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Post by 4real on Feb 14, 2011 17:39:28 GMT -5
Hi fellow nutz....
Well, I finally lashed out and got a new computer with the intention of using it for a few projects and of course sound recording. I've attempted such things before basically, and I got a stand alone R-600 a while back but done little recording on it though it is very good in many ways.
The machine is a powerful ASUS N73JQ laptop...so replacing the desktop machine. 17" screen (big for a laptop), decent sound for a laptop...2x500GB internal drives, 12GB Ram(!), i7 quad core processor, 1GB graphics...so a powerful machine!
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So...now on to the software...running windows 7 64 bit...
I have an Edirol UA-25 audio capture/midi USB Box. I finally located the appropriate windows 7 driver and that seems to be loaded ok.
I had a look and downloaded REAPER, ANVIL and have had a light version of SONAR (cakewalk) beofre (though reduced in capacity and features and unlikely to make use or even run on this OS)...
I have though been quite taken with MIXCRAFT 5 and looking like going in that direction. There seem to be a lot of great features and included things like Virtual Instruments, loops and a clean layout...designed to be kind of a garage band for windows to some extent. Comes with a good looking amp simulator package as well, shredmaster, and lots of effect tools as well.
I particularly like that it can work with video as well which is the direction i'd like to go in...some steep learning curves! I ahve some ambitious projects in mind, but it will take a while.
Anyway, thoughts and opinions...perhaps something on the level of features I will need to upgrade it to as there are a few variations and reasonable costs.
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Otherwise, machine seems to be running ok, it takes hours of course to set things up.
Have loaded GUITAR PRO 6 with the RSE engine and the machine doesn't miss a beat. Hopefull it will allow me to do some stuff and share without having to use that tacky ASCII tab and not time indications or bars. I might even use it as an editor and load the midi from there into the main DAW.
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Any tips advice, opinions or suggested software or techniques...on the audi, visual or even general computing would be appreciated.
I've switched from the old microsoft suite to OpenOffice and use Firefox and Thunderbird for internet and email. Not yet made a decision on security...those things tend to get messy with conflicts it seems, but i guess i should protect it as best i can afford.
Any advice would be appreciated...it was a real stretch to go this powerful, but I am hoping for some 'future' proofing. Being a laptop, at least if I get one of the frequent power outages, the machine will keep running!
pete
oh...and on a budget. Likely monitor through headphones, I can take a line out to a compact stereo from the UA-25 which tends to be quite effective though the computers sound is very good on it's own.
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Post by JohnH on Feb 14, 2011 21:30:51 GMT -5
congrats on your new box. In my family, we have had no problems using only the free AVG security programs, to augment the Windows systems, and even my teenage kids are OK too!.
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Post by 4real on Feb 14, 2011 21:51:54 GMT -5
Thanks john...it's very shiny...hard to get used to a laptop keyboard at my typing speed, developing a whole new set of typos and the ,mouse pad, has a mind of it's own. I had been using AVG on the old machine but it seemed to be popping up a lot of stuff there and not fixing things when things really do go wrong...but that machine had developed a lot of problems, so perhaps i will give it a go. Windows 7 seems to be a lot more stable and security savvy...but i guess i should get on to it...it takes days to load all this stuff into the machine, drivers this, defaults that... I'm quite taken with the Mixcraft 5 program and it is not that expensive for what you get really... www.acoustica.com/mixcraft/index.htmplus the amp package... www.acoustica.com/mixcraft/shred-effect-virtual-guitar-amp-simulator.htmhopefully this is not just a lot of super saturated digial distortions sounds and they can model a nice fender perhaps... Im tempted by the "pro' version at $150 but for less than $100 you could get the full program plus the drum machine program and drum sample sets...so...hmmm... These kinds of things seem to be far more intuitive and useful than the kinds of things offered by programs such as reaper...i'm sure there is a lot of techy routing one could do...but in the end of the day it would be nice to just be able to plug in a play to a beat and edit out mistakes...
