Getting Started

matta922 · Joined: Aug 23, 2007 Posts: 3 Location: Minnesota

Im sure you guys get this question a lot but Im starting to become more interested in composing electronic music and I am not familiar with much at all.

Where do I start? Are there any programs that I can download that help?

Im using garageband for now and I play guitar and mainly write on guitar but Im just not sure what do.

Thanks in advance

Low Note · Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 3:35 am Post subject:

When you say electronic music, what sort of artists are you thinking of?

Truth be told, a lot of "electronic music" is not a whole lot different in writing than what you may write with your guitar - there just happens to be different 'colors' of sounds being used.

Antimon · Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 3:42 am Post subject:

I recommend scrolling down the topics in Instruments Equipment/General Discussion (here: http://electro-music.com/forum/forum-103.html), where this sort of question about gear pops up every now and then.

One thing I like to do sometimes is hook my guitar to a Clavia Nord Modular G2 Engine, end process sound using lots of delays that are set and modulated in different ways. This can create cool drones and rhythms.

Do you have programming experience? Sound can be input and processed in ChucK as well (forum here: http://electro-music.com/forum/forum-140.html). And of course you can do all kinds of other weird sounds.

/Stefan

kijjaz · Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 7:50 am Post subject:

Or have you been quite comfortable in Sequencers?
For example, the Garage Band you're using..

And some other sequencer programs: Logic, Cubase, Cakewalk Sonar, ..
Ableton Live, Reason, etc..

Especially, I guess you can do quite a lot of things electronic in Garage band already..
especially with all those synth sounds and the effects. Very Happy

elektro80 · Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 8:15 am Post subject:

matta922 · Joined: Aug 23, 2007 Posts: 3 Location: Minnesota

Its not the composing aspect of it I just want some tools that I can use to help get me started.

Are there downloads that I can download to help me get new sounds and things of that nature.

cronodevir · Joined: Aug 24, 2007 Posts: 4 Location: home

If i were you, i would get Fruityloops 6

kijjaz · Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2007 5:52 am Post subject:

matta922 says: .. Are there downloads that I can download to help me get new sounds and things of that nature. ..

kijjaz:
I recommend starting with some of those sequencers also if you're from a very musician side..
I mean, if you want to work on meoldy, chords, beat, and tweaking some sounds they provide as presets or examples in the program.
Fruityloop or Reason would be fun to dig into this..

but if you really want to explore new sound, you might wanna read more about softwares that is more to a programming side,
so that you can get into more low-level music synthesis tools.

These pages might link you to many places that you can start finding the kinds of software you want to play with.
I actually recommend playing both with sequencer-style (DAW) programs and also audio programming language..

There are many programming language software for electronic music that is opensource and/or free,
so it'd be easy to obtain. electro-music.com is a very nice place also for the audio programming community.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesizer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Workstation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_programming_language

If you wanna try with modern electronic music technics on the computer,
I also recommend puredata (http://puredata.info/)

have fun reading and making new friends around here in such a nice and warm community ^_^

Stanley Pain · Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2007 10:15 am Post subject:

fruityloops is the best and cheapest option if you're interested in generally learning what everything does.

it's biggest drawback is that it either can't or isn't particularly suited to audio recording. if you're just interested in genre specific dance music, like techno or electro, it's a nice little all in one box until you find your way.

i think it's important to learn the impact of what everything does so that you can make an informed decision. fruityloops has basic synths with all the parameters clearly layed out so that you can relate the parameter to it's effect on the sound easily.

lots of people rate Reason for this... reason as well. you don't need the fastest machine in the world to run either of them.

they're both fun toys, a little more advanced than garageband. i know a few signed artists that use these or garageband. i don't think there's any shame in that.

matta922 · Joined: Aug 23, 2007 Posts: 3 Location: Minnesota

I think im going to stick with garageband for now. Do you guys recommend any free soft synths that I could download?

Thanks for the help you guys have given a ton of information to work with.

cronodevir · Joined: Aug 24, 2007 Posts: 4 Location: home

Reason doesn't support vsti or dxi [basicly, you won't be useing any synths other than the ones it gives you]..or any other format...your basicly stuck with the limitations it gives you....thus, id still pick fruityloops Smile

free sytnhs...

Synth1
Superwave P8
Crystal Softsynth

google those...

elektro80 · Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 1:44 pm Post subject:

Garageband suggests that he is on a mac. This application uses AFAIK instruments that are basically based on samples. It does not allow use of AU or VSTi instruments. If he wants more sounds he simply gotta buy more samplesets ( or get free ones off the web ).

If he wants to upgrade to a DAW enviroment with true softsynths then Logic Express seems like a decent choice. Logic Express will also open Garageband projects and he can develop these further using more advanced tools.

Garageband itself is incredibly stupidly simple but also pretty powerful. I know several guys who often will build the framework of a song in Garageband and then later import it into Logic Express or Logic Pro in order to do the serious studio work.