161–170 of 175 posts
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Or go modular. Just be prepared to remortgage your house a year later. Seriously addictive [1] https://imgur.com/a/chegsO5 (my setup)
Heh; the rather nice gear in the racks below isn't helping costs either :) Nice setup!
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This question comes up a lot with synths and especially hardware and Eurorack gear. For me not being focused on finishing anything is what got me back into playing music (and eventually performing live sets). Previously there was so much pressure to produce end results I couldn't even get started and lost all joy in the process. At some point I got some hardware to just play with and never really looked up how to sav…
This is useful data, thanks. I'm going through a sort of mini-midlife crisis right now and one of the things I'm thinking about is whether I can make music part of my life again. I used to be in a rock band and it was tons of fun, but I'm in my 40s with kids so the logistics of rehearsing with other people and playing shows at night make that unlikely. Another path I'm considering is making electronic music. That's m…
One interesting aspect of the modular thing that hasn't been discussed yet is limitation. With an in-the-box setup with all the plugins it's easy to get lost in the endless choice of what could be done. Each song sounds different because there's no consistency of setup.
With a hardware setup you're usually limited to a small number of devices/modules - this can be very powerful in focussing the mind. Each time you come back to your setup it's the same, but you'll dig a bit deeper to get something else out of it. Eventually you master it and produce the best of what that thing can do.
A lot of great early electronic music came out of limitations. Voodoo Ray was originally going to be called Voodoo Rage, but the sampler had a limited amount of memory left, so he cut off 'Rage' to make it 'Ray'.
It can be argued that the amazing amount of music that comes out of the 'standard band' setup is also a product of limitations.
Not directly related, but do you know of recent achievements with a wow factor in the physical modelling synthesis field [1]? Just as some offline rendered 3d scenes are amazing, It'd be nice to have a pure virtual instrument with its string and resonance chamber model, inter-string effects, plucking mechanism, and so on. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_modelling_synthesis
Physical modelling peaked in 1993 with the Yamaha VL1 - which was an amazing synth that crashed right into the uncanny valley between sampling and real instruments. PM is a complete nightmare to program - even harder than FM. Which was why the VL1 was a preset-only machine. The full programmimng system was never made public. There are some modern remakes in the box, especially from TAS, but IMO they don't sound as im…
But software can still the same, right? Albeit with a lot of distractions.
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This is useful data, thanks. I'm going through a sort of mini-midlife crisis right now and one of the things I'm thinking about is whether I can make music part of my life again. I used to be in a rock band and it was tons of fun, but I'm in my 40s with kids so the logistics of rehearsing with other people and playing shows at night make that unlikely. Another path I'm considering is making electronic music. That's m…
You don't need much money to get started with a MIDI controller and VSTs, assuming you have a good PC because most people do here on hn. Even though the hardware people seem like the most outspoken on most forums, I enjoy doing everything in the box now and my hardware mostly just sits under its dust covers. I have an Ableton Push2 and it's an amazing piece of kit, more like an instrument than a controller. The layou…
> Even though the hardware people seem like the most outspoken on most forums,
Good point!
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This is useful data, thanks. I'm going through a sort of mini-midlife crisis right now and one of the things I'm thinking about is whether I can make music part of my life again. I used to be in a rock band and it was tons of fun, but I'm in my 40s with kids so the logistics of rehearsing with other people and playing shows at night make that unlikely. Another path I'm considering is making electronic music. That's m…
I'd defininitely agree with the GPs idea of just doing it for the fun of it, and if something finished pops out, great - otherwise it doesn't really matter, you still had fun. One interesting aspect of the modular thing that hasn't been discussed yet is limitation. With an in-the-box setup with all the plugins it's easy to get lost in the endless choice of what could be done. Each song sounds different because there'…
Joining a band was a revelation because all I had to do was make my bass part sound good and there were relatively limited ways to do that. On top of that, a bass or guitar just sounds pretty nice right "out of the box". With electronic music, I found it took quite a bit of effort to even get to a single sound that sounded rich and satisfying. It felt a lot more like having to be a luthier when all I wanted to do was play. (At the same time, I didn't want to just use presets either, because I didn't want sounds that were too familiar...)