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Post by Yew on Feb 15, 2011 12:17:02 GMT -5
Sounds a nice little pc... dont know what use you will have for 12 gig of ram though :/
Audacity is a nice little program (and free) maybe use that for a while until you decide on what you want to buy (what features you use etc)
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Post by 4real on Feb 15, 2011 16:11:51 GMT -5
Thanks Yew....I've had Audacity on the old computer for a long time and it is still a useful basic program...but extremely basic in a lot of ways.
I've been playing around with this Mixcraft thing which seems like a good layout and standard features...plus the video editing/syncing feature.
I'd particularly use things like midi in lots of ways...I prefer to be able to read it in music notation and edit like that than some piano roll for instance. Edit the midi with audio tracks. Have and to use virtual instruments and sampled songs with it.
On even the most basic level, with proper midi editing and sampled sounds, you could *steal* midi files from the net including drum and keyboard tracks, strip them of the more cheesy aspects and change the sounds to some real instruments...'instant' backing tracks...or cut and paste for new songs.
At the very least, drums and percussion that can be edited inside the program and use sampled sounds is important.
Strangely enough, midi drums tend to be a little neglected in a lot of these programs or an add on. The basic full Mixcraft5 has a bundle for a few dollars more that includes the beatcraft program and sample kits...but not in the Pro version that is twice as much! A lot of programs have very little that integrates well...though this is not insurmountable.
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I imagine in general use, I'd lay down a basic beat...compose some riffs or sequences to it and play a basic rhythmn track and melody, riffs etc...use the recorder as a note pad to store some of these ideas. Adjust the drum track to vary and better follow the guitar parts. Perhaps replace some of the backing with keyboard or orchestral sounds. Tweak the parts more. Take the best melodic and solo ideas...use the backing band to practice with, record any magic moments along the way.
Complete a finished recording....then tweak the sounds, amp sims and effects...then master mix the whole track...this will require mixer automation and useful effects like reverbs, delays and compressors. Have a recording to keep, make edited recordings for playing along to (perhaps storing the backing band in a dedicated MP3 player for practice sessions and perfecting the performance 'live'), have the capcity to mute out other instruments and parts for other player to learn, perhaps isolate those parts or if midi, transfer to notation software.
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Part of the rational for spending so much for so much power in the computer is future proofing. We have all see things become obsolete pretty darn fast and need ever more memory and storage capacity.
As for RAM...they say you can't have too much LOL. This machine was not only reduced in price from retail, but came with a bonus 6BG ram to max capacity for the machine.
The power and ram is more for things like the photographic side of things and this is a huge step up from what I was using before to even see pics.
The key to a lot of pictures are to simply be in the right place at the right time...you need a bit of an 'eye' and studying what you have done, the happy mistakes and the ones that didn't work out so well...and taking a lot of pictures is kind of the key. My camera has an 8GB card in it that I fill regularly, that's over 3,000 pics right there. You need the speed to adequately review and save such things...let alone manipulate them should i get into that side of things. I've started to use the computer for this kind of thing and it is so much easier and quicker to do even the most basic resizing and viewing.
Combining the two is likely to need a bit more power...Mixcraft for instance can do basic video editing right inside program as if it's own 'track' and be edited and cross faded just like you would an audio track...that's pretty impressive.
Once I get some of this under my belt, I'd really like to explore these areas, combining images and sounds and burning DVDs and the like. Perhaps using images to inspire music or conversely adding images to music. Baby steps at first of course.
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It is easy to get carried away of course though, for a lot of this stuff I need things to be fairly intuitive and clean. I'm probably not likely to need to route things all over the place, ideally the amp sims would be enough to not require micing real amps but be fairly true to the sounds I do and can create live.
A lot of these things seem to be aimed at 'dance music' and synth and beat manipulation and overblown with features for that kind of thing.
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I'm also thinking of building some kind of 'workstation' to keep all the music making stuff set up so I can just add the computer, plug in and go.
But it's a new adventure and lots to learn.
Just having Guitar Pro 6 running on it will be a great help for noting down ideas and sharing things. One cool thing you can do with GP is again, download midi tracks into it (GP tracks are midi based) and it will try and fret it. Remove a lot of the excess parts, work out a practical way of playing the essential bits...then you will have a transcription that you can hear to work out piano riffs or horn parts on the guitar...inspiring different approaches and techniques.
