I'm having a bit of trouble finding a good program to use. Currently I already use finale and I'm getting sibelius in the next few weeks, so I'm pretty set on the music notation side. The problem is though, I can't really decide on a program to use for electronic music since they all seem so damn good. :heh: I was looking at Logic 9, but I was hoping someone here could recommend some other programs. Basically, I just want something for mac that has a lot of drum beats and synths that can be used with a keyboard and a drum pad.

I swear, my quest would be SO much easier if image-line made a mac version of fl studio. XD

I base this on absolutely no experience, but I heard Reason is really excellent for electronic music. Renoise might also be another option, although trackers are pretty much the opposite of midi controller-based functionality (and then you could just learn Milkytracker if you really wanted).

Logic is one of the best choice you can make for Mac. With it you can get all the important tools you need to shape your music.


Another good options would be:


Digital Performer

http://www.motu.com/products/software/dp/

Ableton Live

http://www.ableton.com/live-8


For synth and drums plug-ins there are a bunch of these stuffs, cheap, expensive, and free around the internet (which usually are not of high quality). It will depend of what you want/need. If you have something in specific in mind, maybe we can help you better to direct you to a synth or drums?


You can go to Big Fish Audio and check products' info and demos from many famous brands:

http://www.bigfishaudio.com/


If you want accoustic drums, BFD2 is one good choice and I have seen a lot of composers using it and talking very good of it.

http://www.fxpansion.com/index.php?page=53&tab=148

Toontrack is another good choice if you want to go crazy with drums. It offer a HUGE variety of drums:

http://www.toontrack.com/products.asp?item=7

And more drums, from XLN Audio:

http://www.xlnaudio.com/?page=home

I was looking at Logic 9
You might wanna go with that one. It's a really really nice program (http://www.apple.com/logicstudio/logicpro/). <--- You've probably read that already

It is expensive though (but many DAWs are).


I know that if I could afford a Macbook, as well as an expensive DAW, that's the one I would get.

Thanks for the links. I really had no idea where to look for this stuff, lol. I'm not really looking for a specific brand or anything when it comes to the sounds, I just want a decent quality library of acoustic and synth drums that I can use that don't sound too computerized.

After looking around, I think I am definitely getting logic 9. Is it good for both classical and electronic though?

Damn, Logic's score editor looks mad. If I wasn't using PC I'd get Logic.

Pros like Yuki Kajiura and Kenji Kawai uses Digital Performer in conjunction with Pro Tools. I'm guessing it's not that they're better instead they're simply used to them.

But yes Zippy, Logic can do everything.

Logic is good for any type of audio production. You will be happy with it. If you are referring to existent sounds that comes with logic, probably will not sound so great. Most DAW does not have a really good bank of sounds implemented. Some are decent, but not the best nor detailed.

I will also recommend Logic! I know the version on our school computers came loaded with all sorts of sweet plugins like SpaceDesigner (impulse response for a realistic reverb), Sculpture (modeling synth), and UltraBeat (which has many possibilities), along with some really nice virtual instruments, but I am not sure which of those come standard with Logic.

Logic is good for any type of audio production. You will be happy with it. If you are referring to existent sounds that comes with logic, probably will not sound so great. Most DAW does not have a really good bank of sounds implemented. Some are decent, but not the best nor detailed.

Really? I was listening to some of the sounds that come with it, and they weren't too bad.

If you start comparing with other VI or the real instruments you will see that it may not be enough detailed. I am excluding synths there. And I have not heard all sounds that come with Logic, so it is my assumption of it by experiencing other DAWs and comments from other composers. Let me note that I am not saying the sounds would be worthless.

Damn, Logic's score editor looks mad. If I wasn't using PC I'd get Logic.

Pros like Yuki Kajiura and Kenji Kawai uses Digital Performer in conjunction with Pro Tools. I'm guessing it's not that they're better instead they're simply used to them.

But yes Zippy, Logic can do everything.
You should check out Cubase. It has a score editor too. Works on both PC and Mac. I've looked at several youtube/nico nico douga videos, and a lot of Japanese people use Cubase (owned by Yamaha). Of course that might be generalization lol, but I didn't come across any other DAW so far from Japan.


Is it good for both classical and electronic though?
I should probably dispel this myth. From the developer's view, their DAW should never focus on specific genres. It needs to be very versatile if it is going to compete with other DAWs. It is in the beholder of the user that uses it. For example, I can create an orchestral score out of FL Studio no problem, but others feel comfortable using other DAWs for that. FL Studio is "known" as a childish DAW that just makes beats and patterns, but that status quo has long changed, and they are always improving with each release.

It's all about the workflow and whichever is comfortable for you. Since it runs great on mac, Logic seems to be a good choice for audio and sequencing. I used to research this stuff long ago, and Logic and Mac makes a good pair. Go for it and give it a try!

