Music making software

Speedy Pete

Speedy Pete

Speedy Pete

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Hi all.

Does anyone here do any music making and can you recommend a good program to have a trail with.

I heared some good things about cubase but think it might be a bit hard for a beginner like me and also you have to buy some usb pen drive for 18quid just to use the trail so that put me off trying it.

Also, are macs really that much better at making music than windows? :p

Thanks.
 
My co-producer had a mac mini + Logic and loads of vsts, plugins etc. Never faltered on any project thrown at it.

My PC was probably capable of the same but I spent so long trying to work out Cubase to get it like his Mac + Logic that I gave up.

You just have to invest a lot of time and effort in to getting it all ready and then you invest the same in making the music.
 
Speedy Pete said:
Why are macs better than windows at music making?
Is it just because their OS is more efficient or is there something else?
Click to expand...

They're not. The only reason that myth exists is because back in the day the Mac was the "artists" computer of choice (mostly for typography, graphics and print, but also with pieces of software like Logic) and there was software written specifically for Mac. Logic Pro isn't an Apple creation. Emagic was bought by Apple in the early 2000s. Apple killed the Windows versions when they acquired Emagic, giving them exclusivity to what was a particularly powerful piece of music software.

Steinberg who make Cubase started out making it for Atari, later Mac and then Windows with the rise of IBM PC Clones.

Some would argue that OS X has superior midi latency to Windows, but having used things like Reason, Logic, Cubase and others on both platforms, they've all got problems with latency, particularly dependent on controller.

The only real argument for using a Windows PC or a Mac for music production these days is simply what environment you prefer to work in.

As it is, I use things like Renoise (a "traditional" style tracker) and Mixxx on Linux.
 
Reason is a good choice for a beginner or advanced, mainly for EDM tho.
Reaper is another world, it really depends on what sort of noise do you want to make.
Do you play an instrument or sing? Or do you want to knock out some beats?
 
I use to play piano when i was a young-un. Maybe a midi keyboard is in order?
But i do really just want to makes some tunes and by that i dont really know what kind of music either so picking a DAW by what kind of noise it can produce doesn't really help.

Ive had a few goes at reason now and after a few tutorials on youtube to get the basics ive made um... well....nothing special since you can't open up a saved piece of work in the demo, making you start all over again.

Come to think about it if i could make any sort of music it would be 'disc break'.
 
I never liked reason. started out with what was then called fruityloops and moved on to cubase and vsti. Cubase is quite easy to use once you get over the interface. I find cubase easier to use than reason. all the software can be very expensive though... but if you know a guy then you can use vsti, i recommend waves vsti and native instruments vsti as well as linplug.

Get yourself wavelab or sound forge for modifying samples but if you are only going to start out. I prefer soundforge out of all the audio editing software.
 
I have tried many DAWs over the years and Ableton Live will get you the fastest results and is very easy to learn. I can't believe more people are not recommending it.

There are some great tutorials on YouTube and loads of free VST plugins and sample packs if you google to get started with.
 
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Ableton is definitely the go to right now, DAW's like Cubase and Reason are beginning to become a little outdated in design and workflow/efficiency. Obviously it's not about the DAW but how you use it, but at the same time you need to take into account ease of use and efficiency of each. The next version of FL Studio is looking very promising with cool features from what I've seen so far.

All in all I'd say it is easier and less monotonous to just dig in and get creative with Ableton and FL Studio.
 
I always thought in the olden days Macs were favoured over PCs becuase of the latency differeneces in the hardware - I guess not an issue anymore.
 
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