What are /r/WeAreTheMusicMakers' favorite Products & Services?

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Hello there,

Here is an Android app I built as one of my fun weekend projects. It is designed to help singers visualize the notes they are singing in real-time. I originally posted the app on the r/singing, but I figure people here might find this useful as well. The app is free and has no ads. I am planning to add more features such as the ability to record and also make an ios version. Right now this is the just first version and I would love to hear what you guys think.

Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.autumnrockdev.nailthepitch

Cheers!

Hyjacking this comment. Startup issues are either hardware (motherboard, RAM, Powersupply, HDD) or software (filesystem is corrupted/broke, boot files missing). If you can't get the laptop working....

1 Buy this: https://www.amazon.com/Generic-Adapter-Converter-Optical-External/dp/B002OV1VJW 2 pull HDD from non-functional laptop 3 connect to working one(connect power supply last) 4 copy files to New laptop 5 copy files to Google drive/ OneDrive/ etc

If you dug this video I would suggest reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. I manage artists for a living and tell all my artists to read this book twice a year. Resistance is very very real and you can overcome. Don't wait for inspiration or motivation. If an artist tells me they only wait for inspiration, then I don't work with them.

This is close.

I searched Amazon for "desktop keyboard stand."

There's several options there that might work for you.

Seriously though, can people start helping him instead of discussing why he shouldn't give a fuck? He asked a question, if you don't have an answer, give it a break.

These should be great some of the best for the price, and doesn't seem to use leather:

https://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD280PRO-Headphones-old-model/dp/B000065BPB

> "...and then go back to the first theme, and then improvise on the one E flat minor chord change.' And then have a drum solo. Joe said, 'Dave, don't ever quit playing that vamp under my solo or I'll get lost.'"

I was on a gigabit connection so not long at all. A good rule of thumb is to go to www.speedtest.net, do the test, see how fast your internet is. That second number, the upload speed, divided by 8 is about what your upload should be in MB per second. So if you are getting a 10mbps upload speed you'll probably get like 1.25 MB/s so say 100 gigs is what your syncing. Math, math, math, and we've got about 22 hours on a relatively slow connection, 2 1/2 on a 100Mbps, and like 15-20 minutes on gig......... sorry used to work for an ISP.... =P

I want to take the opportunity to recommend this book from Wooten, change my perspective on music https://www.amazon.com/Music-Lesson-Spiritual-Search-Through/dp/0425220931

Cakewalk by Bandlab is free to download right now. It's a full on DAW. Maybe not be the best but it'll get you making music with your midi keyboard. It'll definitely have a stock piano plug in with it.

https://www.bandlab.com/products/cakewalk

I did that for months until I realized I could get an actual pop filter for $7.99

Markov Chains have been around a long time.

A guy I met at a computer training class showed me this project he did - collecting all of the "online (text) erotica I could find", then feeding it into in a markov chain text generator, and then hooking that up to the speech synthesizer. The computer generated filth that came from the machine was pretty amazing.

If you're just starting to learn on your air guitar you might want to look into getting this book. I've heard some good things about it. It may help you improve. I believe you can find it free online if you look hard enough.

If you feel like taking a free online class, Berklee College of Music is offering this one, starting Oct 13:

Introduction to Music Production

https://www.coursera.org/course/musicproduction

You mentionned you don't know what the reverb is. They will teach you that, among other things.

It sounds like some of the outlets might have a reversed hot/neutral. Get a cheap outlet tester to find out. And a pigtail adapter to test the 2-prong outlets. Fixing it is pretty simple if you are comfortable working with wiring.

Don't record digital audio from your computer by going through an interface, that's silly. Just use software to route stuff around. On Mac use this Soundflower or something equivalent:

https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower

There are other options on PC.

If there's something you need Pro Tools for, then as bodean55 said, the educational version is probably going to be your best bet.

If, on the other hand, you're looking for a phenomenal daw, check out Reaper. The free trial doesn't have any limitations (no features disabled, saving is allowed, etc) and for the price it's a steal.

not really, this is really more of a contract guidance thing for different types of deals, such as labels, publishers, merch, live shows etc. most people in the biz agree that it's incredibly important to understand all of these things. look at the chapter titles to see what's inside https://www.amazon.com/Need-Know-About-Music-Business/dp/1501122185/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0/136-9916319-3929358?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1501122185&pd_rd_r=09d51abe-1a60-4255-a3c0-c4380e1ebaed&pd_rd_w=QKuBP&pd_rd_wg=XzSZ1&pf_rd_p=5cfcf...

