Yoozer

Save up for a controller, too. Try playing a chord with a mouse without selecting it from a menu. .

Nothing of this has to do with the fact if you're pro or not; it has to do with clarity in communication. I don't care what you know or don't know - I'm more than willing to tell anyone everything I know. There's a tiny ember of hope glowing steadfast in my heart that the next time you ask a question - no matter on which forum, or in IRC, or whatever, you will take care to be specific, because it means it worked. It means you don't have to waste your time and you get an answer you can actually do something with while the rest of us don't feel like they're being put on a wild goose chase. I think that's a really reasonable request.

The future is more of the past since everyone's buying up vintage equipment like mad. 100% analog engineering may pay well soon, bonus points if you can reverse-engineer rare chips (octave dividers). Anyway, just wanted to chime in - this month's Sound On Sound magazine has an extensive write-up about compression and what to use for what. Grab it while it's hot (I've got an eSub)

See? Those things mean something. If you would've posted a video walkthrough of part 1 saying "this here at 3:48 where the commenter finally shuts his trap, you hear something like x or y, I don't know what it is but that's what I'm looking for". If you would've hooked up your Gamecube or Wii to your computer to record the audio outputs, that would've been fine, too. Now, with this post, you've made a separation between "environment" and synthetic sounds and you've made clear that you're looking for environment stuff. Wind you can synthesize fairly easily. Tropical forests generally means resorting to a sample CD with a bunch of recordings that you (re)trigger - you have a looping background sound and you just play bird shrieks once in a while or so. There are a whole set of techniques to generate effect sounds - for instance, the dinosaur roars in Jurassic Park. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park_%28film%29#Dinosaurs_on_screen http://www.sound-ideas.com/sfxmenu.html have sounds. If you want something free - it means going out yourself to make field recordings. Damn, I wanted to read it . Compare it with shopping for a car. "I want a car" doesn't say anything to the dealer. "I want a car I can drive offroad with" or "I want a car I can do groceries with" - that actually gives someone a starting point, otherwise you're just frustrating both yourself and the people you want to help.

yes but which. sounds You could think I'm being overly difficult here, but I'm just trying to tell you that I'm not a telepath and I'm fairly sure most people here aren't either. That's why it's so awfully important to provide at least an actual sample - not a bunch of words - because sounds say something, words don't. How do you expect me or anyone else to know what you mean? "Ambient" is a ridiculously wide description of sounds and music. The Trilogy combines 3 games. All of 'm have their soundtracks published somewhere. Otherwise, check http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showpost.php?p=569767&postcount=5

Define ambient samples. In other words, provide us with some examples. Youtube or mp3 with the specific times would be nice.

Get trial versions of all of 'm. Pick one. Spend a week with it and see if you can make a song with it - enough tutorials for each application. If you feel that the software is not working/thinking with you and making you jump through hoops to get something done, dismiss it and start with the next. Are you willing to buy one in the future? Yes, but not all, and not all equally convincing. The trick is to see the software that provides you with the sounds (the plugin) separate from the software you use to compose music with (the sequencer). It depends on what kind of sounds you want and what you are willing to spend. Furthermore, do not overlook the fact that what you hear is rarely alone - often, effects (again, separate pieces of software) matter as much as the source. For orchestral sounds, GPO can do the job, but you can spend as much as you like. Electric guitars are tricky to do well, and while there are options they still require skill in playing. You could start with E-mu Proteus VX - while still not spectacular, they're certainly better than the General MIDI soundbank (what you call MIDI sounds - but MIDI does not make sound).

http://www.yamaha-europe.com/yamaha_europe/layoutarchiv/FeaturesPictures/20_proaudio/speakers/msp_studio_monitors/10_big.jpg shows a correct setup. Just make sure the speakers all have an equal distance from the cone to your ear. If a speaker is too close, its sound will be louder and the soundwaves will have less distance to travel - so the wavefront will hit your eardrums earlier than the rest of the speakers, which ruins the experience or causes weird effects. For instance, if the peak of a waveform at the left crosses with a dip on the right, the sound may cancel itself out. You can test this pretty well with low-frequency sinewaves. Also, make sure the cone of each satellite speaker is at ear level. The sub doesn't matter so much since we humans aren't great in determining the position of low frequencies. Some surround sets allow you to compensate for this by introducing a slight delay per speaker, in case your room is shaped wrong. Simply draw a floor plan of your room. Where exactly did you put the speakers? What shape does your room have?

Protip: layer. If you can't make a kickdrum at once, use two parts - one for the click, the other for the oomph.. Snare is a self-oscillating lowpass with noise. Clap is an envelope with short decay controlling LFO speed from high to low. Also, http://insidesynthesis.blogspot.com/ has a video with synthetic percussion.

