quote:

Originally posted by Headstapler:
You're a busy guy Mr. Duncan Black. I liked 5tfist. I'll link to some of my music in here sometime. Thanks to everyone for sharing.

Cheers. There should be more stuff soon. I'm working on a collaboration which should feature Kevin from Estardasphere. Will post a link here when it's recorded.

NOTE: THIS IS FOR THOSE WHO WOULD LIKE TO START COMPOSING BUT ARE UNSURE HOW TO START

I love this thread. I was, until just recently when I graduated, in a music technology class devoted to composing original music using MIDI/ music sequencing software. If you have a MIDI port (also a gaming port) in the back of your computer, you can plug up your keyboard (decent one for $100. nice one for $400) with a MIDI cable ($10) and start messing around if you go out and buy some nice software. If you don't have a MIDI port you can install a fairly nice sound card ($30 would buy a very modest one), which has a MIDI port in the back.

For all those interested with macs, I'd highly recommend garageband as a base to start composing and then start working on Reason and Logic and maybe eventually PRO Tools. For those trapped in windows, I have reason 3.0 ($400) and ableton 5 ($500). Reason is a fantastic sequencing program with lots of different samples and instruments. Very high quality. Ableton is for live recording and I don't have a very nice microphone ($100) yet to record with. Of course, the programs can be free if you know where to look on any major bit torrent website. It really is not that expensive to compose these programs and they're very easy to use. I love doing it in my spare time. It is a great hobby.

I agree with the Friar.

Reason is relatively easy to manuever in and is best used for incorporating live recordings of instruments... ie your guitar etc.

Garage band is great as a tool for creating podcasts and utilizing the already incorporated samples and editing tools to create your own material. You can import many types of files into garage band.. yadda yadda. I assume most of the people in this thread have their own set-ups, and its nice that The Friar popped in to let any casual reader interested in sound production know it's less daunting than you may think... I have to support him on the fact that MACS are better for the creative process.

New Macs come with garage band. Even girls can be one man bands.

appreciate the comments headstapler, though I'm afraid not many have stumbled upon this thread yet. Quick thing I forgot, though, Reason's only disadvantage is its inability to incorporate live recorded music like Garageband. Propellerhead (the guys who made reason) did that on purpose and designed a code called Rewire that allows other music sequencing programs to integrate with Reason. Logic and Ableton are the best programs to use with Rewire. There are few others too, if you're really interested let me know.

quote:

Originally posted by Dork:
I finally got around to releasing an album's worth of material. It's all online and free and under the least restrictive Creative Commons license I could find, and it is here.

http://www.archive.org/details/DJ_Rkod_-_Naoise

Dude, that is killer... I'm really digging this.

Thanks for the kind words, Mike and Individual.

After a few weeks of almost uninterrupted music programming, I've mixed and released both my second album (entitled "Sunset Bleeds Distortion") and a complimentary EP, "Crimes Against Us". Together they contain 22 original tracks and 1 remix, all programmed by me (except for a healthy dose of samples from public domain and the Creative Commons). They both sound different from my previous work and each other, but I think the members here might like them anyway.

Enjoy!

YOu guys should check his stuff out. Its worth a listen. I checked it out. My favorite was Clam and the Storm.

Update - my band is now called Lil' Slugger. Aren't you glad to know that ?

4 songs up - I've been mixing for what seems like ages now, but it's soooo necessary. argh. We have enough material for a pleasantly concise full length - more news on that later, maybe.

We've been playing gigs in the Denver/Northern Colorado area. At our last show we had Ed, our surprise front man, skulk around the place (nearly getting 86'ed in the process, as the bartender wasn't in on the gag), before finally making a big entrance as a witch/monster who eventually mock ate me (the song's about having a car breakdown in the middle of nowhere and getting eaten by a witch named Bathsheba). pics from that event are up on the myspace.

In the fall, we are booked for some real studio time instead of just me farting around with my m-box. Woohoo! The new material for that is reaaally exciting (for me anyway) - I've been looking for a kinda of afrobeat/tropicalia/noise rock vibe. Things are looking up.

myspace

Baby Birds Don't Drink Milk.

New Chomp Womp Band. www.myspace.com/babybirdsdontdrinkmilk

live ep out on chomp womp. album coming out on "the record machine".

love

quote:

Originally posted by vitunkrapula:
In the fall, we are booked for some real studio time instead of just me farting around with my m-box. Woohoo! The new material for that is reaaally exciting (for me anyway) - I've been looking for a kinda of afrobeat/tropicalia/noise rock vibe. Things are looking up.

myspace

Good luck with all that, Vitunk. Doesn't sound like exactly my type of music, but I like the band name!

