Where to Begin? Help with my setup...

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docmal

New member
Im a guitar player, and song writer. Right Now I have some good guitar equipment, I have a Boss GT6, A Taylor 815ce guitar, a fender US strat and a Fender Twin Reverb reissue amp. Recently I bought a RC-20 loopstation to practice my lead and to lay down song ideas. It got me real interested in recording.

Ok, now dont judge me, my day job is a programmer so I have some real nice computer equipment, including a very nice desktop PC. p4 3.2ghz 1gig ram, 10k raid drives and 200gig backup drive, audigy 2zs gamer sound card, and some nice Logitech 5.1 thx speakers.

I want to merge my stuff. Basically I want to record tracks onto my pc, but thats just the begining.

My current plan is to get the following items this holiday season:

DigiDesign MBox interface (pro tools)
Boss Dr-880 Drum machine

I also need:
A nice mic for vocals and to record from my twin reverb amp if I want to.
Some sort of monitor to playback or play live through -- Is a PA system good for this or am I looking for something else?

and maybe some sort of sampling machine (though I dont know much about it)

My style is mostly indie rock ala EELS, pavement, early Beck and the likes. If you don't know these bands they are sort of experimental rock artists who not only use guitars but some samples and things, however the backbone of the music is usually guitars and drums.

Basically ANY advice on where to go from here would be great. I would love to get a fully functional beginner studio with room for upgrades and such as I gain more experience. However, im slightly lost with all this equipment being tossed around. I really just want to write music loops and such and then sequence and compose it on my comp.

Sorry this is so long, I REALLY appreciate the help.
 
looks like you got a real good start. the weak points are your audigy soundcard (which would be taken care of if you got the m-box), and lack of a good mic/preamp and a drum machine. instead of a hardware drum machine i would reccomend a software program like reason which can be rewired into pro tools to do your drums (and synths and samples too). it costs about the same as that boss drum machine but comes with more samples and can use any other .wav sample (and there are millions available online for free).
 
neubonic said:
looks like you got a real good start. the weak points are your audigy soundcard (which would be taken care of if you got the m-box), and lack of a good mic/preamp and a drum machine. instead of a hardware drum machine i would reccomend a software program like reason which can be rewired into pro tools to do your drums (and synths and samples too). it costs about the same as that boss drum machine but comes with more samples and can use any other .wav sample (and there are millions available online for free).
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Agreed.

Another cheaper option than Reason is FL Studio, if you're on a tight budget.
Both are able to program drums and act as sequencers.

Also, look into some quality studio monitors if you're planning on doing the mixing yourself. Your Logitech speakers can only take you so far.

Other than that, I'm afraid I can't offer you much advice, as I am relatively inexperienced with recording vocals and live instruments.
 
Well budget isnt entirely an issue at the moment because I am buying to get started and also want a good foundation to build from.

As far as the reason software, I found that the MBox comes with "Reason Adapted" software, is this what you are refering to?

Also, I was thinking that I want to be able to play live with my drum machine so I might want a real piece of hardware correct? What is the difference between say an MPC2000 and a dedicated drum machine like the dr880?

You mentioned some good studio monitors, can you recommend some middle of the road good performers for the money type setup?

My total budget for xmass is around 2000 bucks. But that is somewhat flexible.

Thank you again for your help :)
 
docmal said:
As far as the reason software, I found that the MBox comes with "Reason Adapted" software, is this what you are refering to?
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I'm really not familiar with the MBox, but I don't think they're the same. "Reason" is a computer program by itself that contains a sequencer, sample library, etc. I don't know what the "Reason Adapted" software is. Possibly means that they are able to communicate with each other? Again, I'm not sure.

Also, I was thinking that I want to be able to play live with my drum machine so I might want a real piece of hardware correct? What is the difference between say an MPC2000 and a dedicated drum machine like the dr880?
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The MPC is a drum machine/sampler, meaning you can load your own samples into it to be triggered by the pads. Again, I haven't used a 2000, so I can't give you an accurate exaplanation there either...

Boy, I'm starting to wonder why I'm responding to these questions, as I'm not very knowledgable about the things your asking...

