Recording question for the Cap'n

[adam]

Aloha! I'm going to be writing/recording music in hotel rooms for the next year. You mentioned that you do most of your stuff on a laptop. What kind do you recommend? Any specific programs? Mac/PC? I'm new to the whole midi thing, but eventually I'd like to scrounge up some beats on the laptop, as well as horns and strings generated from software. Any suggestions? Thanks!~Adam

[bravecaptain]

hey adam

a decent lappy to start with. this will be pc based cos i haven't used a mac in a few years. you'll need a decent sized hard drive or better yet invest in a LaCie portable drive. bout a hundred sheets for 160gb. mmmmmmm space.

i would go for ableton live because you can create so much on the fly. drums machines, synths are all in there. i think the new version which i am too poor to buy accepts mp3's as well. www.ableton.com. it's the business.

if you want to be making more structured stuff then steinberg cubase sx2 is what I use to record my tunes on. waldorf attack is a good drum machine but any drum programme is good if yr willing to put the time in and fuck yr sounds up.

if i had to record in hotel rooms i would need to take my soundcard with me which is a standalone nuendo audiolink 96. very dependable. you can fuck around on ableton with the laptop soundcard. i'm not sure how much you can do tho'.

horns and strings; depends on how good you want them. i use an orchestra program by Edirol. its pretty good. it's no substitute for the real thing and should be used as little as possible otherwise it really gets on yr nerves.

i think thats it. it's not cheap but it's doable. probably mark (mixcasesspaces) would be a good person to ask as well.

hope that helps. good luck!

mx

[mixedcasesspaces]

Hello.

Interesting stuff!

I'm generally a bit backwards with my music, so I tend to use seperate hardware samplers and synths and stuff for most of my songs, connected by MIDI where needed and the recorded onto my stand-alone multitracker. Not much use if you're traveling around in hotels though!

I've started getting into using the PC for drums a bit more recently and have had some fun with Rebirth (Roland 808, 909 and 303 emulation!) and I also use Soundforge quite a lot for chopping drum loops around and also for manual editing of any other sounds I have on the PC. Soundforge is great in fact.

For the soundcard I've got an Audigy Platinum one, which is fine. It has all the midi, sp/dif digital outputs needed and seems to work ok, although the software you get with it is very annoying (aimed at people who want it for home cinema I think - loads of built in rubbish 'surround' effect and things). I'm not especially recommending it, but it's cheap and I've had no trouble with it.

The only other thing I'd say is that emulated horns always sound naff (unless they're just quiet in the background I guess) and orchestra stuff usually does too (though I've not heard Edirol), I would just use similar deliberately electronic sounding things instead so it sounds like you had it like that on purpose

Mark
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[freestuie]

Re: Ableton Live v5.01

I wouldn't like to suggest you are willing to break the law, but if you are familiar with how to do BitTornado and torrent files, you can download the new Ableton jobby at torrentreactor.net. Just passing on the information, mind.
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"stay away from the man with dodgy eye, stay away from the dodgy eyed man"

[adam]

Thanks for the info! I'm psyched to try out the sound set up. I'll be hitting the pc shops later this month... That midi stuff is boggling my mind at the moment, but I picked up a cable and been nose deep in the manual all week. I'll figure out eventually. Thanks so much for suggestions, I'll let you know how the set-up turns out! ~Adam