[immi]

Hey, sorry about the off topic post, but i guess producing music on the computer could be considered a form of digital art.

Additionally, i know this was covered awhile back, when the forum first got started, but I thought i'd revisit it.

First off, I have no musical experience whatsoever, but i have an interest in trying to create it. It just seems, if you're creative, your creativity usually applies to more than one area. I'm wondering if music could be one of mine. Doubtful, but still im interested in fooling around.

So, my question. Anybody have any recommendations on software packages (preferably available for a trial download) which enables you to create music. Ya know, add a drumbeat, add some guitars, that sorta shit.
cheers

[-moebius-]

There are tons of programs out there these days...

It really depends on what you are doing on the computer. If you are recording from live instruments, the only program you will really need are an editor and a decent mixer...

Pro Tools are cool... anything from Sonic Foundry rocks... (Acid 2.0 and Soundforge are my best friends!)

Now, if you are looking to construct music, well then you need something more along the lines of a sequencing programs. Shit, there are millions of those out there... and I really hate everyone of them except for one little gem called Fastracker II.. Its totally freeware, and it constructs mods. Yes, mods suck to produce anything of decent quality -- or do they? Ft2 can use wav files as samples; get some decent sounding samples, and you won't be able to tell.

It DOES take a lot of experience and ingenuity to get live instruments sounding well on a sequencing program - especially with ft2... all I have to say to that is to just play with it. That's all I did...

I dunno, I don't really produce anything than trance and jungle in ft2... I tend to work with Acid (combo with wav and midi) for "live" sounding music (usually orchestral).

A great place to head for mods is the modarchive.com... as for editors, I highly recommend sonicfoundry.com

Of course, none of these programs will replace a real synth, beatbox, mixer, and let's not forget the instruments themselves But when you combine all of them together -- wow, you're head spins....

just some quick advice...

~moebius
~nicolas wish

[mobiuz]

one word....Buzz

get it at http://www.buzztrack.com

and get all the updates, betas, etc at http://www.jeskola.com

basically, it's the same as Ft2, cept for windows, and it allows the use of "machines" to generate your sounds, and effects for well....applying effects

soft synths: I'd say go with Reaktor (but beware, it's mighty cpu hungry) get a demo at http://www.native-instruments.com

mastering, etc: sound forge is my fav, but if you don't have the money to shell out for it, then I'd say go with cooledit or goldwave.

and, if you ever planning on doing MIDI work, I'd suggest gettin Cubase or Logic Audio, but they're really quite pointless unless you have MIDI equipment to run them from

and as far as pro tools goes....never used it...hi end stuff tho, quite expensive, and Mac only I think.

another good place to look for computer-based music is http://www.maz-sound.com, it's got all the latest demos and all that good stuff

aight, well, have fun

mobiuz www.mp3.com/mobiuz www.drumandbass.cc

[CyberArtist]

The MOD music scene seems like a good place to go. Rather competative, but awfully friendly from what I hear.

ModPlug Central is the homepage for an excellent MOD plug in for Netscape/IE, as well as a stand alone player (for which it's probably more famous for) and one of the few windows based trackers available.

MOD music is short for modular music format, a brethren of midi created on the old Amiga platform. At the time it was one of the few (if not the only) personal computer that had a dedicated sound chip powerful enough to mix user defined sounds in hardware in real-time. The music from that little chip sounds harsh by today's terms with our nice sounding midi and .mp3s, but still some wonderful music was created by the digital musicians of the time.

MODs sound a whole lot better today, and come in many different formats... .s3m (Scream Tracker 3 Modules), .it (Impulse Tracker Modules), and .mod (basically an older, more general format from what I can tell). This type of music was used in games like the popular Crack.com side scroller Abuse, and the last 4-5 games Epic Megagames made (UT being the most recent), if not more of them.

www.modarchive.com is a good place to look for mods if you want to see what they can do, and http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/126/kosmic_art.html (formerly http://www.kosmic.org ) is a music club of sorts where hundreds of artist can release their music for mass consumtion and exposure (now appears to be mostly .mp3s, but if you check out the archives there are plenty of mods as they used to release purely that type of music).

And, about you question, I think that music is an art form as much as dancing, acting, and traditional art is. I'd love to see some people post some on this forum, though this is mainly a visual arts forum... but hey, people post non-digital scanned art, so who's to say we should ban non-visual art? If you you're really stuck on the matter, just download Geiss for WinAmp, who's to say it's not a visual art now, eh!?



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-CyberA(rtist) aka Ben Golus

Cyber...

