In another thread, a few of us started talking music creation. So let’s chat! I know there must be even more of you out there.
I am primarily a singer, although I also play flute and a dash of piano. I sing folk, folk rock, and prog rock mainly. In terms of music, lately I’ve been focused on classical composition (fugues, minuets, waltzes and symphonies) to attain some skill at songwriting and mixing, as I’m pretty new to those aspects. I am currently doing an accelerated music degree to learn a multitude of helpful things.
Since I am not yet in a band, I’ve been making my own music using Ableton. I’d love to pick up some packs to get some better sounding instruments (e.g., Bundles: KOMPLETE 14 COLLECTORS EDITION) but holy heck they’re expensive. Hence, I would need a monstrous number of streams to make it worthwhile.
Any suggestions on instrument packs that have a great sound with a smaller price tag? What are your favorite instruments packs regardless of price (if I’m going to spend a lot of money then I may as well get the best)?
I recently picked up a Roland Fantom 07 keyboard. Reasonably priced and it came with something like 6,000 high quality sounds onboard (the piano is exquisite), as well as access to thousands more online, many of which are free from Roland. I’ve got more sounds than I could ever possibly use, as well as an onboard sequencer, and full DAW control of Ableton and other software. Honestly, you could pick up one of those for a lower price than that bundle you mentioned, and have a really nice keyboard to go along with it. Then, when you do find a band, you’re ready to go!
Hehehe, as I said in the pit thread: You will be saving about $19K by purchasing that bundle, which completely boggles my mind. If Moog had a synth they’d discounted by 90%, I would not be able to resist.
I’m in (I think) three bands, one of which is just me rooking people into coming in to my home studio (yep, in my bedroom) and recording. That mostly leans toward space rock. I’ve also called it “Hesher Jazz” (it’s probably really Post-rock or something). Hopefully I’ll have an EP together for that by the end of spring.
Wow, the Fantom-7 does look nice, and it does look like they have reasonable used prices.
I’m in the market for a video synthesizer, myself. As I said in the pit thread, I’d be using it mostly for visuals in a live setting, but I’d probably end up using it for videos as well. Lumen does look pretty great, but I’d probably end up needing to buy a new Mac to use it as I’d like. So, even a hardware one would work. If anyone has one they could recommend, let me know.
With a virtual orchestra DVD (gigs of samples, e.g, https://www.vsl.co.at/en/Products) you can get realistic-sounding results, with lots of parameters available beyond just MIDI note and velocity. The question is, which are the really good sample libraries that sound realistic.
The full Ableton Suite isn’t cheap, but it has more instruments and sounds than you’ll ever be able to use. I rarely use anything third-party. Also, if you’re any kind of educator (even if it’s completely unrelated) they offer a pretty steep discount. (My biggest complaint is that they’re not organized very well.)
At home I have a lot of fun with Ableton, controlling it with both the Push and an Arturia Keylab 61. I’m also a synth nerd, particularly Moogs, as I live not too far from their home base in Asheville. I have a Matriarch and a DFAM/M32 combo; I’ve never made all three play nicely with one another, but someday.
I made a decision a long time ago that the electronic stuff was all just for me–I have no desire to play out with it. I get so much out of just dicking around and finding new sounds and combinations, and I think the pressure to actually create a finished track would make it seem like work. (One exception–I do a Halloween show every year on my front porch, playing my theremin over synth tracks. With lights and fog and everything.)
Hehe, I’m a Moog devotee, as well, but without your justification through proximity. I have a Matriarch, too. I loves it. I often shop the DFAM/M32/Subharmonicon modules, but I’m barely able to keep my head around what I’m doing with the Matriarch.
I have an Arturia Beatstep that I kind of dislike, but still kind of use and enjoy. If it wasn’t tied so hard to Windows, I’d probably use it more and consider upgrading to the Beatstep Pro, but my experience with it has left me looking for a different hardware sequencer.
Either way, here’s some of my “Hesher Jazz” that includes me using the Beatstep to control my Moog Werkstatt-01 to make the spacey filter sweeps. I really do like this, but I probably need to master it better.
Yeah, due to the synths I’ve gravitated to, I’ve kind of decided that at least most of my playing them will be either in my home studio or a very adventurous live gig. Almost none of them will save presets besides a sequence, and if you want to remember a patch set, you’d better take a picture.
So, as far as keys go, I’ve been mostly limited to a Yamaha Reface YC (organ emulator), or a Reface CP (electric piano emulator, it’s in the track above) for live bands. It works, and it does make things easier than it would be than it would be controlling a modular synth. Plus, I’m usually also the bass player in those bands right now.
Though, I have had one person who I’ve rooked into recording on the studio project ask “So, studio only, huh?” Since we’re in a band together, I replied “Probably the easiest way to make that happen live is to have band X do it.” If we do it, that will be quite a trick. The drummer hates drum machines, of course, and the drums on the original track are from a euro-rack drum module. On top of that, the synth parts are from a 4ms Triwave Picogenerator (loaned to me by the guitarist of the same band) set to sound like it’s taken a theremin behind the junior high and is trying to get it pregnant.
