Yoozer

Go through the factory ones first, they're already amazing. What do you mean with "good samples"? Any instruments in particular?

Longboard. However, for that money you might be able to find a Roland XP30 secondhand, which trumps all three. Sure - it's a little more sparse on the controller knobs (4 sliders) but the build quality, sounds and keyboard feel are likely to be better.

Unless you need some kind of EAX or surround crud, anything that's called an audio interface should do the job just fine for gaming. It's just that with an external interface you shouldn't forget to switch it on, too. The RME unit is quite a bit ($250) over your budget but is supported both in Windows and OS X.

It's an Intel machine, driver support is not an issue. What is your budget? Apogee Duet is praised, as is the RME Babyface.

But the 303 only has a lowpass filter, not a bandpass filter, and this is clearly a bandpass as Gecko mentioned You're right about the cutoff changing per note - it repeats, which suggests a pattern instead of S&H (or a very naive S&H). That means that either the synth has a step sequencer or that the cutoff modulation is automated - and there are a variety of ways for that. Since we're talking about 1997 here it could be the Nord Lead (the first version was from 1995) - and then it's simply a matter of moving the modwheel and linking that to the cutoff.

That's one option. The other option is to ReWire Reason so it acts as a insanely big software synth. If you know your chords, it's faster to just play one than to click the notes together. Plus, the aforementioned knobs & pads deal.

Hunt and peck is more common with typing - you scan the keys looking for the correct letter and then hit it; then you move on to the next. This does not apply if you still have some piano skills.

That is a good reason to switch; if you know that it's a huge hassle. The fact however that you managed to do that (did your friend have to help?) means that in some cases Live may be a better match in terms of intuition. For me it was the reason to switch from Cubase to Live and I haven't regretted it since. However, lots of people started with a sequencer or DAW because it was something they could afford, something they were taught or something their friends had - when you've got someone who can provide you with a little help, an afternoon of doing things with someone looking over your shoulder beats the hell out of reading a boatload of tutorials. That also means that you're going to get advice that is colored by people's preference for their own sequencer because they happen to find it the most intuitive to themselves. Anyway, go test some demo version of the list Neblix gave you, try one at a time for 2 weeks, and then you'll find out what fits you the best. I don't know over half of these but even then it seems that there's a bit of duplication in there . Not even a controller keyboard? Even if you can't play it's a good investment because hunting and pecking can still be faster than clicking in notes with the mouse. Plus, you get a bunch of knobs, sliders and pads for free, and it's mad fun to assign them to an instrument or effect in Live and play and tweak.

Some sequencers are more popular than others. Some DAW builders have bigger budgets for marketing than others. It's that simple. You've been using Orion for several years now. You're used to its quirks. You know the shortcut keys. Essentially all DAWs (in the software realm) do the same: they offer you a sequencer, a mixer, a bunch of bundled synths and effects and the possibility to add 3rd party ones. The difference is in the interface. Virtually everyone adds 3rd-party plugins because it means a company can dedicate itself to doing one thing right, instead of having to be a jack of all trades. If what you have is a lack of knowledge about engineering - e.g. EQ, compression, gain staging, effects usage - no new DAW is going to help you. Switching from FL to Cubase does not make you more professional; in fact, it sets your production back 3 months until you learn all the quirks of the new DAW all over again. Because some software and some hardware only runs on OS X. Because several audio-related educations offer only courses based on that platform. Again; it's that simple. If you're picking something that only runs on OS X, you need OS X. When you're busy with the DAW, you're not looking at the OS. Or the sequencer. The choice should merely be one based on the software you want to run on it, because the Intel Core chips in there are 100% identical to a bog-standard PC. The packaging and overall handling is just nicer. Short version: what is your budget? In hard numbers? What do you already have? Do you have an audio interface? Monitor speakers or studio-grade headphones? Controller keyboard? Is your current computer fast/recent enough? What do you already have? What do you already have? Help us help you. Tell us what you have - in detail. Tell us what you've already tried - in detail. Rather write too much than omit information. (one of the most frustrating things is that people say stuff like "well, I have this synth". WHICH ONE, DAMNIT. Even worse "well, I have this Korg synth". UGH - that's like saying "I've got a beige computer" when you want to know the system specifications.) For DAWs, the trick is to download a demo. Ableton Live has a 2-week fully functional (with saving!) trial version; download it, install it, and see how quickly you can make a track. Take a week or two to do this so you're not giving up too quickly and focus on that alone so you're not bogged down in other things. All decent plugins that don't rely on huge sample libraries have trial versions; download them, install them, but don't go overboard. Check them out one at a time and don't just browse through the presets - edit the sounds, and start from scratch. What parts of your work do you consider representative for what you want to do? In your nerdcore songs I hear mostly issues with EQ and volume. These can be solved by simply learning what you can do with your existing DAW better.