Running old versions of GP on a slow machine is very time consuming and frustrating...with this thing it is 'instant'...and I can have such projects running happily at the same time as working on other things or the net.
Anyway...have to justify having it as money is tight and it is an indulgence. I thought it better to get as much power and as well made (it's case is aluminium) a machine with a decent sized screen as i could reasonably afford and save money on the software side for most tasks. I will have to get a mouse though, this pad seems to ahve a mind of it's own...and the keyboard is nice, but as I can type a bit, it is taking a bit to get used to...you may notice a whole new set of idiocincratic typos...
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Post by lunaalta on Feb 15, 2011 16:33:12 GMT -5
You might take look at reaper, I believe it has fairly good midi facilities and at a good price (free), LOL.
I started off using Audacity about 5 years ago, then moved on to Krystal Audio Engine (also free but no midi), now I'm using Sonar 7.
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Post by cynical1 on Feb 15, 2011 19:30:22 GMT -5
I tried Reaper a few years ago. When it worked it was fine, but it had a nasty habit of flaking out and locking the entire machine up.
I've been using an old copy of Sonar Producer 6. So far it's run every vst and vsti I've thrown at it. I did have to play with the latency settings, but after a week I had it nailed and haven't moved them since.
With 12 GB of RAM you might want to consider setting up a ramdisk for your virtual memory swapping. The OS and your apps will never pull all 12 GB, but they will drop to vm readily. I think that will give you a recognizable performance boost.
HTC1
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Post by roadtonever on Feb 16, 2011 13:01:42 GMT -5
Congrats on a new powerful rig! Since no one mentioned plugins here are some good sites for finding free plugins: www.gersic.comwww.audiomastermind.comfreemusicsoftware.orgEspecially good IMHO are some analogue modelled compressors out there, sound sweet and sometimes fun as a realtime effect, they interact with the dynamics of your playing in a way digital compressors of yesteryear never could. There are some good reverbs out there as well. For amp sims I'm partial to Amplitube and Vandal but there are many good freebies to be found as well.
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Post by 4real on Feb 16, 2011 13:22:47 GMT -5
Cool!
I've been watching some vids of some of the effects included with Mixcraft...their inbuilt compressors seem very cool and the demos from Acoustica really show how these can make a great effect to a track or mix.
As I have the power and space on this thing, I will be looking for more of these 'natural' effects (over the more dance oriented filters and such) as well as any amp sims, particularly fairly clean or distinctive amp models. I suspect i have plenty of power and space to run a few...so thanks for the links.
What I am looking into is how best to handle drum programming. Ideally i'd like to be able to tweak the drum patterns in response to other elements of the music...so just using loops which i am not that familiar with might be limited...so i am guessing Midi. Now, do I need a drum machine, if so what works well and sounds more human while still being intuitive to use and integrate well into the DAW. Also, need to find suitable sampled real sounds over those dance oriented 808's and such electronic sounds that they seem to prefer. I gather that most software drum machines allow for the loading of wave sounds or something...any thought on this side of things.
On an enquiry about this aspect and not including their 'beatcraft' program with the pro version, they offered me a discount coupon to purchase both which was nice.
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Post by Yew on Feb 16, 2011 13:52:42 GMT -5
Here is a little online drum machine, not exactly what your looking for, but it could be a bit of fun
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Post by ashcatlt on Feb 16, 2011 15:05:56 GMT -5
If you really want to keep the machine clean and get max performance, never connect it to the internet. Don't install "security software" and disable all networking services. Go in and disable all services which are not essential - print spoiler and all that other crap. If you need something from the Internet downed it to some other machine, run a good virus scan, and then transfer via USB jump drive. I was very upset when I found out that Pod hardware and software had to "phone home" over the net before it would work. Luckily, this was a one time activation procedure.
Of course, you put a bunch of money into it and probably wan to actually use it. With the power you've got, it probably won't need stripped down that way.
Google AKit. It's a cheap, natural sounding set of drum instruments. It's A kit, though, so a pretty limited sound set. I use EZDrummer, a bit more expensive, but sounds great.
