“Wah, wah, I can’t afford to pay for music software…”
I think I wrote about this somewhere else (on the Csound blog, probably) but it’s worth repeating here.
I use Ableton Live as my main tool. To go out and buy it new will cost you quite a bit of money (unless you get a cracked or ripped version…that’s between you and your conscience.) The current (Feb 2010) list price for the basic full version is USD449. They do supply a good demo version that is enough to illuminate what it can do, with plenty of tutorials and reference material: as usual for a demo, you can’t save or export work.
So–suppose you are on a budget (like most people) and say “I want to produce music using computer/laptop but can’t afford stuff like Live…so what do I do?”
Well, you’re living in the golden age, you whining git, so do a little research and be amazed. Just a few years ago your options were paltry in the extreme, now you can pick and choose amongst an embarassing array of fantastic stuff.
On top of that, just a year or two ago, the One Laptop Per Child project started releasing many gigabytes of free sound and music samples for anyone in the world to use freely in their productions, for simply the cost of downloading them. I mean, I’m sure many people were already doing that, but this is a completely legal and honorable option.
There’s also the Freesound project which I’ll talk a little about later for content, but first we need to look at a few tools… Here’s a list of a few things I’ll talk about (they won’t all be free but they will be at least cheap)
Composing/Sequencing/DAW suites
Reaper
I really can’t praise this too highly. Besides the absurdly low price (it’s still only US$50 for a non-commercial license) the responsiveness of the developer to user bug and enhancement reports, and the vitality of the user community, is unmatched.
(An update for Feb 2010: it’s up to version 3.31 and just continues to get better, faster and more powerful with every new bump.)
MU.LAB
How about MU.LAB Free? I haven’t used it, but you can at least check it out. As they comment on their website:
MU.LAB Free (which is free to everyone!) has a 6 track limit, can only mixdown in 16 Bit and only supports 1 mono out for ReWired devices. But be sure: a creative soul can do A LOT with that!
The version as of this writing is 2.7.
Acid Express 7
You can’t do any better than free! Sony Media Software makes this software and a basic audio loop pack available for free (hoping of course, that you’ll want to graduate to one of their bigger versions like Acid Music Studio or Acid Pro). You can get it here. Acid Pro (the main version, about USD300) is at version 7 as of this writing and is a very stable, fast and powerful package. A lot of pros have started with this (back when it was sold by Sound Forge) and still swear by it. But for around USD50 you can get “Acid Music Studio” which is between the Express and Pro versions.
Cakewalk Sonar (home version)
Although I personally have been using Sonar for years, really 99% of what I do could probably have been done with “Sonar Home Studio”. Cakewalk gives you some pretty good options on purchase: there are versions of Sonar for $140, $210, $370 and $620.
ChucK
ChucK is an amazing software suite from Princeton for real-time composing/performing. Also free! Check it out here.
Csound (+ Pd etc.)
Csound needs an entire encyclopdia to discuss. Basically, it’s the longest-lived music software out there, with roots back into the 1960s. I’ve been trying to keep up another blog about this, but like everything else it’s falling behind…Csound is the grandpa of music software, going back 20 or 30 years, but still running, still supported, and new versions still keep coming out. Best to check its own site since this will no doubt fall behind. There is also a very active discussion group at nabble.com.
At this price point (i.e., zero), you’re going to have to give up certain things that you expect with commercial packages. Like coherent documentation and the expectation that things will work relatively simply on your system.
On the other hand, this is a great solution if you’re into Linux or compiling your own applications. I know I ignore talking about the Macintosh a great deal on this blog, being a Windows user, but a large percentage of Csound users are running it under MacOS.
VST Instruments and Effects
kvraudio (formerly kvr-vst)
kvr audio
Your first stop for all information about VST plugins is the kvraudio site. This has evolved into the major go-to place on the web for all things related to VST instruments and effects. (I forget what kvr stands for anymore, but I presume it’s explained somewhere on the site…)
HG Fortune synths
I happened on this guy’s creations somewhere along the line…he has written some fantastic and intriguing software tools for algorithmic composition/soundscapes. (Click on the banner to get to his site.)
Kaspar Neilsen’s KarmaFX synths and effects
Dane Neilsen has created some great basic tools which are essentially pay what you like and what looks like a cool modular software synth. I hope to experiment more with these before too long as well. (Click on the banner to get to his site.)
Effects
Just to make sure I don’t forget to add more later–two free effects that I love and use a lot are:
- Ambience reverb processor (by http://magnus.smartelectronix.com/)
- Dirthead guitar amp simulator
I used Ambience for a long time; I think before I even started using Live, when people were complaining about the poor reverbs that were in commercial programs like (early versions of) Sonar and Reason. It’s a VST plugin which means that to use in Sonar I had to jump through the VST to DX conversion hoop that used to exist; but it was worth it.
Dirthead appeared more recently; after a search on kvr-vst for a guitar amp sim that a lot of users liked. This little gem’s name kept getting mentioned with rave reviews and I can see why. It took my lackluster, limp guitar tones and really infused them with power and crunch. I ended up creating a Rack in Live with three different amp sims in parallel that I can tweak to get the exact sound I want, but I used Dirthead alone at first and it was and is sterling.
OpenOffice suite: word processing, spreadsheet, drawing, etc. tools
WordPress.com (which this site sits on) didn’t allow me to upload files in formats like Word, Excel, but instead only “.odt” (Open Document format). At first I thought that was just an annoyance, but I went ahead and downloaded and installed the OpenOffice suite anyway. I have to admit that I’m incredibly impressed by the power, stability and feature set of that software. I highly recommend you give it a try, if for no other reason it makes it easier to download certain media files from this site…Download it from here.
Other oddball music tools
Browsing around the web can unearth all kinds of strange and wondrous musical tools.
One of the first I discovered was thonk (or as they called it: thonk+0.2) This was a little Macintosh-only tool. There is a page discussing it at http://www.audioease.com/Pages/Free/FreeMain.html. The description on that page reads:
thOnk_0+2 provides the sonic treasure-chest composers can turn to to harvest fresh, unanticipated material to solve their writers blocks with, without having to think at all.
The way it worked, as I remember it was as follows: you’d point it to a sample of your own; whether it be a field recording, piece of music or any other piece of audio. You’d set it to work for either minutes or (preferably) hours and it would grind on the sample using granular synthesis techniques. You didn’t get to hear what it was doing while it was working, however. At some point, you’d decide it’s done “enough”, stop the program and listen to the file it generated. It tended to be some kind of strange noise with no recognizable elements from the original file.
However don’t get too excited by the description: I can’t find anywhere live that you can actually download it from anymore.
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