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[Muso] Recording Software/MIDI Keyboard stuff

Started by Flouncer, December 23, 2018, 02:56:23 PM

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Flouncer

I've been doing some recording on my PC in recent months; just basic stuff with guitar and bass, samples, drum loops I've made with FL studio... I have a Lexicon Alpha interface and I've been using Audacity, because it's free and I already knew how to use it. I'm getting a bit better at recording instruments but I wanted to get some keys on the go so I've just bought one of these:



I should probably have gone for the 61 key version but I've done it now! I've not used midi keyboards since I was in college years ago, and now it's here I'm not sure what to use it with software wise (I used Cubase at college but it's fucking expensive to get an official version and I've already blown my wad on the keyboard and general Christmas expenses). I also have no idea how to go about getting the actual sounds I want - I'd like to get some Rhodes piano, mellotron and synthy stuff on the go but I've got no idea where to start and it's all a bit daunting. I'd appreciate any advice, bearing in mind that I know fuck all about this kind of stuff and haven't got a lot of money to spend.

jake thunder

Get Kontakt and the Scarbee vintage keys pack for the best Rhodes / Wurli / Clav sounds.

Otherwise this is a very good, free, low CPU VST Electric Piano emulation:
http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?id=273

Also very good Minimoog VST:
http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?id=405

NoSleep

You should check out REAPER as an alternative to Audacity as it's an all-round, exhaustively-implemented, constantly-updated DAW. On top of that it's free to download and entirely voluntary if you decide to pay for it (a reminder screen no longer pops up at launch is all); but it's well cheap if you feel benevolent.

https://www.reaper.fm/

BeardFaceMan

Quote from: NoSleep on December 23, 2018, 04:31:54 PM
You should check out REAPER as an alternative to Audacity as it's an all-round, exhaustively-implemented, constantly-updated DAW. On top of that it's free to download and entirely voluntary if you decide to pay for it (a reminder screen no longer pops up at launch is all); but it's well cheap if you feel benevolent.

https://www.reaper.fm/

That looks ace but its only free for 60 days isnt it? Do you then uninstall and then reinstall to carry on for free? Currently using Mixcraft but I'm looking for something new.

NoSleep

It's free forever, the 60 days is merely them saying they're happy to let you try it for free for a period; it works after that. It isn't shackleware; there's just the message each time you launch it. Feel free to feel guilty and pay them the tiny amount it costs, though.

bomb_dog

Computer music magazine has recently had an 8-track version of Bitwig Studio on the cover.

a duncandisorderly

reaper.

reaper reaper reaper all day long.

cross-platform, loads of functionality, absolutely solid. you'll probably end up paying for it (£60, iirc) anyway just because you like it so much.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Reaper isn't quite as user-friendly as I'd like. I'm still getting to grips with it, but it's robust and has come a long way from when someone initially recommended it to me.

Neomod

Nanotron is a pretty good free Mellotron sound-a-like.

http://www.dreamvortex.co.uk/instruments/



I use Lounge Lizard for Rhodes/Wurlitzer et al.






Do what I did. Buy a MIDI keyboard for £100 and barely use it. Get excited again and buy £150 MIDI controller and barely use it. Fast forward 20 years and spend £30 on a second hand Novation Launchpad and barely use it.

Flouncer

Thanks for all the advice - I've found some of these VSTs really useful. I've always been a bit sceptical about them but once you try them, you can't argue with how fucking good they sound. I've been really enjoying playing around with the various sounds. I'm astonished by how realistic some of these sounds are - the Rhodes/Wurlitzer in particular blew me away. When I have a good tone to play around with the ideas start flying out of my head so fast I can't keep up with them. I'm really excited and eager to get stuck into actually making finished pieces.

I have been watching Reaper videos to learn the ropes, messing about on it with the keyboard, and last night I finally got round to recording some live audio. I was having a lot of trouble with monitoring latency using the ASIO driver for my interface (a Lexicon Alpha). I ended up using ASIO4ALL (Shoulders recommended this to me when I first got my interface a couple of years ago - thanks man) and have managed to get it down to about 9ms without causing dropouts and whatnot. I'm not really happy with this; I would like to get it down a bit more, but I wasn't able to reduce it further without causing problems. When I was using Audacity I had no latency issues at all... I'm guessing that Reaper is just a more complicated program and is using up more of my system resources - my computer is fucking ancient and although I upgraded it when I first got the interface with a solid state hard drive and more RAM, I suspect it might not be up to the task of running Reaper especially when I have a load of tracks on the go.

What would you lot consider to be reasonable latency when it comes to recording live instruments? Is there any way I might be able to squeeze a bit more out of my system, or am I going to have to look into getting a better computer?