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Post by cynical1 on Feb 16, 2011 20:59:31 GMT -5
I'm with Ash, EZ Drummer is the way to go. There are a load of preset patterns, plus tons of places to grab patterns off the Internet. The patterns are simple to edit within Sonar or Cubase, or pretty much any MIDI sequencing app.
The integral mixer for the drums, plus the ability to render tracks individually to prevent bleed through is very handy.
Down the road you can pickup expansion drum kits and MIDI patterns to really fill out your virtual drummer.
HTC1
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Post by 4real on Feb 16, 2011 22:58:41 GMT -5
Thanks guys... Looked at A Kit, built for windows XP but only $20....hmmm EZ Drummer is one of the most popular and most mentioned, a lot of tweaking available that I probably wouldn't need in the kit (mic placements and such) at least not to begin with...plus the cost is pretty high for the basic program and then there's the temptation to keep spending...hmmm Think I might spring for the beatcraft basic drum machine interface... www.acoustica.com/beatcraft/index.htmwork up later, I'm not after all a drummer...LOL ... Otherwise no major problems so far with things, took a while to get the drivers working for USB interface, but ok now...i hope... will try GIMP for photos so there is a saving there... Otherwise, no cant afford extra machines dedicated to these things...this machine handles anything i'm likely to throw at it. Saved money by using open office, gimp and other such software... From the tutorials and such, Mixcraft 5 is the easiest to get my head around and reasonably powerful and featured, great professional tutorials and support and a fair cost...plus it seems to take a lot of common VST and such, so expandable as required. It is billed as 'garage band' for windows...plus it does video editing inside the DAW so you got to like that!
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Post by cynical1 on Feb 17, 2011 0:23:37 GMT -5
EZ Drummer is one of the most popular and most mentioned...the cost is pretty high for the basic program and then there's the temptation to keep spending...hmmm Buy it right and you only have to buy it once... If you're not a drummer you might want to re-think Beatcraft. I played with it for a few months and just popped the coin for EZ Drummer. Best $99.00 I ever spent on music software. HTC1
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Post by 4real on Feb 17, 2011 2:32:57 GMT -5
True...I see prices at $178...$94 each for expansion packs...but you might be right...
You can get Mixcraft complete for $75 and download midi files into it...$95 for the whole DAW plus Beatcraft and two additional CDs of sampled sounds for the $20 extra. I thought it odd though that the Pro version which adds some nice effects, a sampled grand piano and more virtual synths costs $150, but does not include a drum program. On an enquiry, they offered $15 off which again brings beatcraft down to about $20 so probably worth having.
I'm sure EZ drummer is better in a lot of ways and the beats by known artists is tempting, but I am thinking that a drum machine interface might be an easier introduction and always useful at that price.
The whole 'package' probably ends up being around $170. The keyboards and effects seem particularly useful and could do a lot with drums once in the DAW...I am particularly taken though with the video editing side of the thing and it's ease of use.
I'm not entirely sure where this will take me and there is a big learning curve...messing about with mike placements might be getting a little too detailed at this stage and hold up progress. The mid term plan is to combine images and original music onto DVDs for starters.
One good thing is that with any luck I'll be able to more easily 'plug in and play' and share some stuff with you guys...proper notation and perhaps Guitar pro files if you are lucky...LOL...and some demos of the different options and sounds on my three guitars.
The cost of these things, though money is tight, is so much cheaper than real life hardware...a good shure SM57 would cost almost $200 just to mike my amp....this thing has an amp suite and as people point out, there are other products and free ones too out there to add to that. Imagine the cost of mikes to mic a whole drum kit properly.
I'll download the beatcraft demo and see how i like it as a basic machine i imagine.
I got a 500GB drive to back up the audio video things...this machine even has USB3 which is ten times faster when such drives become more available.
So far i've been pretty happy with the cheaper/free open source programs I'm switching too. Open ofiice seems to do enough, always used firefox and thunderbird anyway...downloaded GIMP as a photoshop like program...gone with Avira for security (I had some bad experiences with AVG in the past and is running on my last machine, it tended to take over things a bit)...but if there are any other must have programs you can think of.
