Yoozer

Your fingers are coated in greasy acidic stuff which will corrode the hell out of the strings. Wipe your forehead. You see how they're shiny? Yeah, that stuff. Something like "prepared pianos" is best left to pianos that aren't expensive, aren't very dear, or ready to be trashed anyway.

Also, disable Norton when you're making music, and IE7 has a tab feature so you don't need to open a zillion windows .

Isn't that Youtube's shit-tastic audio compression at work?

Instead of a QY, pick an RM1x. Doesn't cost you anything but loaded with sequencing power and a floppy drive (you need one single floppy and you can store at least 50 tracks). Combine that with a MicroKorg (secondhand). Maybe you can even add a small sampler (SP-404, anything with a CF card). This will give you a full setup with the only drawback that the MK's keys kind of suck.

That's the way you're supposed to quote. It's good etiquette on newsgroups and carries over wonderfully on forums. It keeps things readable and comprehensible. Quoting someone's entire post to say "lol" or "+1" > fail. Quoting someone's entire post and adding a wall of text below > fail. Putting your answer above someone's quoted post > fail.

You are certain you were playing it right? Equal temperament isn't an ideal solution, but there's no reason why it should sound weirder than anything else. Questions that start with "is it just me" are answered with: "yes, it's you. Your point?" "no, you're worrying about something completely irrelevant". It's not like the A major scale changed radically so it's your observational skills at work here. You say you don't know anything and then make replies like this gem. Then it's probably your tuning mode. Or mind-altering substances. Or sleep deprivation.

jesus tapdancing christ i mean jesus tapdancing christ edit: learn quickly about physics stuff like string tension and why a piano is not like a guitar, also, there's a very good reason why you shouldn't touch the strings with your fingers.

The reason you won't find this other than a generalized version in Computer Music magazine (they usually have workshops for genres) is that everyone's composition process is different and a different approach works better for a different genre. In what way are you now not able to compose (or compose fluently)? If it's the interface, you have to dive in; it's like getting used to a new car (times hundred). Focus on a single operation - e.g. "I want to achieve a certain effect" and spend time on that and only that until you've done it. Don't try to learn 2 sequencer packages at the same time - to stick with the car analogy, someone trying to learn Cubase and FL Studio at the same time is to try to drive an Aston Martin and a Ferrari at the same time. The manuals are mostly for reference purposes, but if that's not getting you anywhere, you need old-fashioned books or instruction videos.

And in case you want to know how to do it, just type "reason sidechain" or "ableton sidechain" or "cubase sidechain" in Google and read. It's become such an awfully tired question that by now pretty much everyone's found an answer for it.

Yeah. Buy a guitar. Learn how to play it. Not only are they ridiculously cheap compared to new synths or plugins, it's also not complete rocket science to learn the skill, and it's good to expand your horizons. I'll be getting an electric from a friend tomorrow and if it works out I'm going to get something that costs more than this borrowed thingy.

The Casios from your childhood sucked; those from mine didn't because at that time Casio was imitating Yamaha's tricks on FM and several nice avenues in synthesis. The lack of MIDI thru is not going to matter in the least, if you have a USB MIDI interface. MIDI thru is used when you're daisy-chaining synthesizers, like this: synth 1 MIDI out > synth 2 MIDI in synth 2 MIDI thru > synth 3 MIDI in synth 3 MIDI thru > synth 4 MIDI in (and so on) You don't put a controller somewhere in the middle of the chain because it does not make any sound - so there's no reason to let it receive MIDI in. You plan to use this as a controller, and while it has sounds, you still don't put it anywhere in the middle because once you work with software and you have a sufficiently big MIDI interface (just get a MOTU 5-port or something, that's enough) the technique of daisy chaining is like token ring on a gigabit network.

Yes, actually, I can. Sometimes it takes more than one time, and when things get really complex I either have to slow it down in pitch or just stop bothering, but yes, I can. You can train yourself with this, but it helps if you've got some talent. In my case, I abused this talent to avoid reading notes, which I sort of regret now .

Such a shame. Few things are nicer than a quality weighted keyboard, even though the keys aren't real wood.

FACT: everyone who'd win the lottery would go apeshit spending it on a big studio with every vintage machine known to man. No exceptions.

