Fat Beats

[Thompy]

Hello!

I'd like to try my hand at making some very simple electronic music, you know the deal: simple beat, bit of drum, synth melody. Anyone have suggestions for programs? Emphasis on simple (in use, not capability) but able to produce proper sounds. The only one that springs to mind is Cubase, as I used it for GCSE music some 10 years ago, but I doubt that is simple. I don't have a keyboard, so it needs to be usable just dragging and dropping or placing of notes on a staff. I'd like individual control over every note and beat of an instrument, so selecting pre-set loops to drop in is not adequate.

I guess my goal is to create something like the first 20 seconds of this without investing time in extensive learning of a program or buying a keyboard.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdjtaqQkyPE[/media]

That's all very vague I'm sure but in 5punk I trust. Go!

[Dog Pants]

*Immediately thinks of Octamed*

Oh the nostalgia. FJ and Sol are pretty handy with the musics.

[Mr. Johnson]

Deject probably knows a thing or two as well.

/unhelpful

[deject]

I used to use ACID Music/Pro for years to make some music (here is my best track) but all you can really do with it on its own is paste together loops so you're quite limited by your library of loops. I burned out a while ago on it just because I didn't have the desire to keep looking for loops that would go together and that I didn't have to pay for.

If you want something more powerful than ACID, check out FL Studio: http://www.image-line.com/documents/flstudio.html I have not used it personally, but I've heard from various people that it's pretty good.

[deject]

If you have an iPad, the Animoog app is like $30 and is pretty neat as well. http://moogmusic.com/products/apps/animoog

[FatherJack]

I use exactly the same two deject mentioned, Sony Acid Pro and Fruity Loops Studio, plus Reason and sometimes Ableton Live - I have pretty old versions of all them that were given away on magazines to entice you to buy the hideously expensive newer versions. All of those are more music production tools rather than music creation, at least how I use them. I feed them a MIDI file, then add instruments and effects to make them sound how I want. Almost all the stuff I did on acidplanet was in Acid Pro with sounds from Reason (just from MIDI files other people had made plus loops), but you can get loads of free VST plugin instruments which are easier to get working in FL Studio, so I tend to use that more now.

For actually creating music how you describe you really only need a basic MIDI editor such as Anvil Studio, while I find input easier with my DX21 as a MIDI input device, you can just click to add the notes yourself. I can't read music well enough to do that though and go with what sounds good, but if you're comfortable with staves it's probably the way to go. It does has the option to input with guitar tabs (chords) or a piano roll (notes as letters like a sequencer) if they're more familiar to you. Then you can put the output into one of the aforementioned tools.

Other options are loop/beat generators which pretty much mimic what drum machines like the 808 did, right down to the interface. They are basically step sequencers where you can enter notes as patterns for each bar, then order the bars into a song. The programs at the top have these built-in usually, but I've found getting them to play alongside an imported midi track quite tricky - so I tend to go for one creation method and stick with it throughout. Since the sounds can be anything from a MIDI note-trigger, a drum beat, a loop, a note sample or even a full loop sample you can build up a complex track fairly easily.

By loops I don't necessarily mean pre-set sound clip loops, but loops of note patterns that you've programmed yourself - the key difference is that you're not making a mashup of WAV or MP3 files, but using each 'loop' or sample as a note from an instrument that you might play yourself on a sampling keyboard.

I grew up with actual 4-track tape recorders, real 808 drum machines and synth-sequencers like the Casio CZ-101, so the way the programs work come fairly naturally to me, but it can seem a bit daunting at first, and the way they are all slightly different doesn't help, but there are plenty of video guides around.

Other tools I've used are cgMusic - which will randomly generate MIDI based on seeds and keys you put in, which is a good starting point if you're short on ideas, a lot of my stuff on last.fm started that way.

Another useful tool is Band-in-a-Box, which I got an old copy of from my Dad when he upgraded. He uses it to put in chord sequences to accompany himself when playing the saxophone, but I put in a simple MIDI tune then apply various music styles to it. It basically works out chord sequences and embellishments which go with your tune, that you can then edit into your MIDI file for depth. I use it quite a lot when remixing C64 tunes and other stuff I've already got the MIDI of.

Some tips on the MIDI files would be to put each instrument in its own track or channel, or even to save each bit of the song in separate files, certainly save each revision as a new file - it's easy to copy-pasta and glue it all together in the production phase, but the devil's own job trying to split it apart once it's merged. Also take a note of the tempo in beats-per-minute, so that if you want to add loops or other elements from elsewhere later on, you can pre-edit them to the correct tempo so they stay in time.

Like most things, it better to not get too complicated. My favourite thing I've made is a very simple tune (from Phantasy Star 4) and I've been working on and off for ages on a new version of my most popular tune (a C64 remix) which at the moment is so overcomplicated that you can scarcely hear the melody, but sounds so much better when I break it down and let the simple bits of it be heard - but I haven't been able to do it justice yet.

[Thompy]

Thanks for the info guys. I've been investigating things mentioned and have been planning to reply with further thoughts but I've not found the time/been forgetting. Will do so tomorrow hopefully.

[Thompy]

So. Firstly I should make clear that apart from a moderate understanding of music theory and being able read sheet music I'm a complete novice. You mention a lot of programs and terms I don't know FJ. I had to look up the proper purpose of MIDI files even as all they meant to me where music you'd hear on websites and video games in the 90s.

I tried Anvil and I get what you mean about producing the basic melody and beat and importing into a production program to add the instruments and effects, but I don't think the basic midi sound bank is very inspiring. To me, having the right sound play makes a huge difference to whether I know if a tune is any good or not.

I've heard of Reason and was going to look at that first but the 2GB download put me off for now so I'm having a look at FL Studio. So far it looks like what I want, producing both the right kind of sounds, and being an all in one package so I don't have to worry about learning two programs to create and produce. Staves aren't necessary for what I want to do and the sequencer and piano roll are great. The amount of plugins and basic sounds is pretty large with a lot of control over modulation and effects. Yeah, it's all very daunting and I should probably start with a good beginner tutorial from scratch, rather than what I usually do when I try to learn programs, diving in without reading anything twiddling every knob. What I want to create is very simple, so a bit of perseverance and I should get close, else this'll go the way of my foray into web design, graphics design, 3D modelling, animation, programming...