A Few Basic Music Production Questions

[RPGillespie]

Hello,

I am a game programmer, and am experienced in programming and graphics design. However, my weak point is definitely music production. To me, it is a whole world with which I am unfamiliar – the terminology, jargon, everything. Needless to say, I’m here to hopefully gain a few insights to get me started. I play the piano, so I am music competent, but I don’t know my way around music software, and all of the knobs and buttons spamming the screen can be a little overwhelming. Please forgive my noobishness.

Firstly, I need to pick a DAW. I tried FL Studio, and made a few basic songs, but I’m not sure if it’s the right program for me. I’m looking for a program in which I can synthesize realistic sounding music without hardware. I want to be able to write and figure out the sequence of notes on the piano, and then apply different realistic sounding instruments to the series of notes. By realistic, I mean non-midi sounding. I read something about “running” midis “though” sound libraries or sample libraries, but I’m not sure what that means or how to go about doing it. Is FL Studio capable of doing that?

Secondly, I had a few terminology questions. If I understand correctly, a sequencer simply allows you to map out your music in terms of a sequence of notes. A synthesizer allows you to create infinite different sounds by changing frequencies, and waves, etc, correct? What then is a mixer and sampler? Where do they fit into the big picture?

Say I write a simple song on the piano, and I want to digitize it, add some bass and some percussion, and make it somewhat realistic sounding. What would be a good DAW for this? From what I understand, Reaper does not have a sequencer, which would make it difficult to map out the song I wrote in terms of notes, am I right?

Any tips and advice are welcome. Thanks,

RPGillespie

[SonicThHedgog]

Hello,

I am a game programmer, and am experienced in programming and graphics design. However, my weak point is definitely music production. To me, it is a whole world with which I am unfamiliar – the terminology, jargon, everything. Needless to say, I’m here to hopefully gain a few insights to get me started. I play the piano, so I am music competent, but I don’t know my way around music software, and all of the knobs and buttons spamming the screen can be a little overwhelming. Please forgive my noobishness.

Firstly, I need to pick a DAW. I tried FL Studio, and made a few basic songs, but I’m not sure if it’s the right program for me. I’m looking for a program in which I can synthesize realistic sounding music without hardware. I want to be able to write and figure out the sequence of notes on the piano, and then apply different realistic sounding instruments to the series of notes. By realistic, I mean non-midi sounding. I read something about “running” midis “though” sound libraries or sample libraries, but I’m not sure what that means or how to go about doing it. Is FL Studio capable of doing that?

Secondly, I had a few terminology questions. If I understand correctly, a sequencer simply allows you to map out your music in terms of a sequence of notes. A synthesizer allows you to create infinite different sounds by changing frequencies, and waves, etc, correct? What then is a mixer and sampler? Where do they fit into the big picture?

Say I write a simple song on the piano, and I want to digitize it, add some bass and some percussion, and make it somewhat realistic sounding. What would be a good DAW for this? From what I understand, Reaper does not have a sequencer, which would make it difficult to map out the song I wrote in terms of notes, am I right?

Any tips and advice are welcome. Thanks,

RPGillespie

You can do all that and midi is not sound nor music, its data, and if your not confortable with FL like many others, try cubase, ableton live, protools, etc.....

A DAW or Digital Audio work station IS a sequecer or there called sequencers, and obcourse drum sequencer like the ones on drums machines like 909s and 808s and FL studios drum/sample sequencer.

Sample librarys VSTi's and stuff like that are around, here let some one eles answer this for you because im running out of time here, and welcome to OCremix.

somewhat of a communtiy:tomatoface: (j/k)

[Tensei]

FL Studio definitely is capable of creating realisting sounding music by the use of VSTis.

As for the terminology, you're pretty much correct about the definitions of a sequencer and synthesizer. A sampler in this context fits more or less the same role as a synthesizer, but the difference is that where a synthesizers sound is basically created from the ground up through the manipulation of raw sound waves (also known as sound design), a sampler uses pre-recorded phrases (a.k.a. Samples). A mixer, at least in the context of software music production is the interface that allows you to 'mix' the tracks together by balancing their volume levels, panning, applying effects, etc.

If we're looking at the architecture of FL studio specifically, the chain basically goes Sequencer/Piano Roll->VSTi (Which can be a synthesizer or a sampler or whatever)-> Mixer

To elaborate: you input raw midi data in the Sequencer/Piano Roll, which will then get 'played' by whatever Virtual Instrument you have assigned to that track. Consequently it's possible, and generally advisable to route this track into the mixer so you can apply effects to it, etc.

[Rozovian]

Your ignorance makes me lol. You at least have a good way of dealing with it, tho a little googling wouldn't have hurt.

Anyway, the process of "running midi through" stuff is a little more complicated than it sounds. If you just want a better isntrument sound, sure, it's not hard, but to get more of a realistic performance out of it takes more than just import-select-export. While some instruments are easier to get a passable sound out of (depending on your standards) raw sequenced notes won't sound good on a piano or guitar because they don't have any of the intricacies that make a piano or guitar performance sound good. That's assuming you have a good enough sounding guitar library, which I assume you don't have. Sustained brass, electric guitar, solo strings, and a wide range of other instrument tend to sound terrible when faked if you don't know what you're doing. Sustained strings, woodwinds, staccato brass and strings, piano, and a few others can sound tolerable, depending on the samples.

tl;dr: running midi through stuff is as easy as it sounds if you don't mind the terrible sound it'll have. It will not sound realistic, and will bother ppl that can tell.

