I'm a newb

I just obtained a laptop of my own (finally) and have wanted to make my own noisy electronic music... but I am unsure of what programs to use... I am running Windows Vista, and I downloaded LMMS, but it confused the crap outta me... I have no audio engineering experience to speak of, so it seemed a bit overwhelming. I don't have any money so hardware and expensive software are out of the question for now.

Basically, where do I start? what programs should a beginner be using? Any help would be much appreciated!

never used lmms but it looks pretty cool.

when I started I just bought acid music, which lets you sequence recordings on a timeline, and recorded a bunch of stuff made with freeware programs into audacity and stuck it together. you could do something like that for free with acid express or protools free.

for freeware audio programs there's lots of good stuff for windows... this is stuff I remember from like 9 years ago, have a mac now, but check out ts-404 - basic synth with sequencer built in, sawcutter - similar kind of thing, granulab - weird processing program that chops up and morphs your recordings, and hammerhead rhythm sequencer - simple stupid drum machine program - those are all free. I think shareware music machine was a good site for finding stuff like that, there was some way to search for just free and not shareware there... more complicated, expensive all in one programs like fruity loops or ableton or logic made way more sense to me after blindly messing around with simpler stuff like that for a few years.

another way is to get a sequencer type program (you put in notes) and vst plug-ins (like synths and effects that play the notes) - don't know what to recommend for starting out that way though

just download a cracked version of FL Studio and maybe Sony ACID as well and off you go!

Be warned, it's may take months if not years to get anywhere that you consider "good" ... experiment, fuck around, ask questions here, don't be afraid to suck, and most of all: enjoy it and stick with it. For what it's worth, I started out with Fruity Loops before moving on to Ableton Live. Good luck!

And although it's ILLEGAL AND WRONG, as a beginner it might be worth downloading some cracked software, at least to start with. When you get good, you can start paying!

btw Fruity Loops and FL Studio are one and the same thing - you'll probably get recommended it a lot as it's what loads of people start out with. It's in no way shit though - still my favourite music software....I have a Mac though now so can't easily use it :(

Yeah, I miss having a copy of FL to mess around with, the Fruity Slicer and the versatile (compared to Ableton) piano roll made it a joy to make beats with. Of course, I haven't tried Ableton's new slicer because I'm still running version 5 like a chump.

Yeah, basically get hold of Fruity and just try everything, don't bother about trying to make full songs, just try anything and everything and keep at it every day. It's really a lot of fun, I had some of the best times with music just fucking around with Fruity.

did you that's nice.

reason

I still use fruity and have for fucking years! It's ace and gets better every release. I chop shit up in soundforge normally although you can do that in fl too, I am just stuck in my ways.

Thanks so much, guys! I'm in the process of... obtaining... FLStudio, Acid and Granular, hoping to screw around with them when I get home from work tonight...

As to plug-ins, how exactly do they work? Just download them and then load them into the applications they're for?

pick a folder to be your VST folder and then whenever you install a VST, install to that folder. then tell whichever host you're using where that folder is from the preferences / config menu.

not sure about directx plugs

  On 8/13/2009 at 8:04 PM, Adjective said:

pick a folder to be your VST folder and then whenever you install a VST, install to that folder. then tell whichever host you're using where that folder is from the preferences / config menu.

 

not sure about directx plugs

lol

  On 8/13/2009 at 2:46 PM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

hey guise i herd about this jazz band covering flim

STFU noob

hey guyz i heard it's heat

what is going on today?

noobs randomly posting memes at completely inappropriate times

READ THE FUCKING RULES ALL OF YOU

lol

it is heat though

that was never in doubt

I'm not fully convinced it's heat or night.

Well, I've been screwing around in FLStudio, and I have to say that I love it so far... fairly easy to use, loads and loads of sounds on it, but I'm having a bit of trouble.

How do I get a sound to stop if I only want it for say, a couple of seconds, for one segment of the song? I have tried a couple of sytrus sounds and the pre-loaded 3xOSC 'bell' sound, but the last note from the pattern always hangs out for the rest of the song... how do I get rid of this? I can't seem to do it.

ohnoes

  On 8/14/2009 at 10:08 PM, Sprigg said:

Well, I've been screwing around in FLStudio, and I have to say that I love it so far... fairly easy to use, loads and loads of sounds on it, but I'm having a bit of trouble.

How do I get a sound to stop if I only want it for say, a couple of seconds, for one segment of the song? I have tried a couple of sytrus sounds and the pre-loaded 3xOSC 'bell' sound, but the last note from the pattern always hangs out for the rest of the song... how do I get rid of this? I can't seem to do it.

It might just be glitching out and if you restart it, it should probably work. If it keeps doing it you can make a midi note after it and move the velocity all the way down so it stops it.

  On 8/14/2009 at 8:55 AM, LUDD said:

what is going on today?

 

noobs randomly posting memes at completely inappropriate times

 

this isn't new