Kontakt has separate outputs, but the generally used option is to simply use multiple instances of Kontakt, each with their own instruments loaded. Multiple outs/parts are used only for instruments that belong together - e.g. you only want 1 instance for an entire orchestral section.

Everything after "ESI4000" in that list, from bottom to top .

wish, command, etc. pictured: Adam A7, AN1x, Micromodular, MIDISport 2x2, Onyx 1620, Echo Park, Virus C, A-Station, TR Rack, TC M300, V-Verb, DSP16+, MDX2600, MIDI Express 128, ESI4000, DX7IIFD (lowest), Juno-60 w/ MIDI retrofit (awesome awesome), JX8P, JX3P, Alpha Juno 1. not pictured: Roland XP30 Eminent Solina string ensemble Eminent Solina 310 Tannoy Reveal 6D Alesis Monitor One mk II E-mu Xboard 49 Yamaha W5 Yamaha A4000

Composing depends on the genre, really. There's a rather clearly defined set of - well, call it "ingredients" for pop music. When you're doing classical-like stuff, there's other rules and concepts - things like A, A', B (the theme, variation on a theme, different theme), counterpoint, call-response, and there's of course the orchestration which plays a big role. The ultimate (and huge) guide for this is http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/allsynthsecrets.htm Start at the bottom, work your way up.

I saw this coming from several miles away because any warez monkey will just get the biggest, most expensive packages of everything and try to use them all at the same time. It's like trying to stretch yourself in such a way that your feet can still touch the accelator of an Aston Martin on the left while you lean over the door to push the one in the Ferrari at the right. In other words, stupid. Just making clear that the word delay is used for the effect. fix'd

It's not delay, it's latency. It's caused by a crappy soundcard - anything on-board will suck for this, and anything that has the label Creative on it (and not the label E-mu) will do so, too. Spend a bit of cash and get something like this: http://www.zzounds.com/item--EMU8803 http://www.zzounds.com/item--MDOAP2496 and these are things you buy and find at music stores, not computer stores. They come with something magical called an "ASIO driver", which will cut the delay back to like, 4-5 milliseconds or so. Why both? And the nice people at the music store didn't recommend you anything else in the way of hardware?

You're not controlling anything, actually. There's no USB or MIDI output on the mixer. At most, you're putting channel 1 in Ableton through channel 1 on the mixer, and channel 2 in Ableton through channel 2 on the mixer. The only thing you can do then is control the volume and use the EQ, that's it - but that's not called 'controlling', because this usually implies that moving a physical slider or knob moves a virtual one on the screen. You are going to need an audio interface with 2 stereo outputs, and yes, those cost quite a bit. The only thing I could find below 200 euros was this here: http://www.thomann.de/nl/edirol_ua25_usb_audio.htm which has one pair of line outputs and one pair of RCA outputs (red/white). ASIO4All is not going to help, since any decent USB sound card will have ASIO drivers already. Another option: http://www.thomann.de/nl/maudio_xsession_pro.htm to control the volume of each Ableton channel; then, get a more modest soundcard (do you have a laptop or a desktop? In the latter case, you could get something cheap like an Audiophile 2496 or E-mu 0404) with a single output, put that on channel 1 of the DJX700. Put your CD-players or turntables on channels 2 and 3, and you can now control everything.

Of course it works, it just doesn't do all the heavy work for you. A computer can beatmatch if there's an actual beat, and an acapella doesn't have to start at the same moment the beat does. Just look for a few audio warp tutorials, you'll get the hang of it. What may help you is if you find the tempo of the acapella and slow down the main tempo of Ableton before importing it. Then you won't have both troubles of placing/warping things correctly -and- messing with the tempo. When everything is in its right place, turn the speed up (or down) again.

I use my ears. MIDI files do not sound accurate; at best, they're arranged accurately. If you expect the General MIDI synth on a cheap on-board soundcard (or an expensive one, all built-in GM synths are crap) to sound like the original, give up your search .

You still don't have to compress anything. Volume automation does the job just as well in a lot of cases; it's just that most of the time people are too lazy to find the risky spots and dip it a bit. When you say "put compression on everything", people will do this. Combine that with having no idea what attack and release do and just jamming the ratio to infinite and the output gain up because that way it is louder (and therefore "more professional") ruins the music.

What do you actually want to achieve? Be able to add sounds from tape/cd/tuner to your mix, or do you just want to listen to those?