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I have been thinking a bit about it for a while and then, suddently I have great ideas to make my own soundtrack. I am searching for a program that is fast, I don't really care if it isn't too flexible. I just want to be able to create libraries of sound effects & of create create my own songs.

Could anyone please help me? I've been searching a while and haven't found nothing that is even "acceptable".

Once I'm done I will post some in "Your Creations"

Edit

Oh and by the way I don't want to sing and record , just to mix sounds, if you know what I mean...

Thanks in advance,

Zodiac

This post has been edited by Zodiac on 11th June 2005 14:43

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Sayonara

I'd recommend Reason 3.0 from Propellerhead.

Seriously, I'm one of those people who, prior to acquiring reason, had only listened to music. Now, I can create some pretty basic stuff (I havent really had time to jump into this sort of thing) using just my keyboard. And oh yes, if you're serious about this sort of thing, get a midi keyboard, if you dont already have one (that's the next thing for me).

Anyway, I'm not sure of the pricetag, but if it's too hefty I know there's a free demo, and there's always other means of acquiring it...

Wow thanks download finishes in... about 4-5 hours. (Dial-Up)
This looks interesting, gotta give it a try!
Can't wait to make some crazy stuff.

Thanks ,

Zodiac

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Sayonara

Ok, firstly, what music making experience do you have? Any experience with any Hardware or Software?

Do you play any instruments or have any knowledge of basic music theory? Even school piano lessons would help here.

What type of music do you hope to create, and what functions do you require? IE, you already stated you don't need to record audio, but, do you want synthesizers? Drum Machines? Sample Players? Do you need VST support for plug-ins or do you want an independent softsuite that is 'all-inclusive' (Like Reason, which can be used as a giant VST instrument)

How much time do you have? Your not going to learn the ins and outs of moduler synthesis, drum pattern programming, mixing down, stereo placement, song arrangement etc without dedicated months and years of sitting down writing and producing music. And you will need to, to get usable work from softstudios.

If you've honestly no idea what I'm talking about and it sounds like to much, I highley reccomend some version of the Ejay product, they are absolutely the best place to start for someone who has, not only never used Software productions tools, but hardware aswell (such as instruments and keyboard synthesizers etc and EQ racks and 4-track records and such). They will teach you all the basic of arranging music based on loops and 1-shot samples from the huge library included, they have FX sections to get you to grips with things like Reverb and Phase.

From there I suggest you learn music theory as you play and experiment with Ejay, possibley adding Acid to your tools when you feel more comfitable with trying something more complex, and in return, the ability to take your work further.

Then try demos of Fruity Loops Studio, Reason 3, Cakewalk, Cubase, Logic (my advice, aviod it), Live, and whatever else out there that catches your eye and looks like it would suite you. Getting into music production is a major investment, you don't want to blow your budget on something that doesn't work for you.

Software-wise, my studio consists of Reason, Recycle, Wavelab, and Cubase, and I don't need a thing extra to create music as professional as the next producers music. I could've spent thousands, but instead I spent hundreds, along with years and years of experimenting, and reading, and writing, and creating, and it is alot more satisfying.

If you have ANY question at all, please feel free to bring it up here. I've had my share of frustrations from making music, from losing 100s of megabytes of work, to just plain not knowing how to use a perticuler function on a peice of software, so any experience I can share is a pleasure.

Lastly, have fun with it and 'Good Luck'.

Lord knows you will need it.



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Whether you take the doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit.

http://slightly-bitter.blog.co.uk

so are you going to be creating like, remixes of songs?

good luck, and yes, you should definitely post them if you get them done

All of the mixing/recording I've done is either with downloaded samples from my friend Steve's sound library mixed with Adobe Audition (ne Windows CoolEdit) or self-recorded tracks overlapped with help from Audition. It doesn't come with a very good sound effects library, so I don't recommend it for what you're planning, but it's wonderful sound editing/recording software; I got it real cheap by getting my high school to buy it for a project .

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
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Does this Reason software need any hookups? I've always wanted to create my own midis and the like; would this do that?

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It's gonna be a glorious day
I feel my luck can change

Yar. I doesn't have a direct MIDI-Out/Thru, but arrangements can be exported to a midi file, sure.

Kind of an expensive way to create MIDI's though.

It doesn't need any 'hook-ups' or VST instruments. It can be used as a giant instrument itself, thanks to Rewire and a full host program like Cubase.

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Whether you take the doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit.

http://slightly-bitter.blog.co.uk

Oh, if it isn't freeware, then I think I can pass up a chance to start the hobby. It would be nice to make my own game music, though. I always thought I had an ear for that sort of thing.

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It's gonna be a glorious day
I feel my luck can change

If you'll be satisfied with simply MIDI's then you might want to check out Sibelius. The main computer for my high school's band room had it, and it's really nifty, letting you compose music in a multi-layered score and then play the scores as MIDIs. Here is the site that has my high school drumline's winter show from last year, done entirely in Sibelius. With a freeware program called Scorch, you can view, print, play the scores (which are basically MIDIs that let you follow along with the score or an individual part), or you can just play the MIDIs straight with WMP or Winamp or whatever. The overall package might be even more expensive than Reason, but for what you want you *might* just need one or two of the component programs, whatever you want.

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

Midi-wise I also hear that Sibelius is excellent, though more geared towards music notation than creating midis. If you're on a mac Micrologic is a great midi sequencer, and for Windows Cakewalk is pretty good though a little complex in places. Both of those are rather expensive though.

Beyond midi, Fruityloops is a great program though I found the lack of an option to vary tempo a little annoying(mind you, it's more geared towards music with lots of looping..hence the name ) - but it's very user-friendly, easy to use samples with, I got some half-decent results from it without too much elbow-grease.

As far as freeware goes, I remember seeing one program floating around that was half decent..*rummages*

http://www.download.com/Quartz-AudioMaster...tml?tag=lst-0-1

Not terribly versatile or stable as far as I recall, but hey! It's free! Should be enough to see whether midi sequencing is something you might be interested in.

I think I'm just reiterating a lot of what BASSsic said, though. His advice is fairly solid - a midi keyboard is a good investment, try lots of demos and a little music theory goes a long way. Good luck!

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Rules For Cooking Toast
Be accurate when cooking toast
Never try to guess
Cook it til it smokes and then
Twenty seconds less.

Quote (Shotgunnova @ 13th June 2005 00:04)

Oh, if it isn't freeware, then I think I can pass up a chance to start the hobby. It would be nice to make my own game music, though. I always thought I had an ear for that sort of thing.

Actually, another program came to mind, Buzz ( http://www.buzzmachines.com/ ). Though, your going to have to get oldskool to learn that program, as it's a 'Tracker', an old way of sequencing music that's been used since the days of the Amiga. Though, well, your a ROM hacker, I wager that if you really wanted to, you could learn to use it.

It's unstable and nowhere near as intuitive as Reason (which emulates hardware racks) but it's free, it covers everything from softsynths , to sequencing, and it's even a VST host, and it has a good community knocking our free 'machines' for it (Which is Buzz lingo for a Buzz-only VST). Oh and theres a machines out there that will do Audio-to-MIDI.

EDIT - Oh yeah and mentioning Buzz, I might get back into it. Theres so much free stuff for it, that once you learn to use it, its hard NOT to be creative.

This post has been edited by BASSsic on 13th June 2005 21:06

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Whether you take the doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit.

http://slightly-bitter.blog.co.uk

What about Audacity? It's kind of easy to use. You can easily find it!