Hey I have a couple questions about the prod. software.

R

Rej

New member
When I look up information on programs I usually get this long-description, I was just wondering if someone could help me clear this up for me. Starting out in production, I was wondering what software does what? I understand that the less-professional pieces of software like acid, fruity loops and garageband are mainly loop based. But do the other peices of software like Logic, allow for straight software production? Or would i need to have some hardware or use some other software first? As you can see I'm pretty confused and I've used the search tool alot on the forums, but I haven't been able to clear my head of these questions.. if someone could point me to a link or help me out that would be much appreciated. I'm really interested in getting into production, but when I used Acid and GarageBand I felt like it was kind of limited.
 
I love Fl and I stillam trying to figure out to make a 32 beat 8 bar seqeunce( need help with that) but everything else is great. If you dotn have external hardware then you would need FL or something like reason to actucally make music. Cubase and those dont amke music jsut mix and seqeunce and things like that.
 
Fruity Loops and Acid are as professional as any other program. You must be thinkin' since it says loop-based you can only use loops, but that is not the case.
 
Rej said:
When I look up information on programs I usually get this long-description ...
Click to expand...
Yep. They figure that if you are about to drop several hundred dollars on a piece of software, you might actually be interested in knowing what it does ahead of time. ;)

They also have this weird idea that - since they are making software for professional and semi-professional musicians - that you might have a serious level of interest in knowing that kind of thing. Serious enough to actually read that stuff and take the time to understand it as well.

Those "long descriptions" tell you what the programs do. Some of it is written in technical language, but that's because they are selling a piece of music technology.

Expecting people to explain to you what that software does without using technical language is like asking someone to tell you what swimming is without mentioning water.

If you ever buy a hammer, you'll notice that it doesn't come with "free, simple instructions" on how to build every concievable thing you might possibly fasten together with nails. In fact, it probably won't even come with instructions on how to build a bird house.

That's becasue it's a tool, not a toy. Just like professional music software.

There's a word called experience. I know people don't like that word mentioned ... I didn't like it much when I was younger. I still don't like when I get involved with anything about which I don't have any experience ... about anything of which I am ignorant.

But whether you or I like the idea, there are things about which both you and I are ignorant. Presently, you are ignorant about music technology.

Ignorant. Not stupid. But that's something you can fix, if you have the drive to do so.

But you won't be able to fix it if you expect a "See Jane make beats" type of explanation about how everything works.

There are many good resources available for free. I can point you to many of them. But they all require (yes, I said require ... this isn't optional) you to stretch your brain and learn a lot of new things ... some of them possibly quite technical.

I know you can do it.
 
true.....HOWever, you also cant begin at the end. you dont need to know how many tracks, at what bitrate,polyphony,compressor settings, mastering techniques, etc.-if you dont know what a sequencer IS. the same way you dont need logic or pro tools if youve never made a loop or a melody. so yea, you need to learn, and those 'long' explanations might have terminolgy you dont understand. so what you need are explanations just as direct, but not as detailed. and forums like this should be a good place to get that kind of info. so you might wanna let us know what kinda music you wanna make, what kind of musical experience you have so far, your budget, your pc specs, etc. then we can give you some ideas.

my advice at this point, no matter what your aspirations might be, is to go buy fruityloops, and dig into that for a few months. then youll know what you wanna do, and what else you might need to do it, before you go spend Gs on stuff you dont need or know how to use.

peace.
 
Well, I've been using Garage Band for awhile and found it a bit limited. I have a Mac so, If there is better mac counterpart to Fruity Loops, I'd like to know what that would be.

I understand that it may seem ignorant of me to ask, Its not the techicalitiies I don't understand. For example, I've been a graphic artist for 6 years and when I try to help people to start out, I try to give them my own types of instructions. For some reason they may want to do something that doesn't need photoshop but would need freehand.

Right now I have a 1ghz Powerbook, 512 megs of ram. I don't believe that fruityloops is available but I know that garageband and soundtrack are. I was just wondering if their was a step up from those pieces of software. Or should I just mess around with them more? When using them I feel sort of limited, which I may have mentioned before. Any input would be nice, or somewhere to look would be helpful. I was thinking of just downloading all the demos and playing with them, but I'd still like someones input as of how far I can go with each program or what they think I should do.
 
Oh and as far as music styles I'm looking for. I'm very diverse when it comes to music. Mostly Hip-Hop and Acid Jazz. But I'd like to produce or be involed with anything from Rock to Trance.
 
You may want to also take a look at Reason. I use it and love it. A lot of what you can do in Reason (as far as basic connections) can translate into the understanding of hardware.
 
i dont know sh1t about macs and audio really. but reasons prolly as good a place to start as any. and theres a lot of people who use it a lot, so you can get help when you need it. and if youre into any real recorded music, youll prolly get into cubase too. cubase is a good app if you know how to use it, and need it. although i hear people b1tch about the mac version sometimes....

peace.
 
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