I know this is lame but

So back in my teenager years I experimented with Fruity Loops and fucked around a bit.. and now I'm 22 and I have an itch to produce some music. I don't know any instruments (I blame it on my guitar and piano teacher getting divorced and fucking off to the Yukon) but I have a laptop and some badass headphones!

Would anyone point me in the right direction of some good music making software? As well as any tutorials or any such things to help a beginner get on their feet?

This is a huge favour, and hopefully I can return it with some shitty music in the next several months or so.

Cheers!

if you know how to use Fruity Loops already stick with it! it's also wicked for beginners and stuff, not that it is at all amateurish - it's very powerful. but yeah, get FL Studio 9.

FL Studio is very powerfull now. it's quite amazing how far it's come really since version 2 (which was the version i began using 10 years ago in early 2000).

now i use a mixture of things, but FL Studio is still pretty good for getting ideas down in quick, and playing around in... etc. i go back to it a lot. but i wish they'd change that step sequencer tho, and some of the colours. it's a bit dull to look at, imo.

Stick with FLStudio, I love it.

alrighty then, any good tutorials that you guys know of? I know nothing about this stuff. I just press random buttons and shit

I've learned 95% of what I know by just screwing around and the other 5% by simply asking questions here. There are probably some pretty good youtube videos, I've never actually bothered to look though.

I just press random buttons and pay attention to what, if anything changes, make a mental note and sometimes write down what happened when i tweaked what knob. Just screw around, you'll find your style eventually. Some people learn well by trying to reproduce a favourite song or sound, as well.

not saying it's the be all or end all, as I know there are lots of similar books, but personally I gained an incredible foundation by reading Peter Kirn's "Real World Digital Audio" a few years back and felt that was really pivotal for me, kinda when I started to feel like "huh, that makes sense" rather than just pushing random buttons.

  On 11/8/2010 at 11:49 PM, halisray said:

alrighty then, any good tutorials that you guys know of? I know nothing about this stuff. I just press random buttons and shit

FL Studio comes with some tutorials that are quite enlightening, also there are loads on YouTube as someone said.

Fl studio has a very good manual.

does FL Studio exist for mac? because I only have a mac now - I used to have a pc

I'm sure it does.

Also check out Reason. It can be pretty simple, but also complex if you like.

If you're on a Mac then get Logic.

http://www.renoise.com/download/renoise/

On the site there's a wiki and a forum that'll help you get started.

You should be able to install the user made 'tools' on the demo version, just drag drop the file onto renoise's window. This one you'll find useful, and some more have been highlighted in the renoise 2.6 beta thread here in ekt http://tools.renoise.com/tools/scale-finder

Renoise comes with some alright basic effects, someone with a mac will have to give you some tips on decent vstis though. And samples, you can record them straight into Renoise's wave editor with your laptop mic, render off little selected bits of a pattern and have them automatically appear in your instrument list, or just download some and load 'em in.

My one suggestion is to shift to making music with speakers and ones with some reasonable sub.

no FL Studio on mac. and i also would recommend against both logic and renoise if you are just starting out. they are both amazing tools but i think there's too much between you and the core concepts with them. logic is just sooooo much stuff and with renoise you will be spending too much time worry about effect codes and not enough time figuring out exactly how the effect works.

i would agree that the best solution for you would be propellerheads' reason 5. just keep in mind that reason does not record audio at all, so if you want to record yourself singing or playing guitar then you won't be able to do it. reason is more of an electronic musician's tool for making sequenced music using synths and drum machines that are all included with it. but if you do want to record there is another product from propellerheads called "record" and it's intertwined with reason, you should check it out.

the nice thing about reason/record is that it's just so damn intuitive. it's like working with hardware, if you want something to do something, you plug a wire into the back of something else. you don't have to worry about navigating through menus to find whatever you are looking for. personally i feel after a while you kinda want something more, that's why i use ableton live, but when i was just starting out reason was essential for me.

the answer to everything in life is ableton live.

Reason for composing and making drum loops, exported via audio/MIDI and put into Ableton Live for arranging = just about the most fun music making has ever been for me. I find Reason far, far easier to write in than Live, but the fact that Live is... well, live, makes it so great to actually structure your tracks.