You're welcome, even though on re-reading it sounds like some 3rd rate mystic. To find out where you have to start, it helps if you break the problem down in areas. There's theory, arrangement/orchestration, synthesis, effects usage, mixing, (don't bother reading about mastering if you haven't learned to mix yet). Then you pick the areas where you think you could use improvement in. The simplest way is to post a song in the WIP forum; a good critique will touch on the problem areas, so in that case you know what to improve upon. Whatever software you use does not matter - in that sense that the above is not depending on a specific workflow. For instance, one thing I hear from someone who just got say, FL Studio is that they're clearly in the process of learning the application. This expresses itself in the sense that people don't realize that the sounds can be modified (so you hear lots of the default preset sounds), there's no clear choice on what kind of sounds are used (so you get say, 3 tracks with very similar synth leads that on their own sound neat), and it's awfully dry and mono (panning and reverb/effects in general seem to miss). But hey - a song, made by that person themselves, which is awesome because it wasn't so much rocket science to do that. And then a (seemingly) devastating critique because it's not acceptable material for an OCRemix - devastating because it pulls the entire song apart, making it look like it has no merits whatsoever. That's enough to discourage some people; but that's not what you should do, unless you refuse to learn anything (in which case the critique is not devastating because it won't even budge the cognitive dissonance) but I digress. It's important to know what level you're on - as said there's lots of information that is DAW-specific and you need to connect the dots between someone saying "this needs more reverb" and "how do I add reverb to a sound without messing everything up" (there are several routing possibilities). If you'd say you play electric guitar, it's easier to explain effects; stompboxes are so-called insert effects, and the concept of send effects would not be completely alien because you already know insert effects and the usage thereof. The most important part - when you read any one-liner saying "do X, not Y" is to find out the 3 pages of text that come after it and describe the situation that the conclusion is based on, otherwise you're just doing cargo cult composition and mixing - wave the magic wand but have no idea why something works or doesn't. Zircon's write-up on tips is good - but it's also abstract (I realize it's a part of a series but can't be arsed to look up the other parts right now, so if this is duplicate, whatever) An example. If you have a regular band, you have a room that band is playing in. The fact that they're in an enclosed box already means that you get reverberating signals - so a bass guitar through an amplifier beaming the sound into the room gives you a different flavor than a DI bass guitar (Direct Injection - in other words, plugged directly into the mixer). There's this imaginary microphone somewhere in the room (hooked up to anything that records, or even just a listener to a concert) and you have to deal with this microphone. The concept of a band in a room is obvious to a recording engineer; less so to the band themselves, since they're not looking from that point of view but that's why the engineer has to worry about this - and even less to someone who has no experience making music, only DAW software and an urge to express themselves. Headphones don't help with this since instruments in a room reverberate in a different way while headphones have much more separation between left and right; a signal coming in via the right ear is not heard at all in the left ear. Even with electronic music you have to deal with such a band in a hypothetical sense - each instrument has its time, place, and space. So, let's look at the room again. All people are playing at the same time. So, basically, each instrument should get a room reverb, right? Wrong - by smacking a reverb on every track you basically put every instrument into its own room all by itself, with its own reverb. Of course, there's a way to do it differently, and that's by using a send effect; this requires only one reverb and it sounds better that way. Depending on the realism of the instruments you're using you have to conform to the reality of the situation; want to make epic orchestral tracks? Simply treat your samplers as musicians in a room, positioned like a real orchestra. A microphone records the orchestra - the violin players are closer so you'll hear more violin and less room, while the timpani players are in the back - you'll hear more reverberation and each hit is "smeared" out because of that. Those are just some things you have to deal with during orchestration - by no means a complete list, but hopefully a helpful pointer to start with. Post a few fragments of what you have made (or better, the links to the threads in the WIP forum). Don't be afraid for that devastating critique, because it'll point out exactly where you want help - meaning that your next questions can be more on target and thus easier to look up/answer. True, but this time it took half a page to get to the point where we can start having a fruitful discussion. Rather specify too much information about what you have, know and use than too little; curbing your enthusiasm is easier for the responding party than trying to pry it out of you.

