By bedouin
Tue Feb 10, 2009 10:52 am
He said he was working primarily with samples. That rules Garageband out pretty quick (I think it's wonderful as a DAW). Some of the other options are far too extensive for a newbie and he said he has no interest in recording vocals.
I'd say Reason (with Recycle), Fruity Loops, or maybe Ableton are what you want to play around with.
In Reason you'll chop up your samples in Recycle then load them in Dr. Rex or one of the other samplers (depending on what you want to do). There's some loops and samples included but I'd look at those more as examples of what's possible than something you'd want to use in a serious work (they'll stand out like a sore thumb to anyone who has used Reason). I look at Redrum's drums sort of the same way. Reason tries to mimic real equipment, down to hooking it up with cables and the rack of stuff you have to work wit is cool.
Fruity Loops I can't speak on because I haven't used it since the very early days (maybe in 2000 or something? It was a long time ago). Ableton might do a little too much and I definitely don't think the interface is as intuitive as Reason's.
Logic is good but not so much for gritty, boom bap, sample-based beat making. Again, it has a learning curve that's intimidating. It throws a lot of tools in front of you that you might discover you want later on, but at the very beginning is just not necessarily. Pro Tools is the same way.
Start small and work up to your needs (if you ever need more). You might remain with software forever, or you might use it to understand what real hardware you'd like to purchase for your bedroom studio (that sort of happened to me). Needless to say, and regardless of how you feel about it ethically, you can download most of these applications with very little effort for free if you look in the right places; you can't simply download an MPC 5000 though -- yet
I'd say Reason (with Recycle), Fruity Loops, or maybe Ableton are what you want to play around with.
In Reason you'll chop up your samples in Recycle then load them in Dr. Rex or one of the other samplers (depending on what you want to do). There's some loops and samples included but I'd look at those more as examples of what's possible than something you'd want to use in a serious work (they'll stand out like a sore thumb to anyone who has used Reason). I look at Redrum's drums sort of the same way. Reason tries to mimic real equipment, down to hooking it up with cables and the rack of stuff you have to work wit is cool.
Fruity Loops I can't speak on because I haven't used it since the very early days (maybe in 2000 or something? It was a long time ago). Ableton might do a little too much and I definitely don't think the interface is as intuitive as Reason's.
Logic is good but not so much for gritty, boom bap, sample-based beat making. Again, it has a learning curve that's intimidating. It throws a lot of tools in front of you that you might discover you want later on, but at the very beginning is just not necessarily. Pro Tools is the same way.
Start small and work up to your needs (if you ever need more). You might remain with software forever, or you might use it to understand what real hardware you'd like to purchase for your bedroom studio (that sort of happened to me). Needless to say, and regardless of how you feel about it ethically, you can download most of these applications with very little effort for free if you look in the right places; you can't simply download an MPC 5000 though -- yet