Yeah, Reason would be an excellent place to start.

FL Studio if you want a powerful DAW and don't care if people make fun of the name.

Reason if you like to play video games and think VST's are for fags.

Ableton Live if you want to eventually play your songs live, but don't mind retarded level midi capabilities.

Renoise if you want to be Venetian Snares and don't mind a learning curve that rivals Max MSP.

Oh and Cubase if you want to talk to hathathat.

Yeee, Renoise isn't as complicated as it's made out to be imo, and it's got easier to use with some recent additions like the pattern matrix. It might seem weirder if you do have a lot of experience with more traditional piano roll orientated software, than if you're just beginning perhaps? And I think the effect column argument is rubbish. It's useful for sample manipulation, but I reckon I use the delay column to jazz things up a bit way more - and then the automation editor for controlling plugins. Not saying he won't be a bit intimidated if/when he opens up a demo track for the first time though.

Live would be my next suggestion just because I've had a lot of fun with it, the suite comes with piles of crap to monkey around with and it's very easy to get into. Didn't really dig FL or Reason personally.

One thing acid1 has missed is that in Live you only have a choice of about 15 colour themes (about 3 usable) yet in Renoise you can waste hours tweaking the hue, sat and brightness of every visual element. Other DAWs are LIGHT YEARS behind when it comes to this. Light years. Actually, EnergyXT has this feature as well. FU acid1.

i love fruity loops but when i got mac i went to reason, love the drum machine and sampler but i did not like how i couldn't use 3rd party software, annoyed me, so i moved to logic which i now love! a friend of mine gave me tutorials from lydia.com (i think its lydia...) which were a life saver, so if you can get hold of that i recomend it.

  On 11/9/2010 at 10:36 PM, futuregirlfriend said:

One thing acid1 has missed is that in Live you only have a choice of about 15 colour themes (about 3 usable) yet in Renoise you can waste hours tweaking the hue, sat and brightness of every visual element. Other DAWs are LIGHT YEARS behind when it comes to this. Light years. Actually, EnergyXT has this feature as well. FU acid1.

LOL!

I love EnergyXT skins. I once suggested to Jorgen that he make it so we can save themes with our songs but I was loudly rejected.

I agree with you tho that if you start off with Trackers it might actually not be that bad. This is what I did back in the day with Buzz, and the learning curve going from a tracker to a piano roll didn't even exist. The other way can pretty tricky though.

And on a side note, I've been messing with Renoise exclusively lately. Ableton's been feeling like the ugly girl at the dance these days.

If you're unlucky like me, you'll work with one DAW for a couple of years and get really sick of it, not feel even remotely inspired to open it, and have to start afresh with something new. Which is fun and infuriating at the same time.

  On 11/9/2010 at 8:32 PM, acid1 said:

Ableton Live if you want to eventually play your songs live, but don't mind retarded level midi capabilities.

Just curious, why do you think Live has retarded level midi capabilities? I hear this quite a bit, and i'd like to know what you can do in other DAWS that you can do in Live's midi editor? I understand things like FL Studio having handy tricks which is great but really if you can duplicate those by hand in other editors than you are probably too lazy to make anything decent. If anything I'd probably say audio editing is where Live is maybe below average, but for midi once you get used to the keyboard shortcuts and stuff it works great.

  On 11/10/2010 at 1:43 AM, ryanmcallister said:

  On 11/9/2010 at 8:32 PM, acid1 said:

Ableton Live if you want to eventually play your songs live, but don't mind retarded level midi capabilities.

Just curious, why do you think Live has retarded level midi capabilities? I hear this quite a bit, and i'd like to know what you can do in other DAWS that you can do in Live's midi editor? I understand things like FL Studio having handy tricks which is great but really if you can duplicate those by hand in other editors than you are probably too lazy to make anything decent. If anything I'd probably say audio editing is where Live is maybe below average, but for midi once you get used to the keyboard shortcuts and stuff it works great.

You could make any song by combining enough sine waves together... doing so would probably be retarded tho.