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Where's the "suggested program to start with" thread?


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I'm not sure which program I want to use or even what any of them generally do.

I know what I want a program to do with the limited knowledge I have. I'm not sure which one I should start with first either.

Does anyone have any suggestions on a program to start with and why?

*runs off to read about programs in the mean time.*

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What's LE?

And thank's for the info. I might have to check out abelton and fruity loops since most video game songs are looped.

That's not what IBBIBAZZABIB means by loops. FL leans towards patterns; so writing a short few bars and looping that over and over. FL is pretty good simply on the grounds that it's a lot cheaper than the other lot, although, I really would't rule out Sonar or Cubase yet- it's at least worth a download, right?

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What's LE?

Lite Edition - e.g. a stripped version of the software. This means you usually don't get (all) the included instruments of the full version, and there may be limits to the number of tracks you can add in a project. Sometimes you can buy this version (for instance Ableton Live Intro), in other cases you get it for free when you buy a controller or audio interface. I got Cubase AI (their name of the "LE" version) for free when I bought a Yamaha mixer, I got Ableton Live Lite (now called Intro) for free when I bought a controller keyboard, so since you're going to need something like that anyway, it's probably a good idea to check out what's included with it, since those applications are already pretty powerful. Plus, you usually get a discount when you want to upgrade to a "full" version.

And thank's for the info. I might have to check out abelton and fruity loops since most video game songs are looped.

As said, this is irrelevant.

What people mean with "loops" is that you have a 2 or 4-bar fragment of music that you can put in the song somewhere. Virtually all software for audio can deal with this concept; however, in the case of FL Studio it's a big part of the workflow.

For instance, I could sample a piece of dance music. It would sound like this:

http://www.theheartcore.com/patch/909_120_full.mp3

However, if I wanted something like this without the kick drum, I'd have a problem. The kickdrum is "baked into" the sample. If I want a different sounding kick drum, I also have a problem - it's like un-baking a cake (yes, there are a variety of tricks that I could use for this but they depend on what's in that loop, and that's advanced material).

The alternative is that I put each instrument in its own separate loop.

http://www.theheartcore.com/patch/909_120_kick.mp3

http://www.theheartcore.com/patch/909_120_clap.mp3

http://www.theheartcore.com/patch/909_120_hats.mp3

But that's no good if I want to have it at 140 bpm instead of 120. Before the advent of timestretching, it would've sounded like this.

http://www.theheartcore.com/patch/909_140_pitch.mp3

You hear the obvious difference. (Even with timestretching it may mess up the drums so the kick doesn't sound so punchy anymore; again, there are various tricks to get around this but they all depend on what's in that loop, and what works great on drums may be disastrous on vocals.)

So, what's the real solution? Ideally, you have every instrument played separately - so those 4 kicks in a row are 4 separate kicks, the claps are 2 separate claps - because when you want to speed up or slow down in that case, it'll still sound "right".

Enter FL Studio; you have 16 steps. On step 1, 5, 9 and 13 you put a kick, on 5 and 13 you put claps, and on every step you put a closed hihat except for 3, 7, 11 and 15 - you put an open hihat there. If you slow it down, it'll sound good; if you speed it up, it'll sound good, and the best part is that you can still treat those groups of steps as a single block of samples. You call this collection of these 4 instruments and the steps a "pattern", and you simply copy the pattern, name it something different, and remove the kick steps. Or add a snare step, whatever you want. Put 8 of those patterns in a row and do a snare roll on the 8th pattern, and you already have a piece of dance music done. The best part? If you want to change the kick, you only have to change it with the patterns that are actually different; so if you have 8 of those patterns but only 2 unique ones, you only have to change the sounds 2 times - for each unique pattern once.

Patterns simply mean that instead of having to put in every identical sequence of notes separately you use the similarity between those sequences to work faster.

It doesn't mean however that any sequencer is suited better towards any kind of music, though; all it means is that you can work -faster- for certain types of music (not better).

Virtually all software - if all you use are software instruments - has some kind of parity; what makes the difference is the workflow. I prefer that one of Live, and you can ask a dozen remixers here and get a dozen different answers.

I started with Cubase. Why? It happened to be something a friend of mine used so he could quickly teach me the basics, and then I could find out the rest for myself. In a lot of cases it's something like that - you have someone else who can show you the ropes because they already have experience with the software. What matters however is not the software - it's the concept behind it. If you learn how to use a mixer (any mixer) then the difference between one equalizer and the other becomes a matter of taste, no matter if one's on the screen and the other is somethin you can actually touch.

What they theoretically do (boost or cut frequency ranges) is the same for any of 'm.

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What's LE?

And thank's for the info. I might have to check out abelton and fruity loops since most video game songs are looped.

You misunderstand the name of Fruity Loops. That's technically not its name anymore, because people use it for non dance music all the time so it's called FL Studio. The name fruity loops is degrading because it implies that it's a workstation that relies on loops.

What DAW you choose doesn't have anything to do with what video game music sounds like. If I learned both Pro Tools and FL Studio, I could make a song sound the exact same way in both. The arrangement and production of a song are not a result of the program you use, it's a result of whatever you did. Each program has a different way of doing things, but you can use every single one to get the same result. It's all a matter of which workflow you prefer.

Referring back to Yoozer's pattern explanation, I like to use patterns when not only making dance beats but composing any type of music; I just like that I can store bunches of different MIDI data in reserve and then stick them on the playlist where I see fit, rather than in other DAWs where you have to write a MIDI block onto the playlist/arrangement window to write something (and if you delete that, it's gone forever). That's my personal taste in workflow because I write all of my music by mouse, but if you do something like Yoozer said and you use a controller keyboard to put your MIDI data into your computer, something like Cubase or Pro Tools can be a more beneficial option because everything is linear and you won't be storing patterns in reserve for use.

But before you buy an expensive piece of software, you should learn the ropes of composing and producing, and there are some great free pieces of software for that:

REAPER - An entire free DAW. Supports MIDI, VST's, and Audio Recording. What more could you ask for?

Kore Player - Has some cool synths and acoustic instruments. It's a free VST that you can load into a DAW and write MIDI (in a piano roll) to make it play whatever you write.

Guitar Rig 4 Player - If you play guitar, this is a great starting point for an amp sim. It's also a free effects VST.

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