Your initial question was incredibly open-ended. This makes it hard to give good answers that actually help you because there could be a dozen causes or possibilities. It's like going to the doctor and pointing at a random body part - without telling in detail what's wrong you won't get a diagnosis. It's frustrating in the sense that people really want to help you but can't because you don't give 'm an angle for leverage. So, go on and ask - and don't be afraid to be specific and answer questions people ask back at you. Otherwise your effort will have been for naught. If you ask the same thing like this on another forum you'll most likely get a similar response. So, tell us about what you have and where you feel your limitations are - either with what you know, or what you have. I'm trying to pry the answers out of the topicstarter. Various DAWs have books, Youtube videos, online courses - but it's kind of hard to recommend anything at all when you don't know what DAW the topicstarter is talking about in the first place.

Which one? (see? You're doing it again, you should've read that link on asking the right question. We can't read your mind; so be specific. Nobody's going to keep track of what you use or used, nobody keeps tabs of a list of equipment or experience you have, and if someone is by god they're scary creeps and should get the hell out now.) Keyboard will. Guitar only if you have one of those guitar > MIDI converters. How do you play a chord right now? Draw the separate notes in the piano roll? With keys, you do this at the same time - it's a lot faster. Plus, you can end up at chords generators wouldn't come up with rightaway, and drawing them would just look... off - so you're less likely to use them, even if they sound absolutely awesome. Also, when you pick 'm out of a list like in FL Studio there's no hint which one's right or wrong or which one fits better. Music theory will always help. A DAW does not come up with chords for you, and if does - well, don't you want to have some pride in your own work? Don't you want to be able to point at the end result and say "hey, I made that" as opposed to "hey, I clicked the "generate chords" button for like 16 times"? You learn by doing and by making mistakes; you won't learn anything when you do something a hamster could've done. Everyone else went out of their way to interpret your question. Every time such a question is asked people get a little more exasperated. If you would've asked it the right way the first time you would not have had snarky replies to bother with. It's that easy. Besides, you're going to ask more questions, aren't you?

It's an incredibly open-ended one. We can't read your mind. Yeah, but you didn't say that. Here, read. Writers don't need to learn spelling, grammar, and don't need to read other people's books. How sensible does that sound? Not at all, does it? So, they're wrong. First, start learning an instrument if you can't play one already (you didn't tell. We can't read minds. You already know what you have, know and want; tell us, don't make us pry it out of you because you're the one here asking for help - we're not.). You'll be able to put your thoughts (or someone else's) on paper (or tape). Already know how to play an instrument well enough? Great. Then it's off to music theory with you, because you'd be bloody foolish to ignore several centuries of work and thinking that other people have already done before you. Why does this matter more than anything else? Why is it more important to learning how to mix, learning synthesis, the dark arts of the equalizer and the compressor and mic placement? Because all of those are things you can quite literally outsource to someone else. The moment you outsource expression of your own musical thoughts is the moment you're no longer owner of the song. Someone else did the primary work for you. Every composer wrote the music themselves, nobody'd look at them cross-eyed that they couldn't play 20 violins all by themselves; those people had to follow creative orders, much like how synthesizers and samplers nowadays follow your creative orders when you tell 'm what notes to play. Look at an album. The name of the composer is what counts; the rest got a flat fee for their efforts. A good song (in the conventional sense - I'm not talking about swirly ambient or pounding techno) will survive any transcription; it will be just as effective on solo piano or guitar as it'll be when played by a big orchestra. This site is a monument to that - the entire concept of remixing wouldn't work if the song merely relied on gimmicks.