Btw, restating what Nyu said, it's generally a rule of thumb. You can find better sounds via third-party VSTi than the stock sounds. "Stock" makes me cringe :lol: Those stocks are there for you to "test out" your new DAW and "play around" with the DAW. When you get serious however, you should find better VSTi. The second reason is, if you use the DAW's stock sounds, people who know the program are surely going to find out how cliche sounding it is.

The second reason is, if you use the DAW's stock sounds, people who know the program are surely going to find out how cliche sounding it is.

Not any more cliche than, say, Garritan instruments are. That reason doesn't make any sense to me. It's all about how you use an instrument that determines whether or not it is cliche.

It's all about how you use an instrument that determines whether or not it is cliche.
I'm inclined to agree. Tons of pros use East West but I never see their stuff called cliché. So just because they all use it doesn't mean they all sound alike.

Even free virtual instruments and samples can be made to sound halfway decent in skilled hands.

You should check out Cubase. It has a score editor too. Works on both PC and Mac. I've looked at several youtube/nico nico douga videos, and a lot of Japanese people use Cubase (owned by Yamaha). Of course that might be generalization lol, but I didn't come across any other DAW so far from Japan. I must've missed when Yamaha bought out Cubase. I didn't like how Cubase's score editor worked, but I'll end up learning it eventually. VST Expression 2 is serious business - the capacity to edit each and every parameter of every note individually and independently from other notes. *drools*


Btw, restating what Nyu said, it's generally a rule of thumb. You can find better sounds via third-party VSTi than the stock sounds. "Stock" makes me cringe :lol: Those stocks are there for you to "test out" your new DAW and "play around" with the DAW. When you get serious however, you should find better VSTi. The second reason is, if you use the DAW's stock sounds, people who know the program are surely going to find out how cliche sounding it is. Every sound is perfectly usable if you know how to work them. Take this song for example.

ZK4ga3PCz2w Makoto Yoshimori has a knack for taking simple sounds and turning them into badass songs like these. No East West, no Vienna, no Synthogy. Most of the sounds in this song are readily available from most stock libraries, yet, not only would most listeners not know, they wouldn't even care if they knew.

I think if you can write mad songs without using expensive libraries... you have serious juice as a composer.
But with so many VSTs out there, what comes with your DAW is for the most part a non-factor.

I'm having a bit of trouble finding a good program to use. Currently I already use finale and I'm getting sibelius in the next few weeks, so I'm pretty set on the music notation side. The problem is though, I can't really decide on a program to use for electronic music since they all seem so damn good. :heh: I was looking at Logic 9, but I was hoping someone here could recommend some other programs. Basically, I just want something for mac that has a lot of drum beats and synths that can be used with a keyboard and a drum pad.


I swear, my quest would be SO much easier if image-line made a mac version of fl studio. XD

You could get one of the Windows Virtual machines and fl studio
WineHq should work fine. and it's free(I think)

It is not exactly about cliches or the sounds being useless. You can get good results if you are quite creative and good at producing. The problem is the limitations you may find, which you have to work around them. For example in any X DAW you saw a taiko, but this taiko just has 1 velocity and there are not more articulations available for other sounds the taiko can produce. If you play a bunch of crochet, you will get a machine gun effect. If you alter each crochet through raising/lowering pitch, EQ, etc, it won't sound so natural. Most DAW does not have implemented many detailed instruments or else the DAW would cost more money. Third parties libraries or add-ons from the DAW offers instruments more detailed and richer in its timbral quality. I am referring here to Live instruments that are sampled, not Synth. You surely can make something good from something that sounds cheap and limited. Example Nintendo64's sounds.

Zero: Thanks for post that music, I love it! :D

Not any more cliche than, say, Garritan instruments are. That reason doesn't make any sense to me. It's all about how you use an instrument that determines whether or not it is cliche.

Now that you mentioned it, I'd have to agree. I should reword it and say it depends on how you do it. I guess I can't say what a composer should or should not use.

I checked and WineHQ is free and works with fl studio

You could get one of the Windows Virtual machines and fl studio
WineHq should work fine. and it's free(I think)

I was thinking of doing that with something like bootcamp, but so many people on mac forums have been bitching how using fl studio with virtual windows causes compatibility problems with their keyboards and other midi controllers. :eek: So it's probably not worth the effort.

And speaking of garritan, does anybody use an orchestral AU that is better? And by better, I mean less computerized in terms of sound. Sometimes when I play stuff on garritan, it sounds too fake. :P

Im talking about WineHQ wich isnt a virtual machine but a program that allows u to run windows "PROGRAMS" on OSX linux etc
As you can see here in the App Database
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=178
FL studio works fine

Hehe
The best solution is the detach yourself from greedy steve jobs and switch to windows

What does AU mean? Is it the samething as VST?