You mentioned some good studio monitors, can you recommend some middle of the road good performers for the money type setup?
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I myself am getting a pair of Behringer 2031A Truth's, which, from what I've heard are reasonable quality, and very good price. ($300 for a pair). But there are questions about the reliability of them, so you might be better off going for a higher quality monitor system. (Try searching the Production Hardware forum for some different options)

Thank you again for your help :)
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No problem, man. I wish I could be more help to you. I've only gotten interested in this production stuff for the last few months myself.

You'd probably find some of your answers by searching through the other forums on here, there have been many threads with similar questions asked.

Good Luck.
 
Copied from digidesign website, sounds like the right stuff but is it fully featered? Probobly not.

Reason Adapted
Propellerhead Software Reason Adapted
An easy-to-use studio package providing a virtual rack of MIDI-based innovative synthesizers, samplers, drum machines and effects. All audio from Reason Adapted can be streamed directly into the Pro Tools mixer via ReWire for additional processing within Pro Tools.
screenshot: http://www.digidesign.com/products/bundle/screenshots/reason.jpg
 
A couple of ideas.....

Reason and Pro Tools are cool, but if you just want drum sounds for Pro Tools, look at PlugSounds plug-ins. They are samplers inside of Pro Tools that are an excellent value. There's Drums &Perc, Keys, Synths, Hihop/R&B Toolkit, World Instruments and Strings. They are each about $99 and are just amazing. The whole set of six is like $499?

Also in term of you Guitar rig, have you thought about Reamping?? There is a product of course called RE-Amp and then something from Little Labs that will also be interesting for you to check out. I'm not a guitar player, but I"ve been peeking in on that stuff. Also run not walk to www.tapeop.com and check out the site, then subscribe to the magazine. I think it will be of great benefit to you. The mag is also availble for free via the websoite site subscription process I think.

Anyway, peace and happy thanksgiving.
 
Okay let me clear somethings up first. Reason Adapted is a less applicable version of Reason and dont recommend using it. I say get either FL Studio or Reason for drums and other things. Then the Mbox is good though so stay with that and youa re set
 
Ive decided to go with an MPC1000, instead of the drum machine. After alot of research I found that the MPC will give me more freedom to explore and expand my ideas. Not only can I put drum kits and sequence them, I can make my own, or sample anything I want. Seems like there are some good deals on these machines on ebay.

I still may pick up Reason 2.5 if I like the reason adapted that comes with protools. Many people here seem to use both so that they arent limited by one or the other.

Anyway, thanks for the help so far guys. I'm still undecided about getting a PA or getting nice monitor speakers. Eventually I want both, the PA for playing and Jamming Live and the monitors for mixing. However financially I think I can only pick one for christmas.
 
'Reason Adapted' is simply a version of Reason with a limited number of devices. It's designed to be bundled up with audio hardware as a teaser for the full version. Different hardware bundles have different combinations of devices: one might give you a mixer, a redrum and 3 dr.rex's, another might have a heavier focus on the synths.

As I understand it, other than the limitation on the number & type of devices you can have in a rack, it's a fully-functioning version of Reason. It's certainly a good way to gain exposure to it, plus whatever skills you pick up translate directly into using Reason.
 
As far as Reason goes?

I want to say that very soon they'll be offering the full Reason along with their products, or else I'm totally crazy.

Recently Avid (Digidesign's Parent company) bought out M-Audio, who was the parent of Propellerhead, the company behind Reason.

So Digi OWNS Reason now, and for some reason I thought I read someplace that soon "Reason Adapted" will just be "Reason".

Could be wrong, as always.

-Jer
 
i used to make my own alteritive music and all i did was use FL as a drum machince (not point really getting a MPC 1k when ur gonna get the same results) and then just took that in a 8 track software mixer and recorded my guitar parts. i pluged my guitar into the line in that went to the DOD fx board and into my guitar, was pretty decent sounding man and that was with the comps own soundcard and FLs stock real drumkit sounds.
 
Jericho said:
As far as Reason goes?

I want to say that very soon they'll be offering the full Reason along with their products, or else I'm totally crazy.

Recently Avid (Digidesign's Parent company) bought out M-Audio, who was the parent of Propellerhead, the company behind Reason.

So Digi OWNS Reason now, and for some reason I thought I read someplace that soon "Reason Adapted" will just be "Reason".

Could be wrong, as always.

-Jer
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as far as i know Maudio was only the US distributor .
 
M-audio NEVER owned Propellerhead . It is a DISTRIBUTOR for the USA .

Reason adapted ships with other products too . it is not a PT exclusive .
 
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