Lots of things wrong with dongles and all my stuff's legit. What's wrong is that the entire value you poured into the product is put into a worthless piece of plastic that does nothing by itself. It's not the software itself. Lose it? Break it? Fry it? Investment *poof* gone. It doesn't matter if you have the CDs, or the receipt, or whatever else; if the dongle gets it, you're done for. I vote with my wallet; sweet if there's a neat plugin, but a dongle means I'm not going to buy it. Hardware synths are arguably big dongles for the samples or code running on 'm. I'm fine with that - those do something. Dongles don't.

It costs absolutely jack shit per day, because you're going to have it installed on your computer for the next 2-3 years.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/electronic-music-instruments-electronic-music-production/654280-best-80s-analog.html 808, 909, Minimoog, JP8, Prophet 5, DX7, PPG Wave, Linn, SP1200. All are sampled or emulated - Goldbaby has several drum kits. There is a great JX8P emulation you can start with; FM8 or Toxic Biohazard can take care of the digi stuff.

It is a never ending story.

Is the RD700NX 16-parts multitimbral? Otherwise, alter or overwrite (with the correct commands) all the Program Change events in the MIDI file. If you can get the RD to send Program Changes, the easiest would be to record and then hit the required buttons to select that built-in preset. Copy that to the start of your MIDI file and the sound should be magically switched to the decent one in the RD instead of the GM bank.

Sylenth's structure is far less complex and FM8 is old, because it's a repackaged FM7 which had to run on positively ancient systems. Massive renders voices in groups of four or so, thought I read that in an interview or so.

I didn't hear field recording yet, so include that in your arsenal of noise making tools. Go out with a mic and record environmental sounds; by having them fade in softly from time to time you'll make the entire thing less synthetic (if you're using mostly synthetic sounds). Study minimalism. You have a pattern that is repeated and subtle changes are introduced. However, since you're dealing with a different kind of listener you have to make sure it doesn't get grating. Alchemy is a lot of bang for the buck. There's also a free player version if you just want the sounds first and the science later. It's got more useful material from the start than Absynth, IMHO. Even then, even Massive can make ambient noise well.

Neither. Ableton Live. : In what way are you outgrowing it? What can't it do? What doesn't it have enough from? Virtually every DAW worth its salt has a demo version. You've got a few songs that you've made with Mixcraft. Download a demo. Re-make one of your songs with the demo version. See how far you get. See if the software works/thinks like you or not at all (this means that a certain workflow is/isn't to your liking, not plain old RTFM questions that get thrown at you). Spend a week with it, write down your observations/experiences, pick the next demo. Don't try to do all demos at the same time - think of it as driving a car. You can only do that with one at a time, too. Do keep in mind that even with software that comes with a dozen plugins people rarely stick to the built-in plugins; they're considered starting/utility/"good enough for government work" material in a lot of cases. It's just that when you're focused only on writing the best reverb possible and it's your flagship product you're probably going to do a better job of it than some DSP textbook algorithm that got thrown in so you have another checkmark on the feature list.

And your budget in numbers is...?

