This one is a good quick tutorial, or for more in-depth, try 33 minutes of Choirs and WordBuilder.
Make sure you get the student/EDU version, since you’re eligible. Also, make sure you explore the mod wheel on every patch you try—CC11 should be your best friend when using EW HW libraries.
Thanks a lot!! 
I was worried that this thread would just be me posting about my musical journey periodically. I’m really glad to see it grow into someplace where music creators can talk shop.
Oh, I’m more than happy to talk shop - I’m glad I read this thread!
I hang out on an an instrument-specific forum and the musicians there tend to get locked into certain genres/eras of music or specific ways of thinking about production. I prefer talking about experiments, the “whys” of creation and examining different approaches to music 
I only just noticed this thread. Coincidentally, I just posted a note about publishing my music on YouTube, it should show up in recent posts in this forum.
I’m a songwriter, guitarist, bass player. Mediocre vocalist (but I can sing harmonies), fumble-fingered keyboard player, adequate drum programmer. And I like to think, fairly good recording engineer.
Played in bands on and off for ages.
I enjoy collaborative projects… have a listen to my YouTube channel, and if you like anything you hear, we might bounce a few ideas? I’d add an email address, but the SD moderators don’t seem to like that?
But we could probably find a way to connect?
I’d be happy to check your YouTube channel - can you PM me the handle, or something?
For some reason moderators really don’t seem to like any explicit links in posts?
Try searching for ‘david higgen’ on YouTube.
Nah, it’s a weird glitch in the board software. There are several workarounds, but the best summary of the issue I have found is this post courtesy of Dr, Strangelove:
Basically, it’s a glitch in how the board tries to store previews. If you manufacture what the board sees as a new URL that links to the video and get it in before the board generates a new preview, it works. As an example, here’s a link to your song “In My Robot State”, which I am fond of on first listen:
Hehe, I’m apparently a pretty good lead vocalist, but I basically can’t sing harmonies at all. I can’t do either and play my primary instrument without an insane amount of practice for each part.
Cakewalk by Bandlab is free, and is a powerful and full-featured DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).
There’s also Reaper, which has an honor system $50 cost for private users; that’s also a full featured DAW.
I have no connection with either, just a satisfied user.
I also use Cakewalk, and also Zynewave Podium free (i like free !).
I would not claim to be a real ‘power user’ of either Cakewalk or Reaper.
Either seem fine for audio work. I might give Cakewalk a slight nod for MIDI functionality: it actually started life many years ago as a MIDI sequencer, in fact.
Ah, okay. I’ve just subscribed - I’ll have a listen after today’s rehearsal.
You can find my channel at Doug MacNaughton…
Excellent, I love it. One has to be careful with the spelling and capitalization in the search though: there seems to be someone with a very similar name apparently putting out rather unpleasant right-wing junk. Just FYI.
A small YouTuber is using my music for his latest video. I love it!!
Is Cakewalk really free? I know it’s a subtle distinction, but it is not the same class of free as in all those programs you can download from Github or similar. There are some quite useful programs I use like Bitwig (that one is $300–400 though) but there is no substitute for something you can hack yourself…
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I tried to run “Plugincollider”, which wraps Supercollider into a VST plugin for convenience, but it kept crashing under Linux. Perhaps it works better using Mac OS.
Yes, for the moment at least. You have to create a bandlab account, but once you have that you can download Cakewalk. I think it’s only available for Windows, though.
I must admit I don’t understand their business model, and I would not be enormously surprised if it becomes a paid product again at some time in the future.
It’s not open-source, of course, but wearing my music producer hat, I want something which does the job out of the box. Don’t want to have to spend time hacking the tool itself…
Breaking news: I just saw the announcement that they will shortly be discontinuing it and creating some new paid product. As I said, I’m not very surprised. So of course I would not suggest Cakewalk for any new work.
Time for some damage-control export work so I can move work in progress to a new platform.
As the saying goes: if it seems too good to be true, it probably isn’t…
I’ll probably move to Reaper, in the short term, anyway.
My new album is out. “Fortune & Glory: Fantasy RPG Ambience & Themes Volume 4”. Huzzah! I think my favorites on this album are: Fortune, Glory, and Bad Bard Strikes Back.
I will post Squirrel War (a.k.a. “For the Nutz!”) when it releases since you’ve asked.
My first vocal song is soooooooo close to being ready. The lyrics and melody have been written for over a year, but getting the harmony has been brutal. But it is really REALLY close now. I’ve learnt so much in this past year. Still learning tons of course, there is always more to learn, but yeah. I’m super excited to release this song! More excited then anything I’ve released to date!
Congrats on the release (belatedly)! Vol. 4 shows that you’ve been progressing (and have access to some new timbres ) The mixes, in particular, seem to gel more than your earlier works. I A/B’ed a couple of tracks from Vols. 3 & 4, to make sure I was remembering correctly.
I’ve been huddled up in my cave, working on more tunes, and a collab platform for musicians. My current obsession is a symphonic piece, titled ‘36’—no generative aspects this time. Instead, I’m forcing myself to work strictly with scoring software and a DAW. It’s an interesting challenge, since I didn’t really read/write traditional notation (and still don’t consider myself literate in it).
An excerpt is here: ‘36 (Excerpt)’ - to me it sounds like it’s exactly what it is: classical music written by someone who’s heard it, but never studied it formally. No wires, this time, but I did manage to squeeze in a Nightcafe image 
That’s great you’re working with vocals, now! The human voice is one of the hardest instruments to work with, because it has near-infinite variations; it’s also the sound we’re most familiar with. I’ll be listening when you drop it!
There’s been a lot of shuffling going on in the DAW/plugin space lately. My read on it is that VC is getting into the market, which is why we’re seeing more consolidation/rebranding.
Reaper is very powerful and affordable—I use it when making sample libraries, simply because of the ability to auto-trim events based on dynamics.