Nabeel Ansari

ASIO bypasses Windows.

This is bad practice to develop as a composer. I mean, for maybe really fast sections, but if you can't figure out the most simple passages in songs, MIDI files won't help you (won't help develop skill, they'll obviously help tell you the notes for the song). You should practice doing things by ear. Hum the melody (yes, hum it) out loud really slowly. At the first note, keep humming that note until you click all the keys in the piano roll from C to the next C. When you find the matching note, move on to the next. A great shortcut in this process is to learn intervals. I haven't had formal training in theory, so I'm going to leave someone else to answer how to do that. But basically if you know your intervals and you know what note you started at you can get a good idea on what the next one will be. Or, eventually down the line you can just recognize note patterns that composers like to use and put them down without going through each note. @OP: It's not "poor taste", a lot of people do it, but doing things by ear helps you so much more as a composer.

$1000 to the guy who can incorporate ALL THE THINGS and have it not sound like a medley.

Where the hell did you get that from?

We weren't really talking about the OP's question, I was responding to Mickomoo's question.

Not really. Record was built for recording. Reason 6 is Reason with Record capabilities built-in. Reason in itself was not designed to record. Just like FL Studio wasn't designed to be a DAW.

Time to bust some beats.

Reason didn't have audio recording until Reason 6. And speaking on terms of MIDI, EVERY DAW can do that, so it makes no sense to use Reason specifically for it. If I had Cubase, why would I buy Reason just to record MIDI?

To show douchebags that I can.

Not getting home till 9PM every day next week. (from 7 in the morning)

No. That is convoluted and counter intuitive. Use one DAW for that, unless you specifically want Reason's synths and effects, which IMO is one of the only good reasons to get it. Reason wasn't built for recording, doesn't make sense to use it solely and primarily just for that. Why move it to another DAW for mixing and masterIng? Where do people get this idea that DAW's mix and master better than others? X_X

Rozovian was already a workshop mod before workshop mods even existed. Now he's just officially called that now.

Use the mixer track panning knob. Hard panning will give absolutely no signal to the opposite side.

Not trying to say it is, just saying judging popularity on sales is misleading.

Sales don't paint an accurate picture. No one actually buys FL Studio for example (unless they're serious and wanna be a pro)... but a ton of people pirate it, that population is way bigger than the people who buy it. Way. Way. Bigger. Not saying this has any bearing on what Dannthr is saying, I agree with him that sample developers might not want to invest time into Reason for reasons that its sampler doesn't have as much financial opportunity as something like Kontakt. Sure Reason is second best-selling music software compared to others individually, but when you add up all DAW's together that can handle VST's like Kontakt and compare them to Reason, it starts to look overwhelmingly small in comparison. It ends up being a comparison of one slice of the DAW pie graph to the entire rest of the pie.

Good luck with note ms edits, because you're so perfect aren't you? Performance =/= Precision Sure you can record then do some edits with your mouse on a lackluster piano roll, but good luck being able to play anything you can think of. I'd rather write my music and not have it limited by what my hands can physically do. I'm not knocking on keyboardists, but saying "lern2play or gtfo" is pretty rude to people who prefer to have more control by editing things manually. Also, I stopped taking you seriously when you tried to say Live looks better. I prefer to have something that looks less like an old Windows 95 program with nothing but solid border rectangles.

Good piano roll or gtfo FL Studio is ugly? This is darker than FL Studio. X_X I'm interested in this. Unfortunately, whenever I see some DAW rated to simplify super fast workflow and such, I download it, and the piano roll is just god awful to work in. Hopefully this Bitwig thing won't follow that trend. I'd be interested in a change of pace, just to change around my workflow a bit.

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, derp. Sorry, I saw the love child of Ableton and Cubase and got a little excited and posted haphazardly.

That's tabs with sheet music. It's not what I'm talking about.

http://bitwig.com/bitwig_studio.php Looks kinda promising, like an Ableton spinoff but a little of Cubase influence. I might follow up on this when it's released, wondering if the piano roll is any good or if it will suffer like everything else. The per note automation thing looks kinda cool, kinda takes FL Studio's per note data values a step further. It does have generic "accept-all" tracks like FL Studio, though, so that's a big plus for more flexible workflow. Thoughts?

I am a buyer of a bulk bundle for me and my entire music group at school and can confirm the package does indeed self-animate as such. NO. Inc. is pretty generous, their EDU discount clocks in at $49.95 per person, and an additional $39.95 for every person after the second. That's only $89.95 for the third guy, and $129.95 for the fourth, and so on. So cheap!

Please post an example. I've never seen such a tab.

additions: Sonar Steinberg Sequel (Little Cubase)

Like I said before, Pro Tools has crappy MIDI editing. I wouldn't recommend it for a MIDI composer, especially since he's not into mixing and mastering (which is the only thing Pro Tools is good for). You need to get him something that has the capabilities that he wants and GOOD ones. Don't take SonicThHedgog's advice and buy him Pro Tools, which will over complicate his workflow banking on the slight chance that your brother will go into professional mixing and mastering. It can not be stressed enough that this guy wants to COMPOSE, people. Not "professionally record and produce". He needs a program with a straightforward system that works well with MIDI composition. Cubase is way better in this case. FL Studio is cheaper with a different type of modular workflow that works powerfully for people who can wield it properly. Ableton Live is great for MIDI Sequencing, better than Pro Tools, but all the included tools at that price may not be necessary for an orchestrator. Its workflow is based in clips too, so that ends up subconsciously encourages "blockular" style composing: all of your musical phrases start at the beginning of one measure and end at the last, the last being a power of 2, usually 4, 8 or 16. Good for electronica, but orchestral moves around more than that. Reason does not allow for VST's, so for great samples, you can rule that out too. Can not comment on Sonar, it's one of the few popular DAW's I haven't used. Neither can I comment on Logic. Garageband is god awful, though. Sure, the Pro Tools MIDI may be ok to some people who like crappily implemented software gimmicks (like SonicThHedgog), but why spend all that money on a lackluster system your brother needs when he can get so much better in other software? And why buy tools your brother won't even use? Rule out Pro Tools at this point. It's a great DAW. But it's not a good MIDI sequencer. At all. Your brother needs a DAW that is/has a good MIDI sequencer. I'm aware there is no best DAW. But I am giving what the better DAW's are for what you told us your brother wants to do.

Get work on a VGM OST.