Need something to manipulate slide shows to turn stills into videos for instance...will have to work out the kinds of files Mixcraft would accept to edit (the idea is to 'score' them like a film...kind of Video postcard kind of concept aimed for next summer when the tourists come back).
Its an exciting endeavour, but as i say, so much to learn...so appreciate all the advice and support from you guys...who knows, if i make any money from it, I could tax deduct things and go nuts for teh second 'album'...LOL
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Post by 4real on Feb 17, 2011 5:37:55 GMT -5
I downloaded and had a bit of a play with Beatcraft and I'm quite impressed really. A few kits, mostly dance stuff so will require some new sounds I guess, but the basic thing is very intuitive and far easier to use and flexible than my quite decent boss drum machine. Triplets, swing, unlimited tracks...but most impressive is the arrangement area that fits together like a jigsaw puzzle.
I'm not sure what the interface for programs like EXD is like but really i'm after something that can put together a basic track fast, then replace it with something more tweaked later so I can concentrate on the creative side and playing the real instruments. My past experiences have been with the BR-900 computer interface (not too bad, easier than the machine) and old programs like Hammerhead...way to basic for anything human sounding and the arrangement thing is really hard without the kind of graphic interface you get with something like this.
Anyway...looks like that decision has been made for now...I believe they have had some upgrades and the program you tired may have been tweaked slightly.
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Post by 4real on Feb 18, 2011 1:38:43 GMT -5
Ah...I see what you guys mean about EZ Drummer...watched a vid ...'from a song writers perspective"...really the two programs are completely different BC for loops and EZD a full midi...it is expensive though.
The main reason for the big price hike on pro is the sampled steinway...useful but the standard comes with multiple quality rhoades (I used to own a real one, lol) and hammond B# so perhaps I am getting greedy there.
I can see now the advantages of keeping the drums in a midi for rather than creating a whole song loop...you can change sounds more easily to the track as things progress on the fly and mix and process the drums as required, without having to create a whole new loop with alterations (without the track present), re render and hope it all lines up again....hmmm
Will have to consider this more closely. It does sound good...
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Post by cynical1 on Feb 18, 2011 7:32:37 GMT -5
It really is night and day. Beatcraft is not the worst interface, but it is very limited for song production.
I spent about 30 minutes with EZ Drummer and I was ready to go. I've been playing with it for a while now and have to admit, aside from Superior Drummer 2.0, it's the best drum MIDI app out there for the money for the average guy looking to record at home.
It may seem expensive, but in the long run you can put a solid drum track together in a very short time, tweak it as you go, and have a very respectable drum track that will fool most people into thinking you really do have a drummer living in your basement...
In Sonar I can set the MIDI track and have an output audio track that allows for adding standard vst's to it. You can also split the kit into 8 different tracks for a finer mix.
Honestly, the best sales tool for EZ Drummer is 3 months with Beatcraft. The better tools make the job easier and the finished product that much better.
Happy Trails
Cynical One
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Post by 4real on Feb 18, 2011 8:02:50 GMT -5
LOL...I getting the picture and being convinced...although they are kind of different things...
I was wondering though, do you have to use their patterns or can you load midi file patterns from midi songs into ez drummer of the Daw wih EZD sounds?
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Post by ashcatlt on Feb 18, 2011 12:09:00 GMT -5
I never use the patterns that come with EZDrummer. Not that there's anything wrong with them, but they're a bit conventional for the kinds of things I do. You can almost think of it as two different things.
1) A powerful, flexible, and great sounding massively multi-sampled drum sound VSTi. Bring it up in your DAW, assign a MIDI track (or set of tracks) to it, and go.
2).A pretty good and diverse set of MIDI patterns. These you drag and drop onto a MIDI track (or set of tracks) and arrange as desired. You actually don't even have to send these through the EZDrummer VSTi. Use another drum program, or get really whacky and send it to glockenspiel or something. At this point it's just MIDI events which you can edit and manipulate using your DAW's tools.
