My Software Setup

October 11, 2009

Hi guys,

This week I’m going to show you what it is I will be using to make music. Some of you will be using the same software, some not. Although it won’t be as straight-forward to follow me on my journey if you’re using something different, the general principles will be the same so hopefully you can mimic what I’m trying to do in your own environment. The idea is that if you have discovered how to do things in your particular software, you can share tips in the forums so others can benefit.

Keyboard

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It isn’t always essential to have a keyboard to play music on the PC. A lot of sequencer software has built-in support to allow the computer keyboard to be used instead. I prefer to use a musical keyboard myself since it feels more natural playing notes and chords. It is also easier to accidentally find a riff or synth line that sounds great just by playing random notes.

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I bought my keyboard 5 years ago from ebay. It was because a few of us decided to start a band and after a few practise sessions playing Oasis, we decided to give up. The keyboard is still in good working condition and has MIDI capabilities. At the back here you can see from left to right: 2 cables for the MIDI in/out that are connected to the PC via USB, a cable for the sustain pedal and a power cable. The MIDI cable I purchased from ebay, I think from Japan or China because the user was sending it over for only a few US dollars. There are a couple of LEDs on the cable which light up when a signal goes in or out of the keyboard.

When attaching a MIDI device such as a keyboard to the PC, it’s important to note that the cable saying MIDI Out should be connected to the keyboard slot saying MIDI In. This is because the Out on the cable refers to the signal coming out of the PC. Similarly, the MIDI In cable should be attached to the MIDI Out of the keyboard.

FL Studio
It was a close call between quite a few software DAWs (digital audio workstations) for me before I decided to go with FL Studio. I had heard about this many many years ago when it was Fruity Loops, however I didn’t know anything about it. After doing extensive research on what people prefer to use and viewing youtube and demo videos of FL Studio, Ableton Live, Reason, Cubase, Pro Tools and Logic Pro, I made a decision to go with FL Studio. This was mainly down to the following reasons:

- Cost
- Ease of use
- VST plugin capability
- Feature set

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After having a look around FL Studio and going through some of the help manual, it seems like it has sufficient features to produce a decent track. The fact that it has VSTi plugin support means that we can pretty much create any sound we want if we buy the plugin. If you watch the video on the right, you’ll see me browsing around and checking out the features available.

Synth Plugins

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FL Studio comes with a number of plugins including some synths. I don’t believe these will be adequate enough to create the kind of sounds I want. To tell you the truth, I have no idea yet how I will be producing good quality drums, basslines, strings or pads. As far as trance synths go, I’ve got myself some demo plugins and full versions of 2 plugins which people swear by. Z3ta+ is one of these (on the left) and some of its presets are pretty amazing. I go through some of these in the video.

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Another plugin that can create decent trance sounds is V-Station. Again, there are some decent presets here. When we start learning about synths, we can start with presets to get an idea of how certains settings affect certain sounds. The end goal, however, is to be able to create great sounds from scratch without using any presets.

Check out this video on youtube that shows Z3ta+ and V-station being used in FL Studio to create trance. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck72Nz0YyPg. Man that has got me excited, I can’t wait to start.

Until next time….

That should be enough of an introduction to get us started. Next time I want to make a plan of action going forwards, in other words what path we need to take to accomplish our goal of producing a quality trance tune. Whether we talk about some theory 1st, explain about synths or just start messing around with FL Studio to see how things operate, not sure. Let’s decide next time when we make an action plan. If you guys want me to talk about something specific, just mention it in the forums.

If you want to be updated when I put up another post, you can sign up to the mailing list in the top-right.

Forum topic of the week

Have you already played around with FL Studio? If so I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on it. More importantly, is it worth upgrading to the latest version 9 considering I have no knowledge currently of it? Another thing that would be a good discussion topic is what you think the strengths/weaknesses are of FL Studio compared to for example Ableton, Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, Reason, etc. You can chat about it in the forums by clicking on the icon below. If there are any technical issues with signing into the forums, please contact me, the link is in the header at the top of the page.