You forgot to mention Developing your musicianship which I found to be incredibly fascinating!

The Jazz Improv class went way over my head and I couldn't keep up, but that was a while ago, I might try it again one of these days.

There is also a brilliant course on Songwriting that gives you a great deal of information about the structure of a song and writing lyrics.

This is totally false. Mastering is much more complicated than just making things louder. There is overall EQ and dynamic conditioning, de essing, normalization, and much more.

I suggest you check out the book “Mastering: Practical Techniques,” by Gebre Waddel- its really once of the best books Ive read on the subject.

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Audio-Mastering-Practical-Techniques/dp/0071819576/ref=nodl_

Interestingly, Beats and Monster split in January. Obviously, the current lineup is still done by Monster, but it will be interesting to see which direction the future products take.

Tracktion 6 is old but free and lightweight, but I believe it comes with some simple synth tools. You'll probably find a better VST host to be honest, but as a DAW it's old but stable and not crippled in any way.

https://www.tracktion.com/products/t6-daw

Chinese companies have been making cheapo generic condenser mics for years now. This is the one that I have: https://www.amazon.com/ZINGYOU-Microphone-BM-800-Double-layer-Broadcasting/dp/B0756V2B6R?ref_=ast_sto_dp

You'd be surprised at how good it sounds for being $30

If I were you I would open it up immediately and make sure the foam layer has been removed. It deteriorates over time and will destroy your sliders. I had to replace all of mine. Took a few hours and is totally worth it. This guy has sliders Sliders! This site is helpful as well. Help!

You and anyone else who likes this train of thought should read the book called "Faking It".

It's a detailed look at many artists over the course of the last century and how the role of "authenticity" in music has changed over time from back in the day when artists didn't write songs, to the first industry songwriters, to Elvis, to Disco, to Kraftwerk, to Punk music, to Moby, etc. etc.

The writer's insight is fascinating and really well researched. It really makes you think about exactly these types of questions in this thread. E.g. Are artists a representation of an idea or are they the embodiment of it? Does it matter to their listeners? Should it matter to their listeners? Can an artist play with the idea of authenticity in the same way they play with music? Can it be manipulated as part of the art form? Etc. etc. etc. etc.

Recommend it.

There is no open source DAW comparable to Ableton that accepts all VSTs. The best open source DAW is probably Ardour.

http://ardour.org/

I actually can't think of any other remotely decent DAW that's open source.

Here's the article this is from. There are some music theory essays linked in the article itself: http://www.openculture.com/2017/04/the-tone-circle-john-coltrane-drew-to-illustrate-the-theory-behind-his-most-famous-compositions-1967.html

You can try MP3Gain or WaveGain

Both of these programs will adjust the level of your tracks based on the Replaygain model of loudness. Typically this will make them quieter than commercial tracks, but more consistent with each other.

What you should be doing is mastering your tracks. I don't mean running them through a multiband compressor and some other whizz-bang processor. I mean basic adjustments like level, fade-ins and fade-outs and some basic EQ to make the tracks consistent with each other and consistent with commercial releases of the same genre. (note you are probably not going to be able to get the tracks as loud as a commercial release without making it sound bad)

To do this import all of the stereo tracks into the same session on separate tracks in your software, put them in the order that you would want them on a CD. I doesn't hurt to add a reference track in the mix as well. Now you can listen to all of your tracks together and make adjusts to level and EQ individually on each. When playing back, you can jump from the middle of one song to the middle of another to check there are not huge differences between them.

Definitely NanoStudio.

It's a MIDI sequencer with a built-in synthesizer. I'm new to this subreddit so I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post this, but here are some songs that were solely done with NanoStudio.

I think it's pretty insane that the press on the bitwig website (coming soon for a few years now) used to pretty much say that these were disgruntled ex Ableton coders working on a new product.

http://web.archive.org/web/20090322193830/http://www.bitwig.com

Now that they released it, it's basically Ableton Live?

Balsy? Lawsuits imminent? Interesting time ahead.

I can't recommend this Coursera online course enough: https://www.coursera.org/course/musicproduction

I'm not sure if you're looking for something that extends through 6 weeks, but it's definitely an amazing material that covers all the basics. The course already started on April, so you will have a month of catching up. But it's definitely doable if you have time.

The second recomendation is The Recording Revolution blog: http://therecordingrevolution.com/blog/

Graham is very passionate about his teaching. It's not so much about the techniques, but more about the right mentality when recording/mixing and what to aim for. He focus on home recording, so it's perfect for you who is just starting with minimal gear.