My grandmother used to have this: which I somehow discovered and played the hell out of. I received it as a present for my 6th birthday. It sounded like a giant melodica with a vacuum cleaner inside (and that's how it works, too). An uncle used to have this: which I received for my first Communion - my parents saw how fond I was of the orange thingy but it made an awful lot of noise, and this thing had headphones. After just attempting to play for a few years I took lessons for one year at age 9 or so. Then the Commodore 64 happened and my uncle (another one) gave me tapes with Mike Oldfield and Jarre. I was blown away and it started to grate more and more that I wasn't able to make the sounds I heard with the organ. I also heard lots of sounds in the C64 that were immensely intriguing. Also, the lessons were boring to me - I started cheating by simply memorizing the music instead of reading the sheet music and acting as a human sequencer. Nothing exciting happened in terms of chords. So I quit taking the lessons and "progressed" on my own. However, the sound issue still wasn't solved, so my uncle took me on a road trip to various music stores. I was drooling at this: which was about 1200 guilders at the time. I would never be able to afford that. (I got my revenge: last year I scored one for 25 euros and good lord, it sucked. Glad I never did this.) So instead, my uncle directed me to something affordable, which happened to be this. The salesguy gave me a pair of headphones, selected a preset, enabled the arpeggiator and my uncle started haggling about the price to reduce it from the princely sum of 550 guilders down to 500. In the meantime, I hit the keys. A meter-wide grin split my face. This was it. This was exactly the thing I've been looking for, for all that time; this made the sounds I wanted. So we loaded it in his car and returned home. My dad rigged up an old turntable with built-in amp and two speakers - the predecessor of this thing: and I could play. Most of the time I'd be wearing headphones, though. That same uncle built me a primitive 3-channel mono mixing desk so I could listen to several instruments at the same time, because then this arrived: and this: Then I sold them and tried to trade up every year or so; scraping money from birthdays and Sinterklaas together and stocking shelves and working on a farm planting leek and so on. I went through a Yamaha PSR-7, a Yamaha PSR-500 (bigger keyboard, taught me about building my own accompaniment rhythms), a Roland JW50 (my first real workstation with disks!), a Yamaha SY35 (FM+sample-based synth with no sequencer but with effects - which I sampled into FastTracker) to a Yamaha W5 workstation around 1997. This was a serious workstation with lots of synthesis options and effects and 76 keys and it taught me all about sequencing. I already knew about synthesis. Then there wasn't anything to trade up to anymore except for well, more workstations. In that same year I did a performance with the workstation; kind of like a Faithless-like track. In 1998 I met a guy who saw me back then - he later told me that when he saw me he wanted to quit because I did a kick-ass track with a single machine, and he had several synths and a sampler and if I was interested in making some tracks? Sure! So I was introduced to Cubasis (now Cubase Elements) which was a pure MIDI sequencer. I dragged my stuff over there, and because I saved up and made more money now I could buy a Roland XP-30 which was added to the collection. We made a demo in '98 and a serious one to send to record companies in '99. We sent 20 of 'm to various companies and got 3 replies. By that time the other guy was done with highschool but I was still studying for my BSc in Computer Science, and my schedule didn't allow for much in the way of making music. So, he continued and made a career out of it, and I put my part of the advance in buying a serious mixing desk instead of the crappy DJ mixing desk I had (no EQ, nothing). His dad had died the previous year and left him a sizable enough inheritance to shop around for equipment; and that's what he did. I recommended the Virus B to him, he asked if I wanted one too and pay him back at zero interest rate - and I declined - my parents would never forgive me for that (and I was still living with them). Since he had the advance; his own apartment, all the necessary gear to start production - I vowed to myself that it wouldn't be the equipment that would hold me back, so I stocked more shelves and did helpdesk work and had my internships and so on. I amassed quite a bit of stuff and studied it inside and out - but never made music, merely learned and learned. Fast forward to now: I'm selling off the extraneous crap, around 2007 or so I've also added plugins and switched DAWs (from Cubase to Ableton Live, which at least made me feel a lot better about making music), and still don't have time to make music! However, I can tell you quite a bit about synthesis. All the things I so foolishly sold in 1992 I bought back again for pretty reasonable prices back when they still were reasonable; I paid less for the Juno if you factor in inflation. Since I blew up the DR110 I got a beaten-up unit and put the mint case of the blown one around it. I got the Solina back for a stupidly low price from the man I originally sold it to. Meanwhile I'm downsizing (again) and still not making music. What does this have to do with OCR? Well, this. I still have to redo that one, as it was sloppy as hell.

Deconstruct the sound you want in components - e.g. initial attack and sustain sound, or low velocity timbre/high velocity timbre. Then, use groups of two or three operators as building blocks for these sounds. Don't bother making anything you could do in a fraction of the time on a subtractive machine unless you are making a soundset or want to see how clever you can be - that includes making Sega Genesis tracks. Gecko - I don't think part two was ever made.

Turn. Down. The. Volume. Use a limiter - it's a compressor that chops off everything to infinitey, and use one that doesn't color (the opposite of "coloring" is "transparent" - and in case of the compressor it means that it only changes the volume). It's like designing a house with doors that are only 4 feet high and then, instead of increasing the height, you simply decapitate all visitors who are too tall.