Music programs

Brumboy · 13 Apr 2011 at 20:43

Are there any decent, simple to use music programs to create music?

I'm looking to try a bit of music creation, a bit of hip hop/drum n bass/dance/electro mix.

Prefer it to be free or quite cheap though

Cheers

twist3d0n3 · 13 Apr 2011 at 21:09

the cheap ones are crap, such as danceEJ etc

to make anything remotely decent you're looking at reason and/or cubase, ableton or sonar.

they all cost a fair bit

Lydzor · 13 Apr 2011 at 21:15

You could check out a trial? Ableton is probably the most suited: http://www.ableton.com/download-suite-trial

Macky · 13 Apr 2011 at 21:33

Fruity Loops?

Lakeland · 13 Apr 2011 at 21:35

FL Studio, easy to get the basics and there are a plethora of tutorials for you to watch on youtube

Chaos · 14 Apr 2011 at 12:09

As mentioned FL Studio is reasonably priced.

Liquid · 15 Apr 2011 at 02:46

Probably out of price range but how about Reason?

MikeHunt79 · 15 Apr 2011 at 03:20

twist3d0n3 said:
the cheap ones are crap, such as danceEJ etc

to make anything remotely decent you're looking at reason and/or cubase, ableton or sonar.

they all cost a fair bit

I disagree, there are plenty of high quality free or nearly free DAW type apps out there, all costing less than £100.

If you've got a Windows box, then check out Renoise, Reaper, or even the completely free Nanostudio.

Of course you can probably get better results with more expensive software, but Skeam is well known for using Fruity for his tunes, Venetian Snares uses Renoise, Four Tet uses Audiomulch, these are all rather rather well known artists using software that is cheap and yet not crap....

twist3d0n3 · 15 Apr 2011 at 12:45

ahh fair enough, didn't realise there were so many using the lesser end of the spectrum. i know logistics, nu:tone and london elektricity all use reason for a helluva lot of their stuff, and literally thought that would be the bottom of the pile of apps to use

MikeHunt79 · 16 Apr 2011 at 00:24

twist3d0n3 said:
ahh fair enough, didn't realise there were so many using the lesser end of the spectrum. i know logistics, nu:tone and london elektricity all use reason for a helluva lot of their stuff, and literally thought that would be the bottom of the pile of apps to use

Reason is a great program, especially if you're used to using real hardware.

It's probably one of my favourites also, mainly because it's so easy to use.

Renoise maybe quite a bit cheaper, but it's not so easy to use IMO, so if you're a beginner, it may be worth shelling out the extra for Reason.

Fruity is also good for beginners, and costs less than Reason...

Here's a Venetian Snares tune playing in Reanoise:

As you can see you can get some pretty crazy sounding stuff once you get to grips with it.

bingbong · 4 May 2011 at 12:59

Reaper.

Free.

twist3d0n3 · 4 May 2011 at 17:55

part in parcel of why i thought reason would be down the lower end is because of it's simplicity. it's a great way to get into making music (i started off with just that back in the day) and has a simple, easy to use interface. the one gripe i had with it is the audio engine is pretty poor, but that's helped by rewiring it into logic/cubase/whatever.

Spook187 · 4 May 2011 at 18:01

I use ableton and reason 4,getting reason 5 as an upgrade soon,reason can be simple as you like or in depth as much as your brain can take lol,great for rewiring ableton into it.