I want to learn to make music using nothing but software

what program/s would you suggest?
does that program have a really efficient sequencer (important) that isn't impossible to learn but easy enough to use?

what else should I know before I begin my career in making music?
any suggestions?
anything
help

reason, but a MIDI controller is recommended

yeah at least a midi keyboard is pretty much essential

reason is great but i really hate it as a sequencer

step-entering and note editing in reason is a pain, but it's great for building sounds using basic synthesis + filtering techniques and recording live MIDI tracks. also good drum machine/arpeggiator/step sequencer features. I got it and an oxygen8 2 months ago and I've pretty much been in heaven ever since

at first I thought this thread was about code-based music - in which case I was gonna recommend MATLAB, which handles matrices/vectors well (if you like math and geeky computer music)

probably fuckin ableton like every other cunt.

If you really don't want to use a MIDI keyboard, gonna go HARDCORE and go with a software sample-based tracker (though I don't know da kids use these days)

reason was the only program I had tried to learn... the sequencer put me off big time.

(cya all tomorrow - I'm going to bed, thanks for the suggestions, keep them flowing)

reason is prob the best for this, yeah. or a tracker.

fruityloops is better than reason. the step sequencer/piano roll is more powerful and intuitive to use (especially for beginners). the native plug-ins and samples are not as good, but you can load practically any vst into a channel (depending on how much ram you're running - this is pretty key with any software btw), and in this day and age there is a wealth of freeware soft synths that are as good if not better than what reason, or ableton for that matter, comes bundled with. furthermore, it acts as a sampler with unlimited memory and sample time - you can load any wav into a channel and it automatically maps it across the keyboard. you can then sequence them as one shot samples in the sequencer, or trigger them with a midi controller. there isn't much scope for editing samples, but you can just use something like audacity for that. again i'll highlight just how easy and user friendly the fruityloops interface is, if you have little understanding of how electronic music production works, let alone music software, i'd go for this.

regarding it's capabilities as a phrase sampler, think of any classic drum machine you can name and like the sound of, for example the emu drummulator. type its name into google, within a few seconds you'll find somewhere hosting free wav samples of its individual drum sounds. you can load these into an individual channel each (kick drum in channel 1, snare in channel 2 etc) all on the same screen, and essentially create a virtual drum machine much like an mpc or something. you can do so much with this alone even before you get into synthesis

and yes i know you can do that with redrum or whatever in reason, but the interface in fruityloops is just so much easier and faster

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFR__g4_jGw

I didn't like fruityloops, but I know a lot of people who do, so if reason wasn't intuitive to you fruityloops might be

(reason is pretty worthless without a controller fwiw)

i can't stress how much you'll learn if you just use one decent synth and a sequencer to make a few tracks. use the one synth for drums, bass, keys, pads, everything. you'll find yourself learning a lot of useful stuff.

what if I want to add guitar... do all guitar synths suck basically?

depends if you can play guitar really... until propellerhead "Record" comes out, Reason doesn't support direct exterior input but you can use Audacity to record guitar phrases, chop em up in Recycle and then trigger them in Reason using the Dr Rex patch.

I'm not too into Fruity Loops, although i'll admit it's slightly more beginner-friendly once you get started. only issue is that it seems to be taken slightly less seriously than other DAWs, even Reason which is VST incompatible seems more credible and there's a wealth of information and tutorials in magazines and online about it. It's a matte rof what works for you though.

I am really big in favor of Reason, and even used it alone for years and years. I've always liked the sequencing interfaces, and more especially the possibilities -- part of the draw of its being all modular and machine-like is that you don't just sequence out parts, you can set up and patch together whole messes of things affecting one another, with patterns tweaking effects, tricking out synth parameters, one thing gating the next, anything ... you can get really Rube Goldberg with it, all based on pretty straightforward interactions, just turning the boxes over and plugging one thing into another.

But yes, the problem is that it doesn't yet record, and it doesn't yet handle VSTs, and recording your takes in other programs and shipping them over as samples is just ... not something one should have to do. I'm glad they're integrating recording into it, for sure. The alternative I like is to use it in conjunction with Ableton Live; it's a terrific combination, sequencing in one and doing multi-tracking, effects, and mixing in the other.

