The first Morbius single was done on a 512mb Atari ST. (Thats less storage than a PS1 memory card!) :D

 

 

 

 

 

[sym170]

quick question, say with cubase sx, if i got a midi keyboard do some come with instruments and can they be used on the program?

im looking at http://www.gear4music.com/Keyboards--Modules/Controller_Keyboards/Alesis_Photon_X25_Controller_Keyboard7.html

it says it has virtual instruments, my current cubase sx only has drum and synth VSTs. will these virtual instruments off the midi be usable on the program? thanks

 

There are loooooads of free VST plugs available, instruments and effects.

 

Check out http://www.kvraudio.com they have a great searchable database of what's available.

 

Then when you're serious buy a Mac and get Logic Pro:p

 

It's teh shizz;)

thanks a lot for that!

logic pro is a bit good, i was playing around with it in an apple shop, was great, the guitars sounded realistic:eek:

[sym170]

right, i can download the instruments, its getting them onto the program that im finding a bit hard any ideas?

[Rackham]

right, i can download the instruments, its getting them onto the program that im finding a bit hard any ideas?

 

Make sure the plugs are in the right folder for starters. Your sequencer (Sibelius?) should have a specific VST folder.

 

Most sequencers let you create specific audio instrument/VSTI tracks. Then it's normally just a case of selecting the synth you want to use from a list. Apps like Pro Tools are a bit more fiddly as you have to load the instrument onto an audio track and play it from a seperate MIDI track.

 

Check the manual.

[Rich Holloway]

Reason is good, but it sounds like reason. But if you are just getting into this sort of stuff its ok for a fiddle about.

 

How come Liam used it for the last Prodigy album then? I know he used more upmarket software for post production but found Reason great for composition and easier to deal with than a room full of real synths.

[windy]

Reason is good, but it sounds like reason. But if you are just getting into this sort of stuff its ok for a fiddle about.

 

How come Liam used it for the last Prodigy album then? I know he used more upmarket software for post production but found Reason great for composition and easier to deal with than a room full of real synths.

 

 

Rich,

 

Have you actually listened to the last Prodigy album? :rolleyes:

It's pants imo, compared to the likes of Jilted and Fat.

 

 

 

 

 

That ignoring the fact that the "last" Prodigy album was the cd of singles.

[Rich Holloway]

 

Rich,

 

Have you actually listened to the last Prodigy album? :rolleyes:

It's pants imo, compared to the likes of Jilted and Fat.

 

Indeed I have, and i like it. I like the assortment of vocal input from artists such as "The magnificent ping pong *****es" on "Girls".

 

This is what Liam has to say on the matter of Reason:

 

We tune in as Liam Howlett, the sonic sculptor of the band, is busy crafting the fourth Prodigy album in the depths of his studio dwelling The Dirtchamber. It has indeed been a while since we last heard from them; 1997 saw the release of The Fat of the Land, but other than the orphan single Baby's Got a Temper - released in the summer of 2002 - Prodigy have been perplexingly quiet.

A six year hiatus, why?

- Well it wasn't a conscious decision or a plan, really; it just happened. We knew there would be downtime after The Fat of the Land - we felt we had reached the pinnacle of what Prodigy was, and I myself had my mind set on taking a couple of years off. And then time just flew by, know what I mean?

About 2 years ago I started working again, but soon realized I needed to shift myself out of the formula I'd gotten into from working in the same environment all the time. I'd written everything in Cubase from 1993 onwards, with a bunch of hardware synths and Akai samplers as my main setup. I sat down and I thought, "well... this is just so boring. How can I ever get inspired doing the same old thing? How am I gonna write a fresh, inspired album? I'm not enjoying it, it's not going anywhere, I hate my studio, I hate all the equipment in it."

For a man with a hardware gear list the size of a small town phone directory, that's a lot of equipment to hate. Liam's winding road through the world of music making is one which many of his generation can relate to; he started out with a simple 4-track portastudio and turntables in the 1980's, soon got into synthesizers, and eventually found himself using a Roland W-30 workstation with a whopping 16 seconds worth of sampling time. The entire first album, The Prodigy Experience, was created on just this one keyboard. As the royalties started rolling in, so did the gear - and soon enough Liam found himself immersed in a machine park with enough electronics to fill a space cruiser. But, as anyone who's been-there-done-that will know, that can be more of a curse than a blessing.

What got you back on track again?

- I bought myself a laptop, which completely reanimated my creative process because I was able to write anywhere I went. At one point someone told me to check out this program Reason, "it's really back to basics, you should check it out just for fun, you know?" So I did - I started out just writing beats on it and approached it in a sort of recreational sense, like you would a computer game. Then I'd go off somewhere like Scotland or New York and I'd take my laptop with me, with all my samples on the hard drive... and then it all just started happening. Reason was just like... it totally refreshed me, it was just amazing. It was like going back to how it was in the beginning. All of a sudden I was writing two or three songs a week, just messing around and having a laff again. I started something with it and got it rocking in ten minutes. That took a lot of pressure off of me. So, to summarize: What got me back on track was A) the laptop, and B) a program that let me feel I've gone back and taken all the complication out of writing music.