Well....find a sample of old vinyl crackling, like this:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eipTCsDkuf8

Put that in the background of your mix.

Now put on a hi-pass/low cut filter up to.....say..120hZ (adjust to taste).

EQ the remaining lower end down and bump up the mids.

Pan Nothing. Everything straight down the middle.

Voila! Shitty recording from the 1920s.

edit I realized did something like this on a recent song I wrote:

https://clyp.it/gftvggcn

The intro is the acoustic guitar low cut and gradually lowered so bass comes in before the full song.

At 1:56 I EQ'd the vocal like above so it sounds like old timey radio voice, like in BioShock. I also applied a low-cut filter that gets removed right as the chorus immediately following comes in so you get whomped with bass.

You could use a VST Host.

I haven't tried this one, but it looks good: https://www.cantabilesoftware.com/free-vst-host

Once you've got that, you'll need a piano plugin. I used to use this one: http://www.yohng.com/software/piano.html

caustic 3

http://www.singlecellsoftware.com/caustic

it's awesome. kinda like reason, but appropriately scaled down [feature wise] for phones.

be sure to check out their tutorial videos on y/t for a detailed overview of features and functions available... it's surprisingly capable.

i also have FL Studo Mobile, but it's kinda shitty... they are apparently working on a new version that will reduce the shittyness.

She had a stab at becoming a pop star about five years ago or so under the name Lizzy Grant. When that failed her dad apparently bought her a record deal which has seemed to work out a lot better this time round. As you can tell from that old song, it's a similar soulful styling, but I think you're right about her production team are a bigger factor in her sound than her.

Hope I'm not too late to the party, but this took a bit of time and my internet is slow. I've got a .wav of the song on piano (not the best quality audio, but I tried)- everything is done straight with no crescendos, etc., at 120 bpm. Let me know if you'd like a version of it faster or slower or something. I've also dictated it as written into a .pdf in case you'd like another copy of it

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0ByvcSIS24B20MWJiMTdiMVd0UzA&usp=sharing

(If the audio doesn't work because google drive is spotty, you can try downloading the .wav or I'll find somewhere else to post it)

Pretty sure it is this one. I got it a few months back when I moved and it is absolutely perfect for music set ups and super cheap compared to most desks.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004VLW38Q/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

<em>The Real Frank Zappa Book</em> - Frank Zappa with Peter Occhiogrosso Half autobiography, half perspective on leading a band that influenced me a lot on leading a band of my own

I like the box in a box in a box technique. I learned it from the Coursera songwriting class. You have one simple idea and that is box one. Box one is the first verses. Box 2 then goes around box one and expands upon it in verse 2.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/songwriting

Take the class, it's free and it was very interesting.

Totally get you. What I really love doing (and the invention of Spleeter that lets me mute any instrument from a song has recently renewed this hobby) is simply playing along to my favourite songs, learning the parts and getting the guitar tones or drum sounds just right. It's so relaxing and fulfilling to just enjoy the musical talent/skills you've practiced for so long to get good at; it's a real mood booster.

Contact paypal to dispute the payment.

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/Help/general/TopQuestion4-outside

It sucks to find yourself in a position like this, and most people find it very difficult to admit they fell victim to a dishonest scam, so at least you have that going for you.

You shouldn't have any difficulties in getting your money back.

As for the future, you now have the experience to better protect yourself from this kind of stuff in the future. Don't let your emotions guide you into a deal. Instead of focusing on how great it would be to reach more fans so easily, research into how the claims can be verified. What would the results of the service realistically be? IN what ways would the service help you reach your goals? Would a cd full of paid spots "circulated" through SXSW, an already saturated market, be worth anything? In which avenue of distribution would this CD be distributed? Handed out on the streets? As a promotional item for a booth? These are important things to explore.

renoise is an interesting one. All the fun of trackers, but with more functionality! :D http://www.renoise.com/

But if you're looking for something different, definitely check out Rax'n'Trax. Free, and pretty easy to pick up on. http://www.raxntrax.com/download.htm

I used mp3gain in the past to do batch normalization. It saves the scaling information to the file metadata and you can change the volume any number of times without continually degrading the quality.

edit to add: if you're using a Mac, there's also a port, though I've never tried it.

> Still, I'm surprised there isn't a decent freeware DAW out there.

Ardour does not count?

Looked pretty good last time I used it, but then I had hardware problems (trying to use the Line6 PodXT with a PowerPC Mac back in 2005). I've been watching it from a distance and it seems to have evolved a lot.

