advice basic beat making programs

[la ressistance]

I'm looking to download a torrent for a basic beat making program (because i've wasted money on cubase before and never been able to use it) but i don't know what to look for.

 

It has to be something simple as i won't have an instruction manual (and i'm thick as shit) to just basically make beats of different tempo's to scratch over.

I'd also like to sample my records with it 'cos i'm always hearing little things i'd like to loop.

But most of all i want a program that i can upgrade as i get more familiar with.cheers.

 

I've found fruityloops studio producer edition v 5 0 amongst others,is it any good ???

[TopherEightyFive]

fruity loops is good. very intuitive. add on a daw and your set (soundforge, audtion, etc)

[decisive]

Reason's great- 3cds though (although the demo's tiny, and worth a look)- you will get a pdf manual with it and the online help is also very good. It can be difficult to get to grips with production, with any method, but when you understand the concepts you'll find they're the same no matter what software/hardware you use.

You probably won't make anything particuarly hot for a while, no matter what you use. Like everything it just takes practice so the software you decide on is really more down to personal taste- whatever you find allows you to work quickest...

 

c

[la ressistance]

cheers. I'm gonna try fruity loops ,i'm downloading the torrent now,but yeah i'm sure it must just take patience .

[dissonance]

fruity loops is very easy to use.... you just have to explore all of its possibilities...which takes time. but once you invest... you'll be quite pleased that you did.

 

 

its very easy easy to get your own samples in there...and I think I have TONS of sounds... I can throw together some shit for you if you go the fruity loops route.

 

I've moved on personally. I'm using reason as of late. I like it quite a bit.

[mr v]

does the trigger finger work with fl?

[decisive]

I just had a look to find out what that Trigger Finger is- it looks nice the Akai MPD16 is cheaper though, although it only has one fader and no pots. I'm saving up for a Korg MicroKontrol which has pads on it as well as 3 octave kb (2/3 size keys), a transport panel and 8 faders and 8 infinite rotation pots, rrps at £180 but sometimes goes for as little as £120 on ebay...

 

 

They're all MIDI based so they'll all work with fl- any software that supports General MIDI will be able to use them. They may or may not come with a template for fl though, if not you'd have to a) find one, there's probably one knocking about somewhere online, or b) make your own- which is easy, usually you click the function that you want to map and select 'midi learn' and then press the key/twiddle the pot etc, basically that's it.

 

hth

c

c

[snuff]

I would definitely defintiely use Reason over Fruity loops...for the main reason (no pun) that once you've mastered reason you will find that professional prgorams like cubase or logic are suddenly shit loads more comprehensible as Reason really does provide a very useful stepping stone to the next level....

[Steelio]

Snuffs on the money, but i would go with acid over reason because you can record audio on it aswell, get acid pro 5. Ableton live is dope too, but if you download it dont use it on a connected pc, because i think it sorta "phones home" and blocks you using the program and just brings up a copyright violation message. Even if you have all the wroking cracks and keygens etc.

[mr v]

quality stuff.

are there any decent tutorials on reason that teach you from the bottom right up floating around?

 

downloaded acid pro, turned it on and just didn't understand it, couldn't find tutorials on it, so ended up giving up, this is why an mpc would appeal so much more, i can press stuff and try and make noises, rather than just goin through menu after menu.

[decisive]

There's still menus and lots of stuff to understand on an mpc, but the screen's a lot smaller! I don't use one or really know much about them tho so that's all there is for me to say on hardware... Reason comes with amazing documentation and tutorials, as long as you read and go through the tuts in order (it's really tempting to skip straight to the lessons that sound most interesting but don't!) then you'll get a solid basic grasp of what does what, how and why it does it within a week- then you can start trying to figure out how to get the sounds out of your head and into the sequencer.

 

The only other thing I can think to note is that reason doesn't support audio recording (or vsts, but the whole point of reason is that it's an all in one piece of software, and its native effects/instruments are on the money for the most part), so for sampling or tracking vocals you'll need to pair it up with something like Adobe Audition- and in a perfect world Recycle.

That's my setup, with Live4 added to taste (I have no probs with it btw) and I find it intuitive, quick, economic on resources and fun to use...

 

c

[broma]

For drums I'd defo recommend Battery 2 by Native Instruments. Real simple to use, works a treat with an mpd16 or whatever midi controller. If you chop up a drum beat in Recycle, Battery can map it across the pads. Works nice with other samples too.