Hot off the presses, my third album -- a double disc of electronic music -- has been uploaded. It's less grimy and more dancy than Naoise or Sunset Bleeds Distortion -- whether that sounds good or bad is up to you. But, please enjoy:

8

quote:

Originally posted by RavingLunatic:
Good luck with all that, Vitunk. Doesn't sound like exactly my type of music, but I like the band name!

Thanks for checking us out, RL. I do appreciate it.

well i'll upload some other songs i made a couple of months ago. ill add a new song each week. I start school soon, so it means that ill probably be in a good mood to create new songs and maybe explore new instruments/computer programs. The new track is "over". please post comments because thats why i upload my songs on the net. the link is http://www.myspace.com/impostorwaiting

what programs do you use Dork?

liking your third album too. i'll check your other ones out later.

quote:

Originally posted by The Friar:
what programs do you use Dork?

Remixes and albums up to now have been, pretty much without exception, programmed in Reason 3.0 and finalized with Audacity. However, I'm branching out into new programs to get some more variety.

dude i love reason!! you got any refills? fav machines?

and audacity is pretty sweet (free!) I just don't ever use it 'cause i don't ever do recordings.

for expanding your horizons

i've used ableton, garageband, logic, band in a box, frooty loops and a few others and I'd say reason is the best for electronica and IDM stuff you got going on. ableton and reason work well together (rewire) so you could record stuff via ableton and process it into reason. its pretty simple.

mac or pc dork? or linux???

quote:

Originally posted by The Friar:
dude i love reason!! you got any refills? fav machines?

and audacity is pretty sweet (free!) I just don't ever use it 'cause i don't ever do recordings.

for expanding your horizons

i've used ableton, garageband, logic, band in a box, frooty loops and a few others and I'd say reason is the best for electronica and IDM stuff you got going on. ableton and reason work well together (rewire) so you could record stuff via ableton and process it into reason. its pretty simple.

mac or pc dork? or linux???

I like the free refills I can get my hands on, though it's tricky to find quality material that isn't pricey. There's a fantastic 7-string guitar refill out there that I use all the time.

I don't use Audacity for recording either, but it's great for sequencing and mixing of already completed songs. There's a precision that Reason can't match. Though, when I get around 80 minutes of WAV audio files loaded up, my PC starts begging me to end its miserable existence...

I'm actually just learning Ableton Live right now, it's coming in handy for carefully sliced and manipulated beats. Very good stuff. However, I simply cannot get the one sound I so desire, that holy grail of vintage guitar distortion, with a digital effect. I am still searching for the right plugin for that.

I'm fully on a PC, by the way, though that's not necessarily something I'd recommend for hardcore digital musicians.

i just switched over to mac but you are using the best software for pc. how much RAM you got? small RAM gets annoying with Reason and Ableton. instruments get choppy. i never thought of using audacity to mix stuff because i always figured reason did a decent job. i'll play around with audacity more this weekend to see what you're talkng about.

when i get some money i'm gonna play around with pro tools. but that is a lot of money cause you got it mbox and the protools software and probably a decent mixer and some other stuff i'm not aware of. right now i just do stuff with garageband. interesting thing i've noted is that i'm far more productive in garageband than reason. I think the amount of creative freedom in reason can be insurmountable for me. i just end up playing with the instruments. garageband limits, which helps me compose.

for me, to get the right guitar sound is always really really difficult. try playing with an acoustic guitars and adding distortion. or some sort of counter intuitive machine combo. some of the combinator guitars are alright if you play around with them.

and have you checked out the sigur ros combinator??? couldn't believe they had that!!

i've been looking around for free refills online but haven't really found any. do you know if there are any torrents or such? though I really like propellerhead and they do put a lot of work into making each sampled instrument (check out some of their youtube videos). its just too expensive.

quote:

Originally posted by The Friar:
how much RAM you got?

2 gigabytes. I built this to be a gaming machine (and I still use it for that), so it's a little different from a standard music oriented computer.

EDIT: I'm also not suggesting you mix the multitracks from Reason with Audacity, I just use it to do crossfades, transitions and the like when I am in the final stages of an album.

transitions. got it now.

i used a comp with 1 gig and advanced instruments in reason (ones with lots of machines attached to 'em) and the computer usually started to cry. now i got 2 gigs! though i haven't installed reason yet, just using garageband.

and i've been streaming your albums as m3u files and listening to them when i'm surfing or doing homework. nice background music (well not just background music but you know what I mean). i don't know IDM very well any recomendations?