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You don't need much money to get started with a MIDI controller and VSTs, assuming you have a good PC because most people do here on hn. Even though the hardware people seem like the most outspoken on most forums, I enjoy doing everything in the box now and my hardware mostly just sits under its dust covers. I have an Ableton Push2 and it's an amazing piece of kit, more like an instrument than a controller. The layou…
Yeah, I can definitely afford to sink some money into this. It's more that I'm wired to hate myself if I spend money on something and don't use it. There are few things I despise more than feeling like I'm a poseur. > Even though the hardware people seem like the most outspoken on most forums, Good point!
Of course it's up to you, but if I were you I would just get a controller and just get started. It's never been easier, cheaper or better. If you want to save money you could just get something secondhand from ebay.
I am invested in and love Ableton but there are lots of good options out there.
Like I say, I don't think hardware is necessary these days. It is fun to have dedicated knobs for everything but if you get a good controller it's much more flexible overall.
I can put 10 instruments into a single instrument rack on a track in Ableton and immediately have 8 macro knobs to control whatever I want about all 10 instruments at once.
You can easily do crazy stuff like create mutant instruments that morph between completely different instruments or samples, and change effect settings according to how hard you play the notes, or what part of the bar you're in. The limit is really only your imagination!
Then if you want, you can just duplicate that whole complex track with a single keypress. It's crazy. You can't do that with hardware!
Getting it to sound musical is the hard part, and that's where hardware shines - because you're limited in options, you can usually just turn it on and get a good sound out if it immediately. But IMO that's not a real reason that hardware is better because of course you could limit yourself to that in software too.
You sound like you can afford it and have the desire. I would just buy something and get started. It's heaps of fun, as long as you don't put too much pressure on yourself!
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I'm trying to learn guitar in my 30s and I'm really struggling with the ear training parts. Can you point other resources like this one?
The most useful tool I've found is Perfect Ear for Android and iOS. It's not as full-featured as GNU Solfege, but it covers all the important stuff and it's far easier to dip into when you have a spare moment. https://www.perfectear.app/ If you're a late beginner/early intermediate player and trying to move past the chord shapes and scale patterns rut, I strongly recommend William Leavitt's A Modern Method for Guitar…
Oh man, I missed this app when I switched from Android to iOS. So glad it's finally on iOS!
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Absolutely. There is such a wide variety of cheap analog monosynths, it’s definitely the way to go. For me, the knobs are the most important part. It’s an expressive medium after all, you need to feel the movement.
I don't know about that. I've sold off an Elektron Analog Four, Elektron Analog Rytm, Elektron Octatrack and an Access Virus Ti 2 less than a year ago and started working exclusivley in the box and using two ableton push 2 as midi controllers and I honestly do not miss my hardware at all. Sure I lose out on some of that analog warmth but I've come pretty close by emulating it with various VSTs.
As I understand it, it is not possible to separate them, ie both will be showing the same track/device.
Is it possible to have one in note mode while the other is in session mode?
How do you use them together?
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I don't know about that. I've sold off an Elektron Analog Four, Elektron Analog Rytm, Elektron Octatrack and an Access Virus Ti 2 less than a year ago and started working exclusivley in the box and using two ableton push 2 as midi controllers and I honestly do not miss my hardware at all. Sure I lose out on some of that analog warmth but I've come pretty close by emulating it with various VSTs.
To be fair, Elektron boxes and Ableton w/ push 2 have a lot in common. The push provides a similar UI to the octatrack, but expanded and aligned with ableton. Instead of a single row step sequencer/keyboard the push has a grid. And the push has a bigger, but still menu driven screen.
There's a dedicated button for almost everything (except for browsing samples, which is something that it would be impossible to have dedicated buttons for).
The great thing about Push is that you sort of make your own UI. If you put an instrument rack on a track then you assign your own macro knobs for whatever you want. It's only if you need to access the devices within that that you need to start navigating around using the (dedicated) buttons.
The best resource I've ever seen for learning synthesis is Syntorial: https://www.syntorial.com/ It teaches you step by step all the aspects of a synth engine: oscillators, wave shapes, amplitude, filters, modulation, unison, FM… But most of all it trains your ear, which allows you to replicate the sound in your head and build it from scratch.
Syntorial is a charm, definitely the best resource to develop your ear. There are possibly waay extensive resources like books, but as the nature of the medium it's good for getting information, but for practice and developing the ear, Syntorial is #1.