Sequencer lets you write notes. Synthesizer makes sound based on math (yeah, really). Mixer is where you combine different sounds, different tracks, be they instruments, effects, vocals, ambience, whatever - think of it as a mixing console like the ones in church or school or wherever - cables go in, sound comes out... somewhere. Sampler like a synthesizer in that it's something that makes sound - but it uses sampled sounds, sound files, to produce sound, and is generally more suited towards reproducing realistic sounds than synths tend to be.

So you can have a few synths, a few samplers, write their respective notes in a sequencer, and combine them into a song in the mixer. A DAW combines all these in the same program.

A good DAW is one that fits your workflow. If you work much with patterns (blocks of notes for different instruments) FL might be good, whereas if you prefer distinct midi regions REAPER might work better. It's hard to say, so you should just get demos and try everything out.

Also, check out my remixing guide in my sig, it should hold some valuable insights. It currently doesn't have a terminology section, but a lot of other technical info is there. The section on humanizing seems like it could be especially useful to you.

[Tensei]

tl;dr: running midi through stuff is as easy as it sounds if you don't mind the terrible sound it'll have. It will not sound realistic, and will bother ppl that can tell.

This is wrong. If I record a live performance on a midi piano and run it through Ivory I'm still technically 'running midi through stuff', but it will sound quite realistic. You're forgetting that stuff like velocities, expression etc. are all midi data too.

[Rozovian]

This is wrong. If I record a live performance on a midi piano and run it through Ivory I'm still technically 'running midi through stuff', but it will sound quite realistic. You're forgetting that stuff like velocities, expression etc. are all midi data too.

Technically yes. Wasn't forgetting, I was just trying to keep it simple.

Anyway, in order to "synthesize realistic sounding music without hardware", you'll need to shell out money for sample libraries, a single DAW will probably not come prepackaged with all the sounds you'll need, certainly not of even near-realistic quality. It can be done in just software, but as with hardware you'll need to get the good stuff and learn to use it - with all its modulation wheel and expression controls, keyswitches, not to mention learn to write/record the midi for the whole song.

[eilios]

Firstly, I need to pick a DAW. I tried FL Studio, and made a few basic songs, but I’m not sure if it’s the right program for me. I’m looking for a program in which I can synthesize realistic sounding music without hardware. I want to be able to write and figure out the sequence of notes on the piano, and then apply different realistic sounding instruments to the series of notes.

It can be done pretty simply, but to make it "realistic sounding"(assuming you're using sims) is a rather complicated manner.

By realistic, I mean non-midi sounding.

Technically, MIDI files have no sound. See below:

I read something about “running” midis “though” sound libraries or sample libraries, but I’m not sure what that means or how to go about doing it. Is FL Studio capable of doing that?

Most definitely. It's how a lot of people get started(openin' up a MIDI file and pokin' around with the notation) with remixing(myself included). In FL Studio, this is done by simply opening the MIDI file you wish to open(if you have one). Alternatively, you can hook a midi signal and have it taken as input for another VST to deal with(live), or record MIDI stuff into a MIDI Out channel and save the data(later, you can edit some of the note values too if you want to deal with imperfections) then later hook the notes into a different synth(or you can just copy the note values into another synth's channel).

Keep in mind though, that what you refer to as "midi sounding" is doing just that. It's running the sound through a bunch of generic lo-fi synths. It won't sound realistic at all, but it gives you a general idea.

Secondly, I had a few terminology questions. If I understand correctly, a sequencer simply allows you to map out your music in terms of a sequence of notes. A synthesizer allows you to create infinite different sounds by changing frequencies, and waves, etc, correct? What then is a mixer and sampler? Where do they fit into the big picture?

You're right about the Sequencer/Synthesizer(although it's not really infinite, it's just an incredibly high amount). A mixer is a tool that's used to take sound input from a number of sources and then arrange them in a logical(if used properly!) manner, later to apply effects to or change individual sound values. A sampler is a program that loads sample files of different instruments(formats vary, but a common one is soundfonts) and plays them. Kontakt and sfz are both popular samplers.

Say I write a simple song on the piano, and I want to digitize it, add some bass and some percussion, and make it somewhat realistic sounding. What would be a good DAW for this?

Honestly? Any of them, really. There's no "best DAW" for any situation. You can make good music in anything if you know how to, and the differences can be dealt with if you're willing to deal with it.

[Frederic Petitpas]

[........]

[mickomoo]

certain DAWs lend themselves to having more options than others, but it sounds like you're looking for something pretty basic. something like FL, mixcraft, or even garage band is pretty much plug and play. You could get a midi keyboard (or any keyboard with a usb/midi out) a cheap daw and some starter VST (sample and/or synth) libraries and just play around. You probably will need to invest in VST libraries and a keyboard for sure