[Muzman]

I've found using trackers to be like pulling teeth in the past. but I started out just mixing wave files together and making whole tracks that way (straightens out your mental arithemtic in a hurry) For multi wave file triggering I still like fruityloops a hell of a lot. The trick is what to do for sounds; there are millions of samples on the net for sure but you'll be wanting to make your own. As people have mentioned Soundforge is great, but so are Goldwave and Cool edit. You end up collecting them because they have different little quirks and effects that nothing else does quite the same. Soft synths are in abundance; you end up collecting them as well (well I do).
Really, nothing beats being able to physically play the actual notes from time to time too, so I recommend getting a keyboard of some sort sooner or later (if you don't already)
check out www.synthzone.com for info on all of the above
(I'll try and think of some better info too)
and granulab is great

[tanis]

This is my scope. I'm an active musician (aka guitar player) and I studied hard for quite some years to reach the "right" way to play. As a musician, I can assure you that many if not most of the MOD composers in the scene aren't real musicians and don't even know how to play a single instrument. If you think you've got some talent with music you should first of all learn to play an instrument (be it a piano, guitar, sax, or whatever.. even singing!) and then approach music on the PC. Doing the inverse and starting up with digital music can only bring you to be a sort of techno-alike-clone. Music theory is fundamental for compositing. Get a grasp at basic music theory and playing stuff and you are going to learn what's needed to start making your own music. I can't state hard enough how important it is not to start putting up waves and samples and try to fit them all to create a song.


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C'ya!

Valerio Santinelli a.k.a. TANiS
[email protected]

[immi]

Cheers guys. Taken into consideration.

[Nex]

Well I am musican too so I'll add my junk here.

First of all you should have a huge CD collection if you want to make music. The more you hear (and really listen to) the more you learn. Especially quality music (i mean from real musicans) can help to understand a lot.

There are times when I dig something up from my cd stack and play it, just to find that there is one line or one sound in the background that I did not hear before. You really can profit a lot from listening closely. Hear what the keyboard plays, listen to the bassline, the drums the groove, guitar, vocals etc and try to isolate them from the rest of the song.
As stupid as it may sound, but there is more to even a britney spears tune than the average music consumer hears.

To be exact most of these acts (spears, aguilera to name some especially teeny type) have really good songwriters that know their craft and (regardless if the text sound like "ooh yeah baby.." ) you can learn even from them.

just for protocol: this is not my personal musical taste.

As tanis said, learning music therory is inevitable if you want to make music.
I would recommend learning to play the keyboard/piano at least basically so you can play some chords.

(if you are interrested I could provide you with some material to start with, just drop me a mail if you want)

I don't know what your musical taste is, but there are some styles that trackers (I prefer modplug tracker software by the way) cannot do well. This includes rock music. Sampled guitars almost always sound like crap unless you sample every single phrase as a separate sample.

so I recommend:

1) download a tracker and some samples.

2) pick a song that you like from your cd collection and try to reproduce the drumgroove as close as possible.

this will take you some time, believe me

I'm curious what you will come up with.

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- Nex

http://on.to/nex

[This message has been edited by Nex (edited August 01, 2000).]

[immi]

nufink

[This message has been edited by immi (edited August 01, 2000).]

[-moebius-]

Tanis, you obviously have no idea what you are talking about.

You are looking at the really bad mods out there... I could point one mod out to you that would make all of your musical training seem feeble and worthless when you look at how detailed, and artistically composed some of the music the mod scene has produced.

its all in your current level of skill. that's all it is. Composition is composition. Do NOT confuse composition with playing a piece of music. And though one song of a certain genre may sound like another, believe me, they are probably more different than your ear is trained to hear. If not, then that composer doesn't have an adequate skill yet. Or maybe he/she does and didn't feel like doing something original (as is this case all of the time with all art, no?

I'm not going to flame any more than that, and I apologize in advance for that. Its just that I hate seeing ignorant and close-minded statements such as that.

does an artist have to be taught what colors mixed together create what colors in order to produce something beautiful? I think not - the artist only needs to know what works and what doesn't... he/she can always just fuck around until they find the correct color. Creating something that works is by far the bigger challenge. And that is something that cannot be taught all at once, but only with experience....

[k]

Im a gutarist and I use to have a keyboard.

I had the Korg M1 and i use to sequence stuff from Depechemode, camouflage, etc...

until one day some bastard broke into my house and stole it.

My parents wouldnt buy me a new one and I swore that after I got a job in the industry, Ill get myself a kool a keyboard.

In the mean time I playing my kool cheap Gibson Epiphone

And I hate stock sounds. You gotta make your own types of sounds. Mix and Match and sequence all of my own stuff.

[This message has been edited by k (edited August 01, 2000).]

[Dean Welsh]

Cubase VST! CUBASE!!!!! I love CUBASE!!!


and if you just want something fun to play around with Look for Rebirth.

[proximo]

Well i find mix man studio to be a fun and easy program to use, i mean if you want to make techno and what not .. and they have a demo i think .. mixmanstudios.com or maybe its mixman.com .. one of them i think but its cool ..