I'll post later about ConFusion (short form: excellent!), but I wanted to take the chance to emphasize something I mentioned in the Home Recording panel
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The last time I used Audacity, it crashed horribly on a conventional PC. Has it improved? (I never had problems with Reaper, by comparison.)
Sony Acid was fun to play with, but blast it, it's impossible to find enough samples with enough different chords to produce songs. I need something that can play the chords I don't know enough about music to create.
Well, they finally released a 2.0 version this past summer (it's up to 2.0.2 right now), and is a lot more stable than it used to be. What are your system specs?
For you, I definitely recommend ChordPulse. That at least will get you a background for your song, playing the chords for you (and even including progressions to get you going), and then you can export the song to a MIDI file, load it into pretty much any program with MIDI, and play with it to your heart's content there, changing instruments, tempo, the notes themselves, etc., etc., etc.
That works. Rather than smack people around with Reaper, Cubase, Sonar, etc., etc., etc., I was trying to go for the absolute basics, to get them used to the concepts and tools before going big. The nice thing is, the tools are still good enough to get a lot done.
I consider it different. If you have nothing else, it's a great, cheap way to get the job done. Remember, high end mics literally cost thousands of dollars. At our level, most low-end pro mics (like this Audio Technica) are way more than good enough. They catch more signal and less noise (and create less additional noise) than a computer mic. But if you already have, say, a decent mini-recorder like the Zoom H4 that you like the sound of, you don't need it. You already fulfill the "start with a good microphone" criterion. It ain't AKG or Shure, but it does the job
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I wouldn't recommend Audacity but I know friends who use Band in a Box and Reaper and are very happy with their results. I personally like CuBase although it costs a bit and has a pretty large learning curve. The most important item is a good recording mike for vocals and instruments which doesn't have to cost a fortune. I am using an M-Audio input device which gives me the flexibility of numerous inputs and computerized sliders. A good set of mixing monitors is also important and you don't have to spend a fortune here either. I found out early on that a dedicated fast computer with lots of memory is also desirable as sound files can be quite big.
Band In A Box and Reaper are two of my go-to programs... for composing and mixing, respectively. For audio processing and editing, BIAB is kinda rough to work with, and I don't think Reaper actually has an audio editor except for the stuff in-track. If you don't like Audacity, there's Wavosaur, and a few other freebies out there, or the commercial product Sound Forge Audio Studio. (Sound Forge Pro is rather pricy these days, unless you catch exactly the right sale/upgrade deal.)
Yeah, active monitors are very, VERY helpful when you can afford them. (The cheapest pair I know of is still about $100.) What active monitors do, as opposed to regular speakers, is let you hear the sound without any hardware sweetening. No extra bass, no extra warmth, no hardwired EQ at all, WYHIWYG. This is vital to knowing what your sound tools are actually producing.
I too use Audacity, on both Windows and Ubuntu Linux platforms, and never had problems with it. I bought Sound Forge XP on your recommendation a few years ago, and barely used it.
On the Linux side of the house, I'm playing with Bristol, JACK, Timidity, QSynth, and Rosegarden. I doubt I'll have anything ready by Penguicon, and at this point I'm not sure I'll be able to attend.
But I want to share something that I think is way cool: a Linn LM-1 soundfont file. This contains all the sounds from this classic drum machine from the 1980s. It's available here and here. Now if I can figure out how to use it.
HammerSound is a fantastic resource for free soundfonts. Now all you need is a free soundfont player, of which there are approximately four gazillion. :D I would recommend, however, simply going for the gold and getting SFZ+ Professional from Cakewalk.
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Sony Acid was fun to play with, but blast it, it's impossible to find enough samples with enough different chords to produce songs. I need something that can play the chords I don't know enough about music to create.
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For you, I definitely recommend ChordPulse. That at least will get you a background for your song, playing the chords for you (and even including progressions to get you going), and then you can export the song to a MIDI file, load it into pretty much any program with MIDI, and play with it to your heart's content there, changing instruments, tempo, the notes themselves, etc., etc., etc.
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Yeah, active monitors are very, VERY helpful when you can afford them. (The cheapest pair I know of is still about $100.) What active monitors do, as opposed to regular speakers, is let you hear the sound without any hardware sweetening. No extra bass, no extra warmth, no hardwired EQ at all, WYHIWYG. This is vital to knowing what your sound tools are actually producing.
Reply
On the Linux side of the house, I'm playing with Bristol, JACK, Timidity, QSynth, and Rosegarden. I doubt I'll have anything ready by Penguicon, and at this point I'm not sure I'll be able to attend.
But I want to share something that I think is way cool: a Linn LM-1 soundfont file. This contains all the sounds from this classic drum machine from the 1980s. It's available here and here. Now if I can figure out how to use it.
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