I wouldn't put Emily Lazar on that list. Everything I've heard by her is way too loud and squashed. I do believe we should have more women in recording, but it seems like she gets accolades just because she's a woman.

In her place let's put the incredible Paul Stubblebine. http://www.paulstubblebine.com/home/index.php

Better link: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/paul-stubblebine-mn0000032228/credits

I made a track using only free VSTi/VSTs. The only VSTi generator used is Charlatan which is a great virtual analog synth. The track is on Newgrounds here

Oh no! I posted incorrectly and lost all my text. The photographs are mostly from interfacelift with a few from Reddit. I wish I'd saved them as the author's names, I apologize for not having proper credit. I take no credit for the photographs.

These aren't the highest resolution, I made these for my own 13" laptop so I can better memorize the circle of fifths. I edited them in a lossy way so unfortunately it would take forever to go back and redo them all.

Though I've also included the template at 3840 x 2400 for those of you who'd like to use it.

The typeface I used is Jaapokki by Mikko Nuuttila, which is free to download!

Hope some of you enjoy, let me know if you'd like to see more.

A friend of mine worked on some of the music placements on that show! I can shoot her a message if you really badly need to know. Or shoot a message yourself to the company she works for https://picturemusiccompany.com/ Here's a list of all the songs from the first season

There's also Ninjam, from the makers of Reaper. While that software isn't actually in real time (I don't know how to explain how it works - it's right there on the website) it works really great as long as you are synchronized to the metronome. Also, if you jam on the public servers, they will save some of the best parts of the jam: https://archive.org/details/ninjam

I'm an original Freesounder.

There are three C.C licences a sound can be. Zero/public domain, attribution, and attribution/non-commercial. Understand that all of these can be modified if you simply contact the person whose sound it is. I had a few bad experiences which is making me reconsider how freely I licence my sounds.

As far as famous songs, of course there must be a lot that use Freesound samples. It's a tremendous resource. Off hand, A Prodigy song used a Freesound sound with no attribution (or the right to use it commercially) and got busted for it. The movie "Children of Men" gave attribution to Freesound in the credits.

Try and have respect with the sounds. If you stick in a snare drum, or put a texture in the background, that's one thing. If a good part of the music comes from someone else's sounds, you should attribute them, or at least Freesound in general. It's non-profit and the people who run it are doing a good thing.

The quality does vary. Comparing it to commerical samples are pointless, not just for the obvious differences, but also because some commercial packs rip off Freesound sounds, and because some commercial producers contribute to Freesound as well. Note that the preview streaming on Freesound isn't very hifi, so don't read too much into that as far as a recording's fidelity.

Finally, start contributing some sounds. It can be very gratifying to see where your sounds end up going and how creative people use them.

Reaper does everything you need and much more. Full unrestricted demo version comes with a 4 second nag screen when you open it and if you do get some cash I think it's like $60 to purchase. The Reaper website

/u/universal_linguist is doing an amazing job making this easier to download on /r/edmproduction :

>Quite a few people liked the idea of having this library easier to download. I was going to do this for myself anyways, so why not help out you fine people too?

>Instead of making you wait a whole week to download everything all at once, I'm going to roll them out a row at a time. So I have the first row on the site ready to go. Tomorrow will be the second and so on. It'll end up being a week, like I said, before everything is good to go.

>There's no fixed time that I'm uploading these so check back here for info. I'll make edits as it fills out.

>Download folder on mega: CSL Mirror (MEGA Link)

>>EDIT: Sorry, I didn't mess with meta data. It may already be good to go. I sorted everything by type and then artist. The Revive Jazz pack is a little wonky because I organized that one after the fact.

Original Post

just googled and found this https://later.com/blog/schedule-instagram-posts/

depending on the kind of music you're making and the content, people might like the honesty, but I don't think that should be up to us.

HD650s for £250? Amazon are currently selling them new for £232.

Slowcore/sadcore/whatever.

Here are rough mixes of two tracks I wrote a while ago but just finished recording recently. Would be lovely to get some opinions.

https://soundcloud.com/we-the-plural/ends-rough-mix https://soundcloud.com/we-the-plural/cnut-rough-mix

Get a metronome - when you're learning scales, etc or even just power chords, play to a click. This will come in handy later in the process.

If you get a guitar, learn about maintenance. tuning, strings, humidifier if you need it - maintain your instrument.

Consistency - rather than say " I'm gonna do 2 hours a day of practice and crush this" start with 30 minutes. Every day. Set realistic goals.No matter what. You gotta get that muscle memory up, especially if you wanna do this in a year.

for some fun - https://www.coursera.org/berklee once you get past the basics, Berklee offers some interesting free online courses for beginners.