Is the real goal here to make old school video game music? because it feels like using modern software like frootyloops and reason would be "cheating" a little.

cheating schmeating

i just know reason' sequencer sucked... fruity loops is too lo-tech I think

fruityloops is only as lo-tech as the samples or plug-ins you put into it. considering you've never used music software before i doubt you're qualified to decide what is and isn't lo-tech. there is no daw on the market with similar features that will let you work as quickly and as easily as fl, especially if you want to use "nothing but software"

what does "nothing but software" mean exactly? Is sampling OK, or is the idea that everything is generated purely by software (no recording)?
maybe post an example of the kind of music you want to create. I've only used FL a few times but I'd have to agree that it is geared towards a certain frootloopy way of working.

You can do some amazing things in Fruityloops. It's not really that low-tech, even though it looks a little cartoony. I remember reading somewhere that a lot of hiphop acts use Fruityloops. For me, the resulting style highly changes depending on the software. Fruityloops lets you make really cool sounding hiphop or techno.

Basically, Fruityloops lets you easily customize and alter loops because it's super easy to cut and paste loops and create 10-20 different variations of the same loop while looking at all the sound files (e.g. you can see at once all your hi-hats, kicks, etc.)

Reason is not so easy. Redrum lets you view one sound type of the loop at a time, or you're dealing with the piano roll editor, and only 16 bars at once without toggling a switch. Visually, it's harder for me to see how the loops can be easily altered.

That said, Reason's synths and processors are higher quality than FL, though FL has some neat little granulizers and stuff and can record sound inputs. It's basically a gigantic synth program in that almost every sound is the result of triggering a midi note that sends a signal to a particular virtual synth.

Ableton Live, in some ways the opposite of Reason, is highly sample-oriented. It lets you make wav-file music, e.g. drop in a full loop of saxophone, drums, etc., adjust timing as needed or automatically if you want, cut-and-paste wavs like it's Photoshop, to make quickly very cohesive, nearly professional sounding music. Its synths aren't quite as intuitive as Reason, nor as warm sounding. But you can make recognizable music without knowing how to play an instrument or read music. Musique concrete is eminently doable.

I think those 3 are really good to start with. My band used Reason and Ableton on our first album, and it wasn't that bad! There are a lot of other really cool programs, like Reaktor, MAX, Mulch, and Reaper. The first three in particular are fun, and you can definitely make really cool sounds--but making a piece of longer music is a bit tougher.

If you want to do sw stuff but be able to also input guitars or something, have a look at Reaper - it's a software multitracker but it allows VST input as well as regular audio and you can run it in conjunction with fruity, reason or buzz and get great results. Its freeware (or open source I think) too. This is wintel of course, NFI if it wotks on *nix or MacOS but Mac users have protools and whatever i guess.

Also as someone who's reasonably musical but has nfi what I'm doing when it comes to electronic music, Fruityloops is really intuitive, I find. It made sense to me as a pianist/reader of music, reason confused the shit out of me.

Hey, can anyone help me remember this one drum sequencer/tracker program I was using a couple years ago? I'm on a diff computer with no access to my old stuff and my mind is BLANKING. IN GENERAL I remember a blue color scheme, various graphical "knobs" (really generic, I know), and a really huge number of tracks to work with compared to Hammerhead (which I'd been playing with up till then). Like at least 16. Really easy to swap samples in and out (also a nice step up from Hammerhead). Lots of muscle, not a lot of BS.

I THOUGHT it was Tuareg2 or Moonfish but I'm looking at their screenshots now and they both look a little too simple, way too few tracks on display and too...cartoony. This thing was kind of a powerhouse.

Am I completely imagining this wonder-program? Halp!!

Also, compared to Hammerhead and the other Bos programs, this thing made it reallllly easy to get multiple versions of one beat going and work with them side by side.

Oh! And! Very definitely some kind of pitch-shifting control on original notes - I was doing great corny little tom-tom rolls and stuff.

this is the only thing i know with a blue color scheme:
http://www.madwizard.org/images/content/el/modplayer/fasttracker2.png

Hmmm, no - much more recent than that, more Win98-looking, I think. But thanks!

Dahahahaha! It was HOTSTEPPER!

http://www.threechords.com/hammerhead/hotstepper.shtml

Gonna download tomorrow and start screwing around with some things - but I strongly recommend this piece of software.

i uh obtained reason but am very intimated by it. how did you guys learn how to use this behemoth? are there are any tutorials or instructional methods you might recommend? or just fuck around with it?

h8 reason

just fuck around with it. i still don't really know how to use it, so i just use it as a glorified soft synth

logic is pretty cool, i wish i had more of an idea of how to actually use it though