Hehe
The best solution is the detach yourself from greedy steve jobs and switch to windows
careful now. We don't want "them" to be after you :lol:

What does AU mean? Is it the samething as VST?


careful now. We don't want "them" to be after you :lol:

Yep
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Units

And speaking of garritan, does anybody use an orchestral AU that is better? And by better, I mean less computerized in terms of sound. Sometimes when I play stuff on garritan, it sounds too fake. :P

Well, If you want the whole orchestra, EWQLSO can be a good and "cheap" option if you buy the complete composer collection in a special.

http://www.soundsonline.com/Complete-Composers-Collection


If you do not want to spend too much, wait for any other special (They are ALWAYS coming with specials, just subscribe to their newsletters).


Another option is Vienna Symphonic Orchestra:

http://www.vsl.co.at/en/211/261/1968/1638.vsl


If you have any question related to these libraries feel free to ask. I can help better with questions related to EWQLSO since I own the Gold Version.

The thing is garritan is only 150
Its not the best soundwise but u get the most for your buck

Hehe
The best solution is the detach yourself from greedy steve jobs and switch to windows

No thanks. I'll jump off the grand canyon before using my PC for anything besides gaming for the rest of my life. XD Macs are 4587903182576956234905 times better for writing music on imo. If you were to walk into a music studio, chances are you are gonna see a bunch of macs lying around.

BTW, do you guys know of any good logic 9 pro guides for beginners? I've been looking for a "this is the power button and you turn it on like this" type of guide since I really don't know what the hell I'm doing, but haven't found any good ones. :sweat: I would really like to learn this shit fast so I can get to learning the other cool stuff I got yesterday.

http://www.logicprohelp.com/ Try asking those folks. Doesn't it come with a manual?

Btw, Macs are better because of stability (can't comment on that - not sure if it's absolutely true relative to Windows) and the most important aspect to any music studio is latency. Mac's CoreAudio architecture is way better than Window's WDM architecture. ASIO can run one instance at a time, which sucks. Heck Linux does better with latency. I guess I'll wait and see what Windows has to offer on their future OS.

Heck Linux does better with latency. I guess I'll wait and see what Windows has to offer on their future OS.

Actually, Linux does it best with JACK (http://jackaudio.org/) since it is 99.9% realtime access and 100% of the time below 3ms. So the real magic happens when you put wine on a linux box and use the Jack plugin for wine audio. Volia, you have yourself the lowest latency option of all windows programs.



Edit:

And I don't know how I missed it, but apparently Jack can be installed on windows. Go figure.

No thanks. I'll jump off the grand canyon before using my PC for anything besides gaming for the rest of my life. Macs are 4587903182576956234905 times better for writing music on imo. If you were to walk into a music studio, chances are you are gonna see a bunch of macs lying around.
Why are macs better for writing music on? Shouldn't they both be pretty much identical?

I am not sure about the stability. I have crashed both Mac and PC many times. The only problems I have with my PC for audio is my limitation of RAM (3GB) and my hard drive streaming a bunch of huge samples. But that can be solved by upgrading my PC. Otherwise I really do not get errors, troubles or any other thing when I am sequencing music. Something of Mac that probably gives a good point is the aesthetic.

If you want an Audio Pro PC Build, VisionDAW will give a powerful PC for audio that can kick the ass of many Macs.

http://www.visiondaw.com/productcart/pc/index.asp

It is more expensive than building a PC yourself, but you get a few good benefit of that and not headaches of research stuffs and spending a lot of time.

And many Pro use PC (Although PC + Mac Combo would be a better answer).

You can see here a list of some well know composers that use PC in their studios:

http://www.visiondaw.com/productcart/pc/in_clients.asp

Apple makes things pretty
nothing else

http://www.logicprohelp.com/ Try asking those folks. Doesn't it come with a manual?

It DOES come with a little guide book, but that really just confused me some more since the order it teaches stuff is kind of weird. :heh:

I just posted a link to a PDF on the "Read Me" thread which explains some reasons why people think Macs are better for music than PC.

I hope the people claiming "OSX is better" aren't saying it is the end all, be all of all music production, and that Windows will never catch up. Windows can still improve. Maybe Linux too. All of this debate is blown out of proportion imo. Anyways I gotta try a Mac and see how it deals with audio. Currently I like PCs over Macs because I get to build it my way, but hate Windows' WDM Architecture.

