 jimi
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Ok, this is a free question, I’d like a lot to get here Brad’s answer but any other voice is cool.
Well I play guitar, I have some multi effect, I’ve figured out how to record (REAPER), my problem is idk how to get some rythm, dunno any programs to do some percussion beats and also all this electronic noise and voices, so can You Brad, and all of you guys give me some names? I’d like to use some free programz but I can check out this paid ones too.
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 Jamais Vu
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jimi, im sure brad has a load of info on the subject, but i can tell you what i have found recently myself on a close to $0 budget.
You already have reaper.
Ive been using FL Studio for a while for the beats cause its quick and easy (But that is definitely NOT free).
I’d like to actually hear some recommendations on a different solution though. :)
With plug-ins Reaper is pretty damn amazing. There are tons free on the internetwebthingy. Search for vst plugins or vsti plugins.
Plugins can provide instuments, eq, effects, amp & synth emulations. It’s really crazy what you can do now with a comp and a standard keyboard.
Checkout the program demo for Acoustica Mixcraft. It has a ton of instruments.
Reaper has a virtual keyboard that you could use your computer’s keyboard to play, but that is quite limited. You can also “draw” the notes in the midi editor, which can help when composing really complicated pieces or songs.
Oh and obviously, you would need a decent mic to record guitars or vocals.
That enough for you to bury your head in for now lol :)
Now if i could just learn how to use this crap. :)
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 Litis
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Here’s your percussion! There. Happy now?
First, the commercial ones:
- ToonTrack EZDrummer. It sounds very realistic, at least from what I heard in the demos. Costs $170 or $180, if I remember correctly. You also have a few optional expansions.
- Big Fish Audio offer an obvious EZDrummer rip-off called “Addictive Drums”. They also offer a huge array of sound libraries, which range from nu metal and drum n’ bass drum loops to meticulously sampled orchestra instruments. The first costs $250 (which is much more than EZDrummer, at least for me) and the latter cost a bit less, but still… It piles up, I guess.
- Native Instruments Battery is a percussion-focused offspring of their Kontakt sampler. It has a huge library of kits just like its sugar daddy, but in return costs just a bit less than EZDrummer. Native have this competition called “Guitar Rig Hero”, so check it out quickly (it ends on October 14th), and maybe you won’t have to pay for it – if you’ve got the looks (I heard Stephen Carpenter goes for blue eyes)… Well, it depends on which prize you’re attracted to, anyway.
Now, the free options (you probably use one of them already):
- E-Phonic’s Drumatic 3 and Drumatic VE. They’re not velocity-sensitive as far as I can tell, but the first can create an enormous range of sounds (yes, the description doesn’t lie) but isn’t for you if you don’t like to have only five presets and to tinker with synthesis, and the latter is… just a vintage drum machine emulator, and is pretty annoying in the beginning, so read the README file first.
- Audiosonic’s DigiDrum Pro. The samples are shitty and overused everywhere, but at least it’s velocity-sensitive, and it’s got filters, and distortion, and… stuff. Use it if you’re lazy about variation.
- Samples you find around the Internet. freesound has a lot of them, but most of them are from dubious sources, just like on the rest of the Internet, and they’re CC, so skip this option if you don’t like to deal with legal thingamajigs. Remember, the Internet(s) is serious business.
Now, to the “electronic noise and voices”. I’ll assume here you’re not a synthesis tinkerer (again), because I don’t have much time to finish typing this, so I’ll just offer Synth1. If there could be a monopoly on the non-existent free synthesizer plug-in market, the creator of this one would have it. There are loads of presets online, and you can get some reasonable sounds if you dabble around. If you’re not serious about “electronic noises”, you’ll only use this one.
I hope you’re grateful, since I spent an hour typing all this for some reason. Please read a bit. If you don’t, I won’t get mad anyway, since I plan to place this on my blog, register on AdSense, and get a lot of money. Then buy one of these. (Please don’t do this first.)