Definition of &quot;cool&quot;.

While not directed at musicians, I do recomend this one:

https://www.coursera.org/course/digitalsounddesign

It's a pretty fun course, rather easy as a whole, but it presents a bunch of concepts related to production that really opened my eyes. There's a moment on concepts of dissonance that the professor talks about traditional japanese music, it just blew my mind and opened a door to jp aesthetics.

You don't need any musical backround or sound production, and he uses freeware software to do everything.

seconded. everything is awesome. i use it all day every day. it's just sooo useful

it can be hard to google for given it's name, so here is a direct link with download options:

https://www.voidtools.com/

> Of every dollar that Spotify brings in the door in revenues, about 85 cents goes right back out the door again in the form of payments to the music industry. 

http://fortune.com/2016/05/24/spotify-financials/

Also

> Spotify says that it pays out about 70% of revenue as music royalties, but in 2015 it had to pay 1.63 billion Euros, 83.6% of revenue. In fact, that number has been above 80% in each of the last three years. What's more, that percentage continues to increase

https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/05/27/spotifys-annual-report-shows-just-how-hard-it-is-t.aspx

Excellent story. Kind of reminds me of the studio scene from the movie Once.

In case you haven't seen or heard via posts on this sub, it appears that DistroKid is the best way to digitally distribute your tunes. It's $20/yr for unlimited songs/albums. I plan to switch over from TuneCore once our new release is ready.

renoise is amazing, venetian snares is a renoise user.

if you want something a bit more old-school that's still built for modern OSes, there's milkytracker

and if you want to really test yourself with retro tracking, there's GoatTracker which is a SID emulating tracker. personally it makes my brain bleed but the SID sound chip is legendary

ninja edit: whoops, didn't see /u/Moholmarn had already recommended milky tracker

A claps is about the midrange and the decay, otherwise it sounds like a hitting a spoon against your thigh.

I just listened to that collapse song. Wow what a great clap sound. They have a gated reverb, but it sounds like it's anticipating the beat a little too. Jesus, thats one hell of a clap.

Heres my claps you can play with: http://www.freesound.org/people/stomachache/packs/1814/ They are already layered from overdubs, but not hyped up like that sound, so if you want it like that, work on it. I have some good stomps there too if you look. If you want to play more with claps, I can dig you up some raw tracks from the personal stash that you can stack around as you see fit. I love claps.

If it all sounds good, then do it. I don't know much about Audacity, but would imagine that it doesn't have great software instrument support. Are you on Mac or Linux? If so, Ardour is a much better free option. Reaper is also a great DAW, and relatively cheap.

>I'm also a bit weird in that I like doing what I'm not supposed to.

You definitely want to take a look at REAPER then. Ridiculously flexible routing and tinkering, but you don't have to dig to find it. You can also completely ignore it if you'd like. It has a very simple interface. Everything is a track -- audio, MIDI, folders, everything.

I've used ProTools, Cubase, Sonar, Tracktion, Ardour, Qtractor, n-Track and others. In my opinion REAPER is the best of all of them while adding its own improvements and cool features/workflows.

You can get a 6-pack for $15 lol

Make a schedule for your art, or you won't do it. After a full days work, and then hours of hanging with my fam, the last thing I want to do it get my creative juices flowing. But the more I sit down and do it, the more I'm thankful I did. Read "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield.

I'd maybe put off making an album for a while until you find the sound you're looking for and improve your craft a bit. Stephen King wrote a book called "On Writing" where he talked about how to be a better writer. One of the things he said in it is that you shouldn't just dive right in and try to write a novel without any practice. You should start with short stories instead so that you can improve your skills, learn what works and what doesn't, and find your voice. I think the same thing applies here.

It might sound awesome to say that you've made your own album, but if the album sucks, it won't be much of an accomplishment. Work on writing songs first and see what works. The more you write, the more your own voice will shine through. You may start out only hearing your influences and the songs you write might not be any good, but every time you make something you'll get a little bit better and learn a little bit more. And eventually, somewhere down the line, you'll feel good enough to write an album of your own and when you do, it'll feel sooooo much better to make something that sounds good instead of something that doesn't work.

The seaboard feels like gimmick to me. Heard it's like learning a new instrument entirely- plus it's ridiculously expensive. Andrew McPherson came up with something way better.

edit: you can't buy it yet, unless you purchased on the kickstarter, but anyone can modify an existing keyboard to use touchkeys. Can't wait for it to public!

