We are the music makers - producers?

Is it your first attempt at driving a DAW?

Might be worth messing about with Garageband for a bit first to get your head round the basic functionality without the initially overwhelming complexity of X?

X was playing with me today, put a rhythm track together and then tracks started randomly dropping out or becoming almost inaudible... Restarted and the problem seemed to fix itself, for a horrible moment I thought I'd have to redo all the keyboard parts I'd slaved over all day...

Not that happy with the results anyway, I'll probably start again tomorrow night!!!

I was having a nightmare with it this week too. Everytime I opened up a drum machine stack track to edit a kick drum, the audio on two completely different software synth tracks would start playing back out of key (the piano-roll was showing a G3 but the note sounding was an F). It was driving me insane. a re-start fixed it. Then the same thing happened again. Again a re-start fixed it. Very weird.

Glad to hear it's not just me, bit of a worry tho'...

I re-recorded a track my old band did over 30 years ago, original had a Roland TR626 on drums that was triggering an SH09 for bass and then a DX100 for a 60s punkish church organ type sound... Original rhythm track sounds ace, very minimal but very punchy... Thing I did today sounds so gutless by comparison, totally empty sounding... I need a rethink...

It needs to be good cuz I've named this project after the song!! My other cheesy, goth disco stuff is sounding really good... I love sequencers... I think I'll be using the Billie Jean beat somewhere on pretty much everything I'll be doing... It's so killer...

PS Best free (?) resource for good sampled orchestral stuff? Mainly strings but I could do with some easy to tune timpanis as well...

Got sorted in the end, it was just some stupid settings I had set incorrectly.

Anyone have a good recommendation for a nice amp and effects modelling plugin? Something with some nice boutique stuff maybe (i.e. stop me from buying an AxeFX)?

Before you go out to buy something new, check out the built in logic Amp / FX suite. Their Orange simulation is remarkable, and the FX pedals are variably very useful - the RAT is excellent, the dark analogue delay is excellent, and I really enjoy the fuzzes too.

If you want boutique, you can use any part of that in conjunction with the convolution reverb, and instead of loading up a reverb tail, load up some cabinet / room tails from your favourite website. I often use the convolution verb as a guitar cabinet simulator.

This sounds pretty good actually, I'll have a mess about with it tonight and see how it goes!

Honestly, Logic X is the most powerful music tool I have ever used, the possibilities are endless. It's amazing. I'm doing my best to buy fewer plugins and get to know the ones I have more - it seems to make sense for me and it's really rare that I come across a limitation I can't get around.

Anyone in north London up to working on a rock album always good to get fresh ears while I'm creating plus mixing.

I use Logic Pro but am currently re-buying slowly all of my old studio gear I once used.

Ableton is absolutely the most flexible DAW there is - Max 4 Live furthers it. The stock Ableton plugins are awesome, its entirely possible to make release quality music without a 3rd party VST in sight

I find Logic way too cumbersome with all of that routing required, what a ballache

Depends what music you make. For musicians who make music with instruments its more than awesome for recording/mixing/scoring and mastering at pro quality. No complaints.

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Depends what music you make. For musicians who make music with instruments its more than awesome for recording/mixing/scoring and mastering at pro quality. No complaints.

can do all of this in Live too also as well etc.

https://www.flashlyrics.com/lyrics/aphex-twin/we-are-the-music-makers-48

You can but that side of it always seemed a bit of an afterthought compared to the live clips/scenes bit. I haven’t used it since 8 though and I like Cubase as my glorified taperecorder.

Thank god Logic stopped needing the routing nonsense at version 8 or 9 (can't remember quite which). I hated that stuff too - that whole logical board thing where the mixing channels were different to the back end channels. Very illogical. X got rid of it - or at least hid it to the point where I've not seen it for many years. I do like Ableton and I'm sure if you're in the right mindstate it's brilliant - I only ever really got into it as a breaks / drums trigger, and I still use it like that to this day. You can definitely release quality music on Ableton (but I also think you could do the same with a phone and a guitar if you had to - it's the ideas and the excecution, not the tools) - it just depends if you like using it or not. Personally Logic works much better for me. I'm used to that linear, left to right, tape recorder display.

I do admit sometimes I run my stems through Logic Pro X - there are some nice sounding plugins in there too

Ah. I didn't realise it had that limit too. Hmmm...

😘

anyone any words of wisdom on PC/Mac to run Ableton and plugins nicely? I'm currently using my late 2011 MBP i7 with 16Gb RAM and SSD but its starting to do odd things with the HDMI output to monitor and generally a bit long in the tooth

I was considering a Mac Mini but they only go up to an i5 processor - wondering if Windows 10 is now stable enough for music production?

cheers

Sorry I can’t help, hopefully someone will reply.

Question for you and everybody really, my 14yr old’s been using Live for a few months, the only hardware is a keyboard which seems to be just for lining chords up, he seldom seems to really compose on it. Most of his stuff is very layered, mushy builds of synthy things, pretty much Ibiza Chill Out filler, some moments of quirk & clarity pop up now and again.

Trying to find a crimbo pressie that could open up some new pastures, hardware or software. Any suggestions? Happy to consider Logic X as he seems to like exploring different programmes. /20th century old man terminology klaxon

I have this idea I should buy him an acid box, his mum’s just found the ROLI thing but it just looks like a keyboard replacement to me, I’m sceptical it wouldn’t be a waste of cash.

I have an akai advance 49 keyboard. Its a great little bit of kit and works well on live. It also comes with Akai's new software which is called VIP, Which works as like a central hub for all other VST's and comes with plenty of new sounds and a couple vsts to run them on. Good thing with the keyboard is it works like a kind of modern hybrid of a piece of hardware and software. As you can manipulate presets and scroll through sounds on the keyboard without using a mouse. Look them up could be a good gift?

That’s brilliant, thanks for input!

I’m thinking about a Roland TB-03 also ...