I do sometimes use a program called Jammer, which nowadays is a really powerful system for creating full band backing tracks in various styles. I was actually overwhelmed with the newer versions and ended up downgrading back to the simpler earlier version. Basically, you can lay out a tempo/time sig map, assign a key (or keys), and either put in the chord changes or let it randomly choose some. Bring up a band style (which can change as often as you like through the piece) and it will create parts for the various instruments. If your not happy with the defaults, it's pretty easy to add different instruments and manipulate the style by "mixing" any number of styles for each instrument. Nowadays I use it mostly for drums. It is a standalone MIDI program without any sounds of its own. You have to find a way to route the MIDI output to a DAW or VST host in order to hear what it's doing. Then you save it to a .mid file and import into your DAW for further manipulation and mix.
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Post by roadtonever on Feb 18, 2011 17:54:11 GMT -5
A few more things that came to mind as I skimmed through the thread: Great site for general for PC software, security, system tools etc: www.techsupportalert.com/I've relied on it for years and never get disappointed. Don't take for granted software packages with some computer oriented audio gear if you happen to be in the market for it. These turn a good deal into a great deal sometimes.
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Post by 4real on Feb 18, 2011 18:35:53 GMT -5
Thanks guys, especially Ash and C1, your experience is invaluable.
Many years ago I used to run an old version of Band in a Box. An interesting tool, but somewhat specialized and directed towards improv and jazz.
Thanks for confirming that you can use the sounds from EZD with any midi sequence...this i can see is vital and there is some more i need to learn there about VSTs and working midi with these tools over the old days in which my experience was limited regardless.
Jammer looks a little different to BiaB and potentially worth looking at. Need to find out a little more about it perhaps.
The intention is to produce a powerful but easy to use studio composing tool with perhaps some video capabilities. It's a ambitious endeavour that will take some time to build the necessary skills. However, I am wary of getting too far away from the creative process of making music and straying too much into learning what are effectively completely new instruments to do it.
It will enable me to explore a diversity of areas though if successful. The initial aim though , is a set up that allows for a 'plug in an play' situation to explore a range ideas from conventional song/tune writing to something more like film scoring ideas.
The other thing was my experience with jamming with this bass player for the last year, now disrupted due to work commitments. With this approach, much more fulfilling ideas could be explored with other musicians, a more elaborate sound, and a way of sharing ideas and capturing them...more productivity when we are able to get together, and the ability to work things out when we cant.
I am on a limited budget though and things can get 'out of control'. I have a decent UA-25 usb interface, the sonar LE that came with it was a bit limited and not the best interface...nor work with this OS I suspect as it is getting on now. It will allow 2 channels in and midi as well as a nice limiter built in and able to take the sound from that to monitor or headphones. This machine is fast, but may have to find a work around any latency issues....will get to that if they are a problem. I want to keep the "hardware' down to a minimum, I have a cheap casio keyboard that may do basic midi to enter notes and I can write in notations as well as import from elsewhere.
The drum side of things though is important...so am working on that. EXD does sound like a good solution. Not sure if something like Jammer is not going to sound a little generic with out a lot of work but it could be useful on first glance.
In composing, one of the 'problems' is that often things are approached from just one angle, like a beat based tune, or the chords as the basis...and then the rest of the music kind of follows that instead of reacting to each other as with real musicians and songwriting processes where one reacts and changes parts as things develop. Looping things with a machine like Beatcraft I can see may well limit this and again things can get a little 'generic' and loop orientated. There is a place for that, and for starting out could be great..but I can see that particularly with drums, you'd be wanting to do a lot of post editing and changing of ideas and it looks like EZD and MIDI is the way to go there.
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Post by JFrankParnell on Feb 18, 2011 19:05:17 GMT -5
Another drummer worth checking out is Addictive Drums. Does the same as the rest. Has really good beats, some of which are assembled into e.g. 16 measure songs, so its easier than finding all the verse,chorus,fills, etc that go together. Also, the mixer is really cool, each drum has comp, eq, etc, and you can add fx to each drum and or the OH, Room, and Main buss.
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Post by 4real on Feb 18, 2011 19:52:57 GMT -5
Hmmm....A Drums is $250 plus extension packs for different styles...i'm sure it is good, but is it that good compared to say EZD which seems to be extremely impressive in terms of both sounds, variety of sounds and the players hitting the things and providing real performance fills?