Have u heard of the efIX dongle?
It allows you to install OSx on ur comp
must be an intel proc though cuz yeah apple stupid like that
Apple OSX for the price and power of a PC

Meh. I was going to say "hackintosh," but I didn't. Because I would have to buy whatever hardware Mac supports. That's how OSX is able to optimize their system because it's just one thing. So it's consistent and predictable. But I would lose out on building my PC so no thanks. A high-performing fanless or low noise PC is what I'm after. If anyone wants to build such a PC, I'm the person to talk to :thumb:

I hope the people claiming "OSX is better" aren't saying it is the end all, be all of all music production, and that Windows will never catch up.

No, of course it isn't! I actually use Windows and I am currently using REAPER as my DAW (mostly because it is really cheap considering its functionality). On the other hand, I have had really wonderful experiences with using Macs and Logic Pro. I can definitely see the benefits of using either Windows or MacOS

must be an intel proc though cuz yeah apple stupid like that


Why is that even a problem? Most computers have intel processors anyway...at least most of the ones I see in stores do.

Because of pro choice

Why is that even a problem? Most computers have intel processors anyway...at least most of the ones I see in stores do.

You still need to answer the "why" part, which I'll answer in a moment.


Because of pro choice
You still have a lot to learn given your age (that was a very bad response). Here's an article on it http://www.macworld.com/article/46961/2005/09/intelvsamd.html. Note it was written in 2005. Intel has the largest market share (80%ish). With that kind of money, they can devote it to R&D. Apple wants that innovation. Or perhaps they want Intel because it sells better than AMD. However you never know what the future holds should AMD catch up. Plus in order to optimize OSX, they have to spend time optimizing their system so it's stable. That is why you don't customize a Mac outside it's supported hardware. There's nothing wrong with Mac choosing Intel from a business standpoint. I don't know if the "pros" are involved in the system design. That stuff is usually left to the engineers, and the pros probably know squat about the system specs, but making music.

I think he meant "pro" as in "in support of" rather than as short for "professional"...

Oh. Then I misinterpreted that :hey: Apple isn't stupid in favoring Intel over AMD for the aforementioned reasons. AMD is cheaper than Intel, but we'll just wait and see if Apple decides to implement AMD into their system.

Well, I think his point with the whole "pro-choice" thing was less that Apple should stop using Intel processors in their machines and more that it's dumb that Apple software won't work with AMD (or other) processors, anyway. The thing is that for a lot of people who don't know that much about hardware, the lack of options is a positive thing. It is pretty annoying that Apple is so up tight about only using their operating system on Mac hardware, but that's life.

Also, I'm surprised you didn't immediately associate "pro-choice" with abortion politics. XD

:sigh:

You bought an Apple. You should have realized that this would mean that your software selection is limited to a select few. Learn to live with it, since you went with the 'proprietary' choice :)

^ The opposite side of that is Macs also have access to software that PC's don't.

But doesn't Zippy already have a decent computer? Compared to Yuki Kajiura and Kenji Kawai's dual-core Powermacs, that PC should be able to handle most tasks.

What i meant is People should have a choice in using proc in macs

What i meant is People should have a choice in using proc in macs

PC=Your Choice
Mac=Their Choice

Mac != PC

The more choice Mac tries to offer, the harder it gets in trying to optimize their OSX with the hardware, and ensuring stability.

That is true
Its just like how iPods have to use itunes(unless special software is used) while other mp3 player you can just drag and drop a mp3 into the flash memory

Addressing this post to zippy: Since you're looking for AU plugin suggestions, here's a list of free AU synths and effects (http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=30681) I found on OCR.

But doesn't Zippy already have a decent computer? Compared to Yuki Kajiura and Kenji Kawai's dual-core Powermacs, that PC should be able to handle most tasks.

My PC CAN handle composing, (i mean, it IS what I used for the 2 years before I got my macbook. xP) but I just think it's a lot easier on my mac. Mainly because my programs don't crash every 3 seconds. Kinda sad how a laptop with one duo core runs better than a pc with 2 quad cores. XD The only real downside to my macbook compared to my pc is that the hard drive is about 250GB less, which I will admit I learned the hard way that it is gonna give me a headache in the future. It was kind of funny watching my hd go from like 400GB of free space to 320 because of logic and all the other programs I bought.

Hard drive size should not be the main issue, well it matter if you are going to get a lot of stuffs. But make sure to have a high RPM speed and high Cache for sample streaming in the future.

Are you sure? Because I got a disk overload error in logic yesterday while my keyboard and volume/fader controller were plugged in at the same time while using logic...and I never got that error with my drum pad and the keyboard. I checked the activity monitor, and no more than 30% of the CPU was being used. :eek:

Disk overload could be something else. Did you have samples/synths/effects loaded? I am sure that is not related to the HD size. If you have not checked yet, you can go to the Logic forum and ask about that. Someone over there probably would have an idea.