Breath control is extremely important. Be confident in your singing and really "sing with balls" as singers like to say. If you push through notes with enough breath, it will prevent you from going flat usually, which is one of the biggest problems new singers have (because they aren't confident. It's very cyclical...) The main thing to remember, I think, is that good singers are just enclosing long vowel sounds with tight, precise consonants.
This is a great vocal exercise to work on your vowel sounds -- http://www.ehow.com/video_2385250_the-mi-ma-mo-mu.html

It's a nice perspective to see the other side of the coin. These guys are hungry, and it shows that they want to to tour for the love of playing their music for other people. If I'm being honest with myself though, that sounds miserable and I could probably never commit to doing that. I'm simply not dedicated enough to my craft.

That said, I really hate the amount of shit that Pomplamoose article is catching. I don't understand why everyone thinks it's whiny. It was pretty clear to me at the end of the article that it was meant to be encouraging.

>"This is the way we did it, we could have cut some corners, we chose not to. We went a little in the hole but the experience and the word of mouth will absolutely be worth the gamble. Don't let this discourage you from touring."

That's what I saw in that article. And good for them. The responses that I have seen to that write up have been some of the most foul and judgmental things I've seen on the internet outside of politics and religion. This is an open window into the process that most of us lurking on the internet will never dare to explore. It's great insight and I'm glad to have seen it.

On a self-planned and booked tour, we had a show in las vegas booked with another band.

We showed up, and the only people in the bar were the other band, us, and the bartender.

So, this bummed us out. We got up, played our set, we were very lackluster, and sat down.

The other band got up.

They played the gig, as if they were in front of 150,000 people in a stadium.

Their energy was off the hook, they really gave it everything they had. My whole group had an epiphany that day, and we talked about it the whole way, driving to the next state.

They were professional performers. We should ALL be professional performers. And who is or is not watching you does not matter.

Whether it's in practice, for no one, or recording a song, or for a huge crowd, you need to be going all in, every single time, because if you do, you will become a better performer.

And also, no one will ever leave a show you play, thinking you were forgettable.

I've played with a million tiny bands over the years, and I can't even remember the names of 99% percent of them.

But I'll remember the name of that band in vegas forever.

The heresay tao.

First: What are "Production Rights"?

Second: Producer Contract

Third: Producer/Co-Writer Contract

If you want to learn about music production, you might want to check out the free online course offered by Berklee College of Music, starting on Oct 13. It's called Introduction to Music Production: https://www.coursera.org/course/musicproduction

I've done a couple of courses with them and that's the next one I'm taking.

I often like to switch between the onboard soundcard, my USB headset, and my USB audio interface.

After much fiddling with how to do it, I ended up using a command line tool and just made shortcuts to a batch file to switch interfaces.

I used the free program NirCMD: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html

I then renamed my audio interfaces to something that made sense. I named them "Monitors", "Headset", and "Onboard" for the 3 different soundcards.

Then I can use nircmd and issue one of these commands to switch:

nircmd setdefaultsounddevice "Monitors" nircmd setdefaultsounddevice "Headset" nircmd setdefaultsounddevice "Onboard"

Here is a list of some other ways to do it: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/easily-change-or-switch-the-default-audio-sound-output-in-windows-vista-and-xp/

BE AWARE with the NirCmd solution... Windows won't 'remember' the name of your interface if you disconnect and reconnect it. Sometimes I plug my headset in to a different USB port. Whenever I do I have to go back and make sure to rename it to "Headset".

PS: I also add a command to lower the volume in case it might be too loud for the new set of speakers. After the above command add:

nircmd setsysvolume 15

I'm sure what your price range is, but Kontakt is great!

I have Komplete 8. It looks like they're on version 10 right now. Komplete includes several virtual instruments (including Kontakt).

With the $100 price difference, it actually doesn't make much sense to get Kontakt by itself.

&quot;The Break&quot; - Sylvana Joyce + The Moment - Gypsy-Rock/Baroque-Pop.

Check out the rest of the reverbnation to hear more. I am the guitar player, btw. Please, let me know what you think and, if you want any info, please message me here.

I searched Cashmere Cat and it put him under &quot;shiver pop&quot;. Not only have I never heard of "shiver pop", but the artists that are also under this category sound nothing like Cashmere Cat. After looking up the genre very briefly, it seems like there's no foundation to it. It seems to just be a rarely used tag on Spotify. (Makes sense, seeing as this site is based off of Spotify.) I know that I'm pretty clueless when it comes to subgenres, but sometimes I feel like they have nearly no meaning. It feels like people hastily classify music into subgenres while some commonly accepted genres have such a wide variation of sound. I'm aware that everyone takes music differently, though. I guess it just means that I get to constantly learn about niche demographics and music cultures.