One thing i am wary about is falling into the trap I hear with most home recorded stuff is that they start with a conventional beat bed and then build the music to it. This is valid, but limited. A band such as the beatles for instance, and really great songs, tended to have a song and build the arrangement and ideas from that basis and the beat being appropriate to the music and not the other way around. Similar with composer generators, it will produce what is expected perhaps and limit the imagination.
I think that we all recognise some of these symptoms for all the power and production values available today, a lot of music does tend to sound somewhat the 'same' and generic and sounds often as if taken from the same machines...even more so in the home studio environment where people can make great sounds but rely heavily on the fills and patterns and structures programmed into the same machines and recycling material. I hope to try and avoid that to some extent and arrange tools that will allow a more natural creative 'environment'. Still, the studio is it's self a complicated instrument, so a lot to learn...
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Post by JFrankParnell on Feb 18, 2011 21:23:33 GMT -5
or looking at it the other way round, you might wind up with something unexpected (and hopefully cool) by auditioning beats to go with your song.
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Post by 4real on Feb 18, 2011 23:32:10 GMT -5
True...all ways of working are valid. Just for me, unless you are doing a very beat oriented dance type thing, or standard 'rock song' thing...one tends to play along with a pre-made and envisioned drum track and try and fit in with it, instead of the other way around. It is natural to start with a basic rhythm thing I think, but too often or by necessity you have to live with the result and it wont change along with the ideas as they emerge.
I can see that with something like a midi/sampling program like EXD of AD and others, you can significantly alter and edit and swap in tracks as needs arise. With more loop based things, at least at this stage, perhaps harder to do...still, maybe combining the two approaches might be a good thing to.
Music can be a difficult thing to work with, quite different from a lot of other arts. The use of these machines really does change the traditional approaches potentially. I was talking to a ceramics artist yesterday where you can continually work with a physical object over an extended time where as 'live' music tends to be quite different. Juggling all the elements is very hard in music really, to concentrate on teh moments while still keeping the big picture in mind.
Early days with this kind of thing, but I do need to keep it simple and within a reasonable budget and simple enough that it allows one to get back to playing the music rather than the technology. But all things are valid and a way of working things will evolve I dare say...
Not sure how other people work. I'm anticipating a basic time keeping drum track, recording a basic sketch track of a song or parts of a song, then building up and replacing things as required. Something that has a more 'visual' basis might be trickier to construct as time and structure can vary greatly.
For a start a realistic sampled basic real instruments, some synth type things perhaps, mixing effects like NR and compression, reverb and delay...audio, midi sample and loop compatible, all in one area...plus the visual side of things...audio interface for real instruments.
I may also be working with 'spoken word' type things which tends to form the basis of time over 'beat' or the rhythms of conventional music so it will need to be able to adapt to that...I imagine such work is similar to that of film scoring and sound effects and takes a different approach
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Post by ashcatlt on Feb 19, 2011 2:19:30 GMT -5
I really like EZDrummer. Of course, I got the Twisted Kit refill, but I like the Cocktail Kit as well.
That said, I'd be much happier if I had the tuning capabilities that I remember from the Addictive Drums demo I had. It was a great program, but I just couldn't justify the expense.
Most of the time I record to a straight metronome on kick drum. Since I often play at snail's pace tempos I often set the DAW's tempo at double time and 8/4 so the measures line up correctly. The kick plays quarters, which are really eighths. This preserves MIDI resolution, which is tempo-based - "parts per quarter".
I record most all the instruments to this and then go back and either mouse in the drums or I have an M-Audio Axiom 25 that I can beat on if I get drunk enough.
That, or I tell the Jammer to play some full-measure fills and loop one or two bars worth.
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Post by 4real on Feb 19, 2011 4:38:03 GMT -5
Well, it's an exiting adventure to be embarking on I must say. Fortunately, I have some of the hardware like a decent audio capture and things have come a long way and continue to improve.
You've convinced me on the EZ drummer I think and those kits do look cool...seeing what I can do about going in this direction.
I suppose inevitably there might be some hardware things required down the track...some neutral monitoring perhaps and certainly some decent mic options need to be looked into.
The whole enterprise makes you listen to music differently as well, noticing the mix and techniques used to create space and life into a track.
