I’m a dad, so I have no time and all my gear is old. I want to start making music again, but I think I need to more or less start over in terms of gear and software.
I’d like to hear a bit just about what you all are using to make music.
Are we all using Macs and commercial software like Logic or Abelton? Anyone bravely trying to work things with Linux? Anyone kicking it old school and recording to tape? Anyone using light weight set ups like iPads or tiny Zoom recorders?
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Yes I’ve been using libre softwares to make music for 10 years. Since 2 I’m also using some proprietary ones, mostly for virtual instruments.
I have no time and all my gear is old
Haha, somehow it reminds me my own statement: “I’m too old to learn any DAW, so I’ll write my own”
Are you saying you wrote a DAW?
Very basic thing. It produces sounds only with builtin synthesizer engine (does not support samples).
https://valent-in.github.io/pulseq/
GitHub page with short instructions and music examples: https://github.com/valent-in/pulseq/
So do you prefer the sounds it makes? Or is it just quick and easy?
For quick and easy… sketching. This is no way “pro tool”. Also works on mobile, has very small project files (one of reasons to not add samples). And about sound - it uses very generic subtractive synth, nothing special.
That sounds fun. I find I’m often picking out Melodies on my kid’s toy piano just because there’s no set up needed.
This was an attempt to transform programming to another “hobby”. And instead of relaxed creation of loops I stuck in coding of this project too long, unfortunately. But it gave great experience and also some measurements of my abilities.
Depend of what you wanna do but I found myself hating using computer to make music. Since your dad and you don’t can got your own music dedicated space you could use an mpc live 2. It’s like a Swiss knife of music. It’s a sampler, sequencer, audio recorder, synthesizer, it got battery and speakers. Actually got an mpc x in my dedicated room but maybe in the future I could think about get a live 2 too
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I use Linux with Reaper, mostly with PianoTeq, Surge XT and Vital natively. I also have the commercial Windows plugins Phase Plant, Plasmonic and Kontakt. I don’t use Kontakt much due to its user interface, but I guess it has its place. DecentSampler is also worth a look.
I bought Renoise Redux at some point, but it turns out that I prefer coding patterns to using tracker interfaces. Tidal Cycles is pretty cool, and there are similar. Of course I’m coding my own too. ;-)
If you are go down the same rabbit hole, take a look at: ChucK, SuperCollider, SonicPI, CSound, PureData, Faust, Overtone, BespokeSynth, Miti, and lots more!
For midi controllers, I’ve got a midi keyboard, launchpad, and some MPE devices.
All that said: I rarely produce music as it’s just a geeky hobby for me, but I have a lot of fun. ;-)
I’m super into csound, it’s kind of my weapon of choice. It’s slow and awkward workflow wise, but it just clicks for me. Do you have any groups or boards where you discuss that? I’d love to start one here.