The most recent version, Mixcraft 7, has a "new performance panel that allows super-flexible live triggering of audio and MIDI loops and clips for high-impact live performances." I haven't used it for live performances myself, but hey - the 7th iteration has the required tools to do so.

Yeah.

> According to the site Who Sampled, "Change the Beat" has been featured in nearly 1,300 songs

I have never found http://www.whosampled.com to be all that thorough. Its more like "the subset of artists who paid to clear their samples that we happen to be interested in."

My gut says The Winston's Amen Brother break is still the most sampled of all time due to the shear volume of 90's jungle and DnB.

To elaborate on /u/Tarron's advice...

The most straightforward way to do this (IMO) is to get a DAW and some drum software. A DAW is a Digital Audio Workstation, and will let you arrange multiple drum patterns in sequence, save them as a wav or mp3 file, turn on/off a click track, and load virtual instruments, like drum kits.

The drum software itself is a plugin that will let your DAW utilize drum sounds.

If you're not looking to pirate anything (and you SHOULDN'T pirate anything), the most cost-effective solution is to download Reaper and MT Power Drumkit 2:

http://reaper.fm http://www.powerdrumkit.com/

Install Reaper, which is your DAW. Then install MT Power Drumkit. You'll have to go into the settings in Reaper and tell it where to find MT Power Drumkit. From there, you can program in drum patterns and arrange them in the order you want.

Oh, and MT Power Drumkit is free. Reaper isn't free, but the demo version is fully functional with no time-limits. You shouldn't have to spend one dime.

From what I understand Reason isn't recording software. For that you need something like Propellerhead's Record or (my favourite) Reaper

For everyone asking, here's a bit of a breakdown of the process.

I record into a presonus FP10 running into my home built PC via firewire, into REAPER.

Drums:

Audix d6 inside the kick, about 4 inches away from the batter head pointed straight at the beater, plastic beater. Kick is 20x22, muffled with a pillow against the reso head. The Batter head is a pre-muffled aquarian head (comes with a foam ring fastened to the head, I forget the model number at the moment.)

SM57s on the snare and toms, nothing too fancy here. Drum tuning is a big deal.

two AT2020s for overheads. I only used 2 cymbals in this recording, so they're at equal height above each cymbal, adjusted to fix phasing.

EQ and compression to taste, and moderate reverb added. I can go over some EQ/compression techniques later if anyone's interested.

Bass recorded direct in to the interface, light EQ. Pretty raw bass sound.

Guitars recorded via a line 6 POD XT, running a line out into my interface. Custom patch. 5 guitar tracks total, 2 doubled rhythm/lead parts, and a solo.

Vocals are recorded with an AT2020, heavily compressed (10:1, about 8-12db Gain reduction), light EQ to brighten them up a bit. Melodyne Pitch correction used at 60% strength.

If anyone has any other more specific questions, feel free to ask! I love to talk about recording! Thanks for all the great feedback! I know this isn't the most popular style here, but it's great you guys are diggin' it anyway!

If you can read sheet music, you can also try musescore, which is free and comes with a range of different instruments, including electronic ones. Some of the sound fonts aren't great, but luckily it's easy to install new ones (some of which also happen to be free).

A song about that one time I locked myself out of my house and wandered around for a few hours, mostly keyboard and vocals with some fun bass added near the end.

https://soundcloud.com/chutez-n-ladderz-1/the-start-of-something-new

Modern Windmill This is an instrumental I recorded sometime this summer. It's just guitars and a tambourine, because that's all I've got. I'd like to know what you think.

My portfolio website relies heavily on the Soundcloud API to stream audio from SC to users who visit my site. Does anyone know which comparable service offers an API. Bandcamp says they do but the documentation is poor.

Edit: hearthis.at provides a REST API with endpoints for playlists / tracks / etc. Read more about it here https://hearthis.at/api-v2/

My two cents as a lapsed classical pianist: If you want to go old school and learn to read music a bit too, struggle your way through the Hanon exercises for piano, specifically the scales and octave scale progression through all keys.

The book is cheap on Amazon

It is boring, dry stuff. But I will be damned if I don't still remember every scale once I start off on the right note, even if I don't remember any of the classical pieces themselves. Because of that bastard Hanon and his exercises.

Hey! So I've been using an Android app called VocalPitchMonitor and it's worked for me so far.