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 Jamais Vu
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wow litis thats great info! im sure everyone thanks u! :)
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 Litis
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Yeah, by the otherwise dead silence I can tell that everyone on these forums downloaded these plug-ins and tries to figure them out for two days non-stop now. Heh.
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 Brad
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That’s a great write-up, Litis. Thanks for that.
I also recommend going through the plugin listings at:
http://www.kvraudio.com/
Lots of free gems in there.
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 jimi
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Thanks everyone, good peace of advice.
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 boolean
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Litis: thanks for the tips. Guess I should’ve dug a bit deeper before replying to the Drums post. EZDrummer looks awesome, if a bit pricey.
Very little free software available for the Mac. Searching for variations on “Free Drum Plugin” turns up a lot of noise but not much substance. I used to read Computer Music magazine and they’d ship or link to a bunch of free software but most of it was pretty dodgy.
Maybe I should just rent a hobo to play some old paint cans or something.
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 Litis
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Here’s some drum sample related stuff:
- DrumWerks – different types of sampled drums. Pretty cheap, though I wouldn’t recommend buying the “all kits package” if you’re a velocity mapping freak, since there are obviously less velocity-varied samples there. The demos I heard sounded very good. Just pick and choose whatever drum kit piece you’d like to have samples of – I think that beats buying a drum sample CD. You can also request a demo kit.
- AudioPervert – this is a mostly electronic drum sample oriented website. This is recommended if you need some plain weird stuff, old computer samples or recordings of vintage drum machines (not only Roland TRs, by the way). However, you’ll have to pay either for a year-long membership or one of two sample CDs.
And here are three interesting drum plug-ins I didn’t write about yet:
- RMV – the demo was released yesterday… I can’t say it looks really promising, since it’s got a few UI issues, doesn’t come with a manual, requires a sketchy DRM system to be installed (yes, that’s just the friggin’ demo), and consumes pretty big amounts of cycles per pad. Still, it’s armed with a monstrous – even exaggerated – array of effect routing possibilities (not that there’s a lot of effects to choose from, but I still think three effects plus filter per pad and nine global insert effects is way too much) and it also offers a big sample and loop library. Yeah, it supports REX and RX2 loops too. It’s also got some good drum synthesis capabilities, and you can route a good amount of parameters to velocity and such per each pad. Still, isn’t 48 drum pads and six loops in one plug-in too cumbersome? I don’t think that even Autechre would use such a beast. Also, the lack of a manual will make trying this one out exteremely frustrating.
- Drumular – a good alternative to RMV and four times cheaper. It’s got a bigger array of synthesis-based modules, and you can trigger multiple pads with one key. It doesn’t come with a manual (do I see a pattern here? Well, this guy also made some presets for RMV…), but unlike RMV, it isn’t loaded with a useless amount of features, so it’s much easier to figure out. The demo comes with a generous amount of presets (don’t know if there’s more in the full version), though you can’t use the samples in them with your own kits, which is a bummer. There’s bigger opportunities for crazy synthesized drums here, anyway. There’s another percussion plug-in from the same guy, though it’s sample-oriented, so I haven’t tried it yet.
- Granite – now this thing is really crazy. The sole fact of it including bit depth and sample rate reducing is promising. That’s two oscillators plus a variable frequency noise source across eight pads (which is a small amount compared to the previous ones I mentioned, but basic productions don’t need more than that). Every oscillator has a standard army of low-, high- and band-pass filters, plus the awesome ring modulation and comb filters (the latter is essentially a pretty term for a phaser). Four envelopes per pad can be shaped, looped and sent to anything logical. One can even vary the pitch, distortion, envelope lengths and other things per MIDI mapping (which makes up for the little amount of pads). There’s a few kit presets and a good amount of drum pad presets. You can get really crazy results if you play around with it even without knowing anything about synthesis, I think. Oh, and you can use samples in this one, too.
By the way, I recommend looking around here if you want to make some noise with a melody, too. I especially recommend Vocal for that purpose.
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