Grime Peeps - Fruity Loop
- Thread starter S-K
- Start date
bassnation
the abyss
S-K said:
fruity loops is massively popular and a lot of people swear by it - but my advice is to find a program you feel comfortable with and go with that. not sure how much you know, but a sequencer is a computer program where you can lay out the pieces and construct songs.
there are quite a few available includingcubase, fruity loops, cakewalk or a bunch of others. my favourite is ableton live - a program a lot of people use for djing but it can be used as a fully fledged sequencer. i'd recommend it for beginners because its not overly technical and its easy to develop ideas quickly.
moving beyond sequencers, you get soft synths (which can be used with any sequencer) called VSTi (virtual studio technology instruments). you get vsts for everything, pads / stabs, drumkits etc - even found a vst that emulates a reggae siren the other day. you can also get vst plugins for reverb, delay, chorus and a million other fx - again these will work with practically any sequencer.
the vsts i like are albino (great for pads and bass), minimoog (wicked bass and fx) and the korg classic vst (which has the fattest subbass i've ever heard). i hear native instruments battery is very good for percussion but haven't tried it myself. these things range in price, typically 100 quid for each. however, theres loads of free vsts on the net, try this place for some ideas:
http://www.rocketloop.com/
the other things you might want to consider is good quality monitors and a reasonable soundcard - but others will have to give you advice there because i'm still saving up for these things. you can still make music even if you don't have them, but its harder to make music that sounds good on a variety of systems without them.
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S-K said:
go here: www.flstudio.com (its called FL Studio now)
yeah FL is a great choice for getting started to making beats. Me and my people have been using it since it was at version 2 amongst other software. If your into garage/nukg/grime - there are many people using it like Ruff Sqwad, Skepta, JME, Young Dot, Beat Camp (Dexplicit, P-Jam and others) and countless others im sure. Hip hop producer 9th Wonder still uses it to this day - remember 'Girl' by Destiny's Child? done on FL.....
The thing is you can jus use it by itself but its greatest strength is being able to take advantage of its Rewire and VST functions and basically use it a rig to plug other soft samplers and soft synths into it.
It can audio record so with some skill you can make a beat and put vocals on it if you want! The quality will of course be dependent on your mic and knowledge of recording vocals using compressors and the like.....
Its cheap too so if you buy it online for $149 your entitled to lifelong updates for free!
To get started though does your comp have a soundcard like a prosumer or pro one? Oh yeah FL only works on PC's sadly....
get back to me and I'll be able to help where I can with advice....
Ekome
D
droid
Guest
FL is great for getting used to sequencing and making tunes quickly, so its probably exactly what you want at the moment. Ive heard great results from it, but I still have my doubts about its compression and overall sound quality, so IMO its not a very viable long term option...
on the real.....
it depends in whose hands its in...I've heard swagness and brilliance in equal measure and it jus depends on how schooled and gifted the person is at using its features and also basic things like eq, compression and reverb.....
go to the site droid...in its latest update its even introducing mastering features.....
droid said:
it depends in whose hands its in...I've heard swagness and brilliance in equal measure and it jus depends on how schooled and gifted the person is at using its features and also basic things like eq, compression and reverb.....
go to the site droid...in its latest update its even introducing mastering features.....
D
droid
Guest
Got it I think. Logic-ing it meself though...
bassnation
the abyss
Tactics said:
what vsts do you use, tactics?
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
This has been done to death at KvR[1] among other places... the 'Fruityloops sound' largely comes down to the distinctive (and in some people's view, undesireable) sound of the built in effects and synths, and you can use any VST's you like, so this avoidable. However, people have done tests mixing down identical projects to wav and then subtracting the waveforms, and the difference is below the noise floor on any sensible DAC. 64 bit mixing is in the same general area as £10000 a metre speaker cables.droid said:
I really like EnergyXT as a sequencer - it's dirt cheap and insanely powerful, and although it has a slightly steep initial learning curve, there's a very helpful and knowledgeable user community.