As I am hoping eventually to mix the audio with visual images, I can feel the two merging which is kind of cool.
It's good to hear how others work with it though, there is no particular "right way" or approach more valid from the rest, and a lot depends on the kind of music and genre you are working on. All I can go on really is my old way of working years back bouncing tracks literally between two cassette decks Hoping to salvage some of these primitive recordings some time perhaps.
Once i get all this together i am expecting there to be some problems monitoring and such if there are going to be latency problems and such, especially if using simulators...but I guess I will learn...
Before I get to into it though, I have a feeling I should make sure everything is loaded in appropriate drives as I have a feeling now I am looking at samples and such...not to mention the recording data...things are going to take up a bit of space and be tricky to find if there are thousands of sounds and such.
This machine has a USB3 port and thinking now that a suitable big External HD drive might be a good investment in the longer run. I'm glad I went for as much computer power as I could manage though as it can handle most things well, including the photographic side of things. The screen is reasonably large too, but I may look to connect to the big TV with HDMI to make things more comfortable. I'm glad of going laptop too as the battery makes for a fail safe, should the power fail doesn't it...LOL...
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Post by JFrankParnell on Feb 19, 2011 12:55:06 GMT -5
oh, btw, I'm not sure if you've settled on a DAW yet, but Sonar comes with Session Drummer, which lacks in the user friendlyness dept. but does have great sound, like the rest. So, I dunno how that affects your bottom line...
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Post by 4real on Feb 20, 2011 23:22:19 GMT -5
I have been busy learning what I can, doing a bit of reading and finally got to explore the mixcraft demo in a bit more detail and try it out.
I had hoped i might "find" EZD but alas...I will put that on my "wish list' which is already growing while I get used to this program which includes a lot of loops and such as well as beatcraft for making machine loops...in the end real quality sounds and midi will be the way to go...there is some capacity to work with it and fairly decent internal sounds.
Some of the internal sounds are extremely good as are the virtual instruments and effects for a quick exploration.
The video side of it is amazing, I had not realized how far the technology had come like this. It's displayed exactly like an audio track as a row or stills but you can play and record while watching it in a small screen or full monitor...
I have got the UA-25 basically working. Is it possible to hear the track through the VST effects while playing, or are these only post production on the direct input sounds? The SHREDmaster suite is kind of basic but doesn't sound bad, mainly the presets are the predictable and a little overblown (like most effects) so will have to tweak my own settings and combination presets to suit my playing and guitars there.
Perhaps a good way of working would be to run direct into the UA-25 then out to an amp, run effects or whatever and then take a line out or mic the amp back into input two and a separate track...then process the direct guitar with modelled amp sims to get a wider variety of sounds or mix with the original guitar....sounds like a lot of cabling and not really 'plug and play' as I'd hoped it might be...hmmmm
So...how is this supposed to be done? It is early stages, I am monitoring out of the headphone out of the UA-25, for a while there I was getting the computers inbuilt mic making alien type sounds but seemed to have turned that off. But in recording, I am getting the direct guitar sound into the computer which is a bit 'dry'.
Midi also seems to be a bit of a delay there making 'performance' of internal sounds almost impossible. Maybe i am missing something here. I have yet to locate a MIDI cable and try out my very basic casio as a controller through the UA-25. I imagine i could use the internal sounds to monitor in real time on that and assign sounds internally after recording perhaps. The UA-25 is ASIO and wavRT compliant and the machine fast enough to get latency down to an extremely low rate...perhaps there is a lot here that I am not yet understanding.
Will have to spend a lot more time with this, but it is slowly coming together amongst other things I'm working on, hopefully all this will coalesce in my brain before it explodes. Fortunately Mixcraft is a lot faster to come to grips with than some other DAW's I have tried out in the past, am awaiting the full pro version by post (the pro's main extra is the sampled grand piano). From the earl stages of reading, this program can be linked to others and used at the same time on the same project so, in time I might explore those avenues.
I did look into all kinds of alternatives to EZD but you guys are right, there doesn't seem to be anything quite like it and is reasonably priced by comparison, but a lot more than the entire DAW so will have to wait till I have this all under control for now.
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