What I really need for music production (beginner questions)
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What I really need for music production (beginner questions) Posted on: 13.02.2013 by Shela Toumey Hey everyone,PHader here, I have been djing now for a while but I really want to make my own tracks. I have done some crappy beats/ remixes/mashups but I really want to start ground floor on building good electro tracks. I'm into the real heavy dirty synths and what have you and I have some great Ideas for producing but I have ran into some problems. Overall the gear I have is great for when I was playing out with my friends at clubs but I want something more portable to go along with me. At the moment I have Reason 4 and Ableton live 8 installed on a higher end mini mac along with my dj software and gigs of music. As far as midi interfaces I have an mpk25, an lpd8 (i have had the mpk25 for a while now or I would have gotten the mpk mini), an apc40 and a traktor kontrol f1. What initially I want to do is create my different sounds (beats, bass, synths) and lay them out in my sequencer to make a release-able track. I also want to turn my sounds into clips and then actually play my tracks; Ideally in some cases there would be 3 releases of my track, the original that I fully laid out, the studio session of me playing (probably on the apc40 so I can do the mastering in ableton) and a true out live set where I have taken my sounds exported them as mp3's and put them into my traktor remix sets and play it out with the F1. What I guess what I really want to know is: - What is a good cheap laptop that I can produce on? - Should I buy an external sound card? If so what is a good one? - where are some good sites that you get vst's for free/cheap? - Where do you go to get you samples (drum kits, synth sounds, etc)? are they cheap or free? - Should I get away from the software I'm using and take a look at something else? - Am I able to produce good tracks with the speakers/headphones I have or should I upgrade? (I'm using some numark red wave dj headphones, and I have some M-audio bx5a studio monitors) Overall some guidance would really be appreciated because I love doing this stuff, and I want the world to hear some of the ideas I have in music but I just feel like I know what I want as the outcome, but I don't have to tools to get there and the tools I do are scattered everywhere. Thanks for your time, PHader | |
| Ervin Calvery 13.02.2013 |
Originally Posted by PHader
Originally Posted by PHader
Originally Posted by PHader
nativeinstruments.com (Kontakt player and factory library, Reaktor player and factory library)
Originally Posted by PHader
Obscure vinyl is my choice for sampling from. There is a lot of Kontakt sample content out there - some is free. I use Soniccouture and all of the NI Kontakt libraries, including the awesome stuff from Heavyocity. The Abbey Road series is really sick, too. I almost never use samples for a synth sound. I use synths.
Originally Posted by PHader
Originally Posted by PHader
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| Shela Toumey 13.02.2013 | Hey everyone, PHader here, I have been djing now for a while but I really want to make my own tracks. I have done some crappy beats/ remixes/mashups but I really want to start ground floor on building good electro tracks. I'm into the real heavy dirty synths and what have you and I have some great Ideas for producing but I have ran into some problems. Overall the gear I have is great for when I was playing out with my friends at clubs but I want something more portable to go along with me. At the moment I have Reason 4 and Ableton live 8 installed on a higher end mini mac along with my dj software and gigs of music. As far as midi interfaces I have an mpk25, an lpd8 (i have had the mpk25 for a while now or I would have gotten the mpk mini), an apc40 and a traktor kontrol f1. What initially I want to do is create my different sounds (beats, bass, synths) and lay them out in my sequencer to make a release-able track. I also want to turn my sounds into clips and then actually play my tracks; Ideally in some cases there would be 3 releases of my track, the original that I fully laid out, the studio session of me playing (probably on the apc40 so I can do the mastering in ableton) and a true out live set where I have taken my sounds exported them as mp3's and put them into my traktor remix sets and play it out with the F1. What I guess what I really want to know is: - What is a good cheap laptop that I can produce on? - Should I buy an external sound card? If so what is a good one? - where are some good sites that you get vst's for free/cheap? - Where do you go to get you samples (drum kits, synth sounds, etc)? are they cheap or free? - Should I get away from the software I'm using and take a look at something else? - Am I able to produce good tracks with the speakers/headphones I have or should I upgrade? (I'm using some numark red wave dj headphones, and I have some M-audio bx5a studio monitors) Overall some guidance would really be appreciated because I love doing this stuff, and I want the world to hear some of the ideas I have in music but I just feel like I know what I want as the outcome, but I don't have to tools to get there and the tools I do are scattered everywhere. Thanks for your time, PHader |
| Jerrell Tallie 18.02.2013 | The only thing you need is a decent computer or laptop, good headphones and the most important thing - inspiration. An artist with no inspiration is no artist. |
| Randell Koper 15.02.2013 | I believe nobody has cleared up that Ableton Live, FL studio and some other DAW's have demo versions, as well as VST's fx and instruments, so you can try a lot of stuff before you buy anything. |