That's a tonehweel organ with a good deal of distortion over it. http://www.genuinesoundware.com/?a=showproduct&b=37 or http://www.genuinesoundware.com/?a=showproduct&b=24 if it can be "really really cheap". It is - because NI B4 costs $199. It's the type of distortion that does the trick, so a plain stompbox plugin may not do the trick.

i just realized i've been breaking all your rules

Audacity uses the LAME encoder but does not expose all settings. Use RazorLAME and try -alt-preset extreme.

Nobody can decide that for you, so you'll have get the trial versions and see which fits best. This means either learning keyboard shortcuts for common operations or a lot of mouse use, and switching between the keyboard and the mouse. You mention clicking. Don't - clicking in a chord takes longer than simply playing it on a small (say, 37 keys or so) keyboard. You still have 5 fingers - use them! Furthermore, a decent controller takes expression pedals as input so you can put your feet to use to control sliders and knobs while playing. It means full support for automation so you can draw knob tweaks easily, which frees up your hand for other things. No sequencer has a somewhat good interface. In fact, all of 'm suck and don't use modern philosophies to speed up workflow. DAWs are "old" software with their own idiosyncrasies and philosophy; some expect you to have/know/operate a hardware studio in software, some do away with that entirely and treat it in a more sane way, and all of 'm expect you to upgrade to the current version - and to not shock people who have been used to things on how they were done long ago, you get a certain interface weirdness. Logic and Cubase are ancient, and Live's nearing a decade, too. No, this is not a good idea. Learn to master each instrument in time. In that way, Logic is nice since its selection of included instruments is generous enough to start with, and ditto for Ableton Live Suite. What kind of music do you want to make?

I fear for what they're going to have to do when 64-bits becomes mainstream.

Making music has never been cheaper. The curve is different, however - a guitar can be had for cheap, but electronic music production has a high initial (set of) bump(s). Thing is, the computer is not factored in. Of course orchestral libraries cost a lot - they're something you just can't do by yourself if you have a deadline. As for the cost - Nexus with all expansions is pretty pricey, too.

In Windows, they're plain .dll files, and you copy them to the designated plugin directory. You can usually set in the application itself, and generally, it looks like Program Files/Vstplugins (though there aren't any agreements about this, sadly enough). Plugins with installer software will offer to copy the files to that; (free) plugins that are just the .dlls themselves and that's it have to be copied there by hand. No. The generic way of using it is: - open a new MIDI track - route the outputs to the Soundfont Player - route the inputs to your controller It should not be different from using any other instrument plugin in your sequencer; all you have to do extra is point out to the Soundfont player which soundfont it should use.

http://producer-network.de/wissen/tutorials-und-howtos/optical-noisia-calyx-baesse-so-gehts Throw through a translator and you're there. Reason 3 or 4? Thor is great for this, punches better than Subtractor does.

Depends on the software. Options, preferences, settings - go hunt in the menu for something like that. You should end up at a spot where you can choose between ASIO, MME, etc. and your soundcard should be in the list. Install ASIO4All too - Google it.

It is already popular, just in other circles.

Download the demos of both (and throw in Ableton Live just for kicks) and go try them. Live gives you 2 weeks full functionality, Reason gives you 20 minutes every time, FL Studio doesn't allow you to save (or whatever they've invented). The difference - when you don't know how they work yet - between us telling you NO USE THIS, NO THIS IT IS MUCH BETTER - is absolutely minimal. Software like this has to grow on you - or you grow on the software, same thing. Try each piece of software separately. See if by just clicking and following tutorials, you can let those things make sound - or even a song. When there's nobody nearby to help you out, you just have to bang your head against the wall yourself - until it breaks. The most useless approach would be to start a new topic every time you run into such a wall; relying on your own analytical skills and using the search is incredibly valuable when you have to wear all the hats (musician, composer, producer, engineer) yourself.

I'd try Reason first - it's actually pretty hard to do anything wrong with it, and it has a pretty good tutorial on http://reasontutorial.be Furthermore, if you like this enough to continue with, be prepared to ruthlessly slaughter your piggy bank. The Paulstretch suggestion was more of a joke. Imagine a song as a cake - it's really hard to extract the original ingredients from, so it's far more useful to just start over again.

Because the internet is already filled with a lot of FL Studio tutorial material.

I use Paulstretch. It turns this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75pjo9ReXCg (Bob James - Take Me To the Mardi Gras) into this: http://theheartcore.com/music/paulstretch_mardigras.mp3

Samples come with sample libraries, not with sequencers. You use Logic or Live or whatever for the workflow, not because of its included sounds; those are a nice extra. Get yourself a secondhand copy of NI Kontakt 2. There's the VSL Kontakt Edition library which sounds great and does your orchestral sounds without a hitch. Unlike others, you are actually allowed to do license transfers. Just don't pay for an obviously warezed version. If ESX24 has stuff included, chances are that it's better than most homebrewn soundfonts. Again; dedicated libraries are most likely to do better; but those are things you gradually save up for. Besides, you can synthesize drum sounds, too .