Plus, three of the tracks are just me improvising over myself. I could probably man the keys and the drum machine, but someone’s going to have to grab the bass. Either way, it’ll be work.
I downloaded some free/trial sound packs from some of the top makers. Jebus, they’re good. I know you can make a lot of stuff with the basic Ableton sounds, but wow, there is a noticeable difference in quality with some of the packs from Albion, Spitfire, Native Instruments, and Project SAM. I’m working on some themes and scores for my portfolio, and it just a world of difference.
Too bad they are just so darn expensive! If I thought it would get me some work composing to earn the money back, then I would consider it an investment. But it so hard to say if it would lead to that kind of success.
What do you mean by/need from a video synthesizer?
E.g. what about hydra, fluxus, GEM… vvvv of course (more precisely I know at least one professional who likes it)
Well, I was really hoping for a holy grail of it being easy to use and basically able to mangle whatever I fed it in interesting ways. Those all seem like rather enticing suggestions. I actually have PureData installed on this machine already, I’ve even used it for audio, and I had no idea the GEM module existed. Sure enough, pd-gem is sitting right there, looking at me.
I think I’ll start reading and begin there, thank you!
I’m not a tech person, so I can’t tell you anything about Ableton and all that.
My go-to technological aid is a Roland 202 looper - one of these days, I’ll upgrade to the new 505, but that’s not going to be anytime soon. I don’t work with it live - I use it to record one part of the song and then improvise the other part until I’ve got something I like.
Other than that, I use WavePad as a slow-downer for transcribing things, and I’ve got a really good strobe tuner/metronome.
The rest of it is all down to practising until I’m good at the instrument or singing…
I’m a longtime music maker and have used Cubase for close to 20 years.
These two websites are really great for picking up discounted or free software.
My favourite instrument pack is Kontakt - but having said that, they’ve just changed the instrument appearance and I don’t like it - but the sounds are great.
I got an educational discount approval from Spitfire Audio today so I picked up a few of their less expensive packs. I was impressed with their free stuff so I’m looking forward to trying out these packs.
If anyone wants to collaborate over the net, Smule has an app called Sing! which is basically a multitrack recorder social media app. There are lots of karaoke songs you can sing with, eithet alone, as duets, or in groups, but you can also just start with your own instrumental part and then let others add their own. i’ve used it for that, and it works pretty well.
You can also find tracks where, say a guitarist has laid down the guitar part for a popular song, and you can add the bass, or vocal, or whatever. There is also a video mode with various filters and such for group performance.
I have nothing to do with the company, but I’ve used the app and it’s pretty well done.
And I’ll start off by thanking you again. The push to GEM seems to be really what I needed. Just trudging through the docs was a little slow. But once I found the examples under /usr/share/ , and realized there was contextual help available for pretty much everything (don’t know how I managed before that when using it for audio, it was like discovering man pages), it wasn’t too bad.
You’ve probably saved me about $500 already, and who knows how much down the line, because this thing is genuinely flexible. The only real pain is capturing a decent video of GEM’s output in Linux. It doesn’t seem to support video output to a file (at least not that I can find). So, screen cap on my second monitor was the only way to go. I had to go through several programs before I could find one that would capture at a decent rate and resolution without introducing a bunch of goofy artifacts. Since my main aim for using it is to project visuals on my band, that’s not really a problem - sending it’s output to a separate output as a projector should be about the same as sending it to another monitor.
So, for my first patch in pd-gem, I made a video for the song I linked above. Caution: it is pretty much all flashing images (and yeah, repetitive noodling).
You are welcome, but really it is both of us who should be thanking the open-source community which made these tools available and continues to maintain them and expand their capabilities.
Your video is cool, too!
I do not know off the top of my head how to set up GEM to output directly to a file, rather than a window you then have to capture, but if I have time I will look at it (perhaps there are some indications in the source code).
I just use the Kontakt Classic Organs and Electric Pianos. They’re really good. I also run First Call Horns, it’s a third-party sample set you can use with the Kontact Player. I’ve never been interested in buying Komplete. It’s just too much stuff all at once. I’ve build my rig one piece at a time after plenty of research. I think I’ve always felt that Komplete just dumps a bunch of stuff on you, and I never wanted to wade through that stuff.
I run a PC rig in my bands, have been since 2012 or so, and I use Sylenth (VST) for my main synth, it’s NOT an NI product. And I use Addictive Keys for my pianos (not NI). And a bunch of other stuff like Sample Bank and Tyrell N4, etc.
I use Cantabile as my VST host. That’s worked out well. Still is.
I picked up some sound packs over the weekend. I got Kontakt Ultimate, Shreddage 3 Hydra and Stratus. I also picked up a couple of mastering plugins from Plugin Alliance (they came with Kontakt). I’m pretty impressed with the guitars from Shreddage. Currently downloading the Kontakt stuff, but what I’ve tried so far has been excellent.
I wrote (or finished) 4 songs over the weekend, and I just finished my latest fugue.