| Tish Shortsleeve 15.02.2013 | First of all you have to know that having all the gear in the world wont make you a good producer. You can find guys with millions worth of gadgets and they cant put a single track together and on the other hand i heard of guys producing albums with a soundblaster and cool edit. Now ofc good gear
will make it easier to get good but as said it wont make you good. Second there really isnt any genre based gear or software, now ofc trance heads might prefer a different synth than some hip hop producer, electro producers will generally use different kind of drum samples then in deep dub or whatever but u can do anything with everything. Now when it comes to gear all i can say from experience is that cheap and good usually dont go together, and that cheap usually means just that i m gonna want to replace it sooner. So i try to go by less and good... i know its hard specially if u r not really good at saving money (like me) and u r faced with a couple thousand dollars price tag, but i didnt regret any of those purchaces while i did regret many of those cheap ones. As far as your equipement goes i say u pretty much have it all to get started. I only dont have any experience with your speakers but if you say they are studio monitors they should be at least decent if not that is where i would start. A good audio interface also can make quite a difference but if u are a beginner i believe it will take at least a year to start producing some serious stuff so that is also how much time you have to upgrade that... my suggestion would be to start saving and go for something like RME... u really cant go wrong there. As far as samples and vsts less is more i say... specially when u r starting out. There will be so much new to learn within the DAW u wanna limit outside stuff. Depending on what version of ableton you have it should come with some stuff (maybe it would be smart to get suite if u dont have instead of some other vst and learn abletons stuff)... so really stay away from vsts as much as possible. I m not saying u should have one good synth vst and one fancy sampler and maybe some more fancy shmancy, but dont get 5 vst synths please. Samples... either start building your own collection, scavenging the internet for freebies, or buy one good pack that should last you for at least a year. Dont buy synth or bass samples... make those yorself. Also maybe start saving for a field recording mic or just record on your phone, even if its crappy u can still process it and build your own library. Resample when u r just playing around with synths or stuff and get some weird sound that you like... just sample and save. U ll have a collection in no time. That would kinda be all...lol... sry for the epic long post, but hopefully it hepls. Good luck. |
| Shela Toumey 14.02.2013 | I love reason, and I would love it more if I had the 6, right now I'm using 4, but I feel like there is a constraint using it because everything is coming from propellerheads. I am always going to use reason in some way shape or form because it is a super great program and I love the fact they made it really feel like you are doing stuff on a studio rack but I do also want to change stuff up from time to time. What I don't want to become is like all these other producers that use the same elements in their tracks and just change the midi sequence on their synth and maybe tweak an attack here or there. So I know my focus is on electro, but the other evening I made more of a trance beat, now I am not going to throw that out because it isn't my genre, I will keep it for a different track someday. I want to make songs that are meaningful and a feeling of expression vs a David Guetta style 4 on the floor beat that is used in all his tracks and the same guitarish/piano pluck synth he uses in all his tracks but just changes the octave that he is doing it in. |
| Jeannine Drobney 14.02.2013 | Just a note on Reason. I started with Reason, moved over to ableton and some nasty synths like massive, razor, synth squad, etc.. As it turns out one of my favorite producers, Claude Von Stroke, uses the hell out of reason and his Dirty Bird label is blowing up this year. So I guess its who uses reason. The sound isnt for everybody. I also believe the U-he website has some free vst's or pick up a copy of computer music magazine. The syths that come on the CD are pretty sick like Zebra Cm, ALchemy CM... I look forward to listening to your work. |
| Shela Toumey 13.02.2013 | I was believeing about doing that. Right now pretty much the gear I have will work for the time being, I don't have any actual inputs at the moment so I guess I don't need the sound card right yet. Living in Nashville I could get studio time or get the vocal cuts I need without having to record it myself. |
| Ervin Calvery 13.02.2013 | I started out buying bits and pieces, but I bought Komplete 8 Ultimate and still needed some things that didn't make it in to that bundle (which contains most of all of the NI stuff other than Maschine and Traktor). I enjoy it. |
| Shela Toumey 13.02.2013 | Thanks man, Is the NI Komplete software worth getting or should I just get the instruments on a case by case basis? |
| Ervin Calvery 13.02.2013 |
Originally Posted by PHader
Originally Posted by PHader
Originally Posted by PHader
nativeinstruments.com (Kontakt player and factory library, Reaktor player and factory library)
Originally Posted by PHader
Obscure vinyl is my choice for sampling from. There is a lot of Kontakt sample content out there - some is free. I use Soniccouture and all of the NI Kontakt libraries, including the awesome stuff from Heavyocity. The Abbey Road series is really sick, too. I almost never use samples for a synth sound. I use synths.
Originally Posted by PHader
Originally Posted by PHader
|
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