A lot of people feel that way; Reason is like a lifesaver for the bored gearhead musician. You?

- Yeah, I couldn't live without it. If Reason hadn't come along I would probably still be in my studio, depressed, going "aww bloody 'ell, don't know what I'm gonna do", you know? I don't want to pat Propellerhead on the back too much, but... Reason has literally changed my life, getting me back in the studio and enjoying it all again. It's taken the monotony out of music making and put it into a format where music should be these days - no big deal, just something that should be fun to do. Creation is always painful, but this is the least painful way I know of.

What do you think it was in the old days that ultimately sucked the life out of creativity?

- It was all so time consuming back then, we were all bogged down in cumbersome processes. I'm not very technical - I come from a hip hop sort of cut-and-paste background and I'm not this big studio guy, it's just all in my head. The technology available now frees the mind in the creative sense; I'm able to think about the actual song a lot more, rather than just going "it's gonna take me an hour to do this or that". Music for me these days is quite punk rock, it's very DIY, very throwaway. I know I'm not creating something that's gonna be around forever. For me and for Prodigy it's all about the quick punch in the face, you know?

So, Reason is pretty much the meat of the sound on the new album?

- Literally everything you'll hear on the new album has been written on Reason. Everything starts there. Eventually we get to a stage where the song is written, and then we - that's my producer Neil McClennan and I - move it into 'Tools where we finish off everything, and that works great since Reason integrates with ProTools really well. Everything that comes out of Reason sounds really good, it's got this sound, I think - a kind of certain... everything sounds like it "locks in" really good, you know? And that sound we got out of Reason is something that we now and again had to go back to Reason to duplicate; sometimes we'd do a thing in ProTools and it just didn't rock it like Reason did, so we'd take it out of ProTools and try to duplicate it in Reason instead.

What are your favorite Reason devices?

- That would have to be the drum machine and the Dr. REX. I use the REX player all over the place and I just love the way you can mess around with a loop, and I love the way you can sync the LFO to tempo and route it to the filter, we use that on the album a lot. As for the effects, the Scream 4 unit is just the best thing for the type of music I'm writing. Definitely the high point of version 2.5 for me. The tape distortion is very good for bass, to give it the edge, it's warm...

What, specifically, don't you use Reason for?

- When it comes to bass sounds, I'm pure analog and I don't use soft synths for bass at all. There's just no substitute for analog. Instead, I'll take an Oberheim, Moog, Korg MS-20 or something, sample a sequence of it playing, rex it up and then bring that back in Reason and lock it in there. I do occasionally use the softsynths to put melodies down - I'd say maybe 50% of the synths, the top line and high end stuff, is Reason. I can't as of yet use it for everything - obviously you can't record vocals into it - but ultimately, what Reason does have by way of limitations is also one of its strong points. It forces your imagination to be more on the board, you have to dig it out of your head rather than just going "well, I just can't do that in there". I never saw it that way, I mean if something you want to do is completely off limits then just use another program, no big deal.

Liam has a wish list for things he'd like to see in future versions of Reason. One would be the ability to automap non-tonal samples to individual key zones in the NN-XT, for creating drum maps on the fly.

- My end note on Reason is, it's got this humour about it, it's like - when somebody showed it to me the first time and said "you can keep on building the rack up..." I was all, "what rack, what're you on about?" I couldn't believe it, it was just such a simple and genius idea. It's so obvious now, isn't it? Love it.

[windy]

To cut a long story, short.

 

He got lazy!

 

 

 

and imo it showed. :)

[Morb]

yes, and millions of people used to watch Crossroads, it doesnt mean it was good.

 

 

Liam says "it's really back to basics, you should check it out just for fun, you know?" So I did - I started out just writing beats on it and approached it in a sort of recreational sense, like you would a computer game"

which is my point.

Liam uses Reason AS WELL AS a studio full of gear, and then prolly some of the best production facilities in the world. I stand by what ive said, cos i is right. Its my opinion, it stands. Your opinion is your opinion Rich (even if it's wrong:rolleyes: )

 

..and we know Lada cars are rubbish right, but if i quoted a load of their adverts would that then prove they are good? No.

 

And lets not mention the 'ping pong *****es', they beat Morbius to 'new single of the week' in the NME.

 

Morb.

 

 

 

 

 

[Rackham]

I don't like Reason much.

 

Used it Rewired with Pro Tools a couple of times and had a bit of a mess about with it on its own and it just feels a bit 'plastic'.

 

I'm surprised no one has suggested Ableton too. It can do some ace stuff with audio, a mate of mine uses it as his main sequencer and churns out some pretty impressive stuff with it.