The canonical set of free plugins would include the Kjaerhus Classic series for yer basic compression, EQ, reverb etc, Synth1 and Triangle II for basses and Drumatic for drums. For anything grimey you'll also want a lot of distortion and bitcrushing plugs, but there's millions of them. A lot of people seem to start with free stuff and then replace that with more expensive things if and when their technique starts to get good enough to notice their limitations. IMO starting out with $1000 worth of plugins would be like buying a Strdivarius when you start playing the violin - it's a lot of money, and it'll be a while before you start to notice any difference.
[1] /really/ useful site for production tips, although there's a wide range of snobbish elements (in all directions) and they get a bit touchy about people who don't search before asking questions. There's an excellent database of plugins with user feedback too.
BrokenFist
Crackin Skulls
Much like the dude who started this thread, I'm really interesting in making music of my own but I'm fairly lost at the moment. I illegally downloaded (oh gosh!) a copy of FL Studio 6 but simply opening the program and looking at all of the features can be quite intimidating. Now, I noticed that if I register my copy through their website, I gain access to all of their video tutorials and what not. Would it be worth it for me to do this or should I just look for alternative tutorials online?
unless you want your comp to be....
f***** up don't do it! You have a cracked copy so it wouldn't work. Jus buy the Producer Edition online - its only $149USD - convert that to pounds and its cheap man plus you get lifetime free updates so ver. 7, 8 etc will all be free...
Out of all the soft studio's the FL Sequencer is the easiest to use imo...if you need help pm me and I'll see what I can do...
BrokenFist said:
f***** up don't do it! You have a cracked copy so it wouldn't work. Jus buy the Producer Edition online - its only $149USD - convert that to pounds and its cheap man plus you get lifetime free updates so ver. 7, 8 etc will all be free...
Out of all the soft studio's the FL Sequencer is the easiest to use imo...if you need help pm me and I'll see what I can do...
D
droid
Guest
BrokenFist said:
Or DL them all on Bittorrent?*
*Disclaimer: you should pay if you can afford it...
bassnation
the abyss
Tactics said:
lol, fair enough, completely understand!
reason is a funny one - its hugely powerful but i found the ui a bit confusing. i think its one of those things with a bit of a learning curve but worth getting into.
do you ever use sample libraries for one hit drums, or program it all yourself? i was wondering whether it would be worth investing in some.
I find Reason's interface really, really annoying. I'm sure it's useful to have everything in one place and la la la, but it really slavishly tries to replicate a hardware rack setup and I don't really understand why. It reminds me of how even a few yeasr ago Akai still had ads for samplers with celebrity endorsements from some dude from Queensryche or whatever, not Rob Playford or Carl Craig.bassnation said:
All that said, I went the hardware route, cos that's what you did at the time I was getting into producing. Now I'm looking at software (I left my sampler at home in NZ) I find myself gravitating towards stuff that's just simple boxes and lines and crap, not cables that swing when you rotate your rack...
There at least used to be heaps of free samples of single drum hits on the web. I don't know what the legality is of this kind of carry on, but I have WAV files of all the drum hits from a squillion different drum machines, including all the Roland ones, the Linn kit, a couple of Fairlight percussion sets and so on. Hollowsun.org is one place that used to have all this for free, but seems to have recently wrapped it up in a package they can sell.bassnation said:
With this in mind I don't really get what a commercial drum kit can offer. You can sit there with a free audio editor like Audacity and a bunch of sound files and mix and layer and filter them all over each other to your heart's content... I guess it depends a little how much you want to get into that side of production though. Personally I love mucking about at that level of detail.
BrokenFist
Crackin Skulls
droid said:Or DL them all on Bittorrent?*
*Disclaimer: you should pay if you can afford it...
Had a bit of trouble finding them. Wanna PM me a link?