I tried your app and the other one side by side and it appears that Vocal Pitch Monitor seems to be able to 'latch on' to the correct frequency more reliably. I don't know how its iOS performance is, though. So keep updating! I do like the graphics in yours though.

Thanks for your reply.

If your musical ideas were only available to you, would that be the worst thing in the world? Could you live through it?

Don't stop trying to improve your production, but perhaps it can be comforting to confront what the worst possible outcome of this experience would be, should it occur.. I'm not trying to be facetious here, this is actually one of the core principles behind cognitive behavioral therapy: identifying the thoughts that cause us the most grief and coming to the realization that this situation is often not as terrible as we had anticipated. I've been going to CBT for almost a year and cannot even begin to describe the benefits it's had on my life.

Gary Vaynerchuk says "Go all-in on your strengths and outsource your weaknesses." It's great that you have a lot of musical ideas. Would you have any interest in working with a producer? Perhaps you can find someone on this subreddit or on /r/edmproduction if you happen to make electronic music.

What do you think is holding you back from becoming a better producer?

By the way, you might like this book, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, it's been very comforting for me as I try to get back into the creative flow of things.

On Android: Perfect Ear 2, which has loads of articles and exercises, as well as Music Theory Helper

Both are free!

Coursera/Berklee offers a free course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/songwriting

University of Iowa usually offers a free course on writing poetry every year: http://iwp.uiowa.edu/iwp-courses/distance-learning-courses/moocs

Your best bet is to look for music with a Creative Commons license that allows for derivative works. Otherwise, you will be infringing. Think about it this way -- rappers have to properly license any snippet of music they sample and rap over, so why would you be allowed to talk over an entire song without proper licensing?

I've been trying to make hip-hop, but all my friends say it sounds too 'electro.' So, this time I tried using a sample, I used Taurus by Spirit to make a beat... Here it is:

Spirit Stairway.

Work in progress, still waiting for the piano and guitar to give the song the boost it needs: https://soundcloud.com/kristj-np-lsson/a-st-a-skype3-demo-janus

Also thinking about getting a female singer to do the choruses with me. What do you think?

OK. I figured out how to get you (and anyone else who wants it) the file. I opened a soundcloud account ROKMAN (all caps) and you are supposed to be able to download from there. Lemme know if there is a problem. https://soundcloud.com/#rokman-1/hip-hip-145-master Enjoy.

btw the half time stuff doesn't start till about 5:25. I got lost feeling my way around all the fills and stuff.

Lol - the guy is totally off the rhythm at the point I mentioned.

Here's the clip of that section:

https://clyp.it/s0fqtaep

He is in and out of time throughout - especially at the :03 - :07 mark, tries to get it back at :08 - :13, but then goes WAY out at the :13 mark (an entire 8th note out), but the fill brings them both back in to sync (although still a bit out) at :15 and they're completely back in sync on the climax end at :17.

If you can't hear that you need to go (back?) to rhythm school.

This has nothing to do with the Studio, but I'll put it here cause it makes me laugh my ass off. And I think the philosophy is applicable to recording.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/melismashable/how-to-tour-in-a-band-or-whatever-by

This implies they weren't profitable at all in 2010.

>And after a number of years in the red, the platform is finally nearing profitability, according to comments made by Google CEO Eric Schmidt in September

http://www.kvraudio.com/ is my usual spot for free VSTs, but man, if you're getting into programming tunes with MIDI, Kontakt is the fucking jam. Their factory library alone has some awesome sounds in just about every instrument group/genre.

Probably because it is, indeed, very bare-bones, and they hat to cut down quite a few things to get that 1-second startup (2 seconds on my Atom netbook in power-save mode to start and open a small default project).

That said, I don't feel much constrained even when comparing to the behemoth of Cubase SX-3 when whipping up an electronic track like this in Energy XT. The interface is very intuitive, customizable and thought-out, and the ability to switch between projects momentarily even on low-power hardware is quite liberating. As a VST host alone it might be worth its salt.

Again, the idea is that EnergyXT is fast. The selling point is that you don't have to wait for this and that to get to recording and production, and you can always polish off the details later in some other software if EnergyXT does not meet your needs. In that, I know no alternatives to it yet.

Download it from their website and give it a try; the only thing you can't do in the demo is saving.

As for Renoise/Ardour/Qtractor, Qtractor is the only comparable software (Renoise is a tracker, Ardour is not a MIDI sequencer). I haven't tried Qtractor yet, so I can't compare (need to reinstall Ubuntu first).

TL;DR EnergyXT trades off a ton of features for lightning-fast workflow, but likely still has most features you'd want from it.