I Need A Synth And Recorder!

I am young, and I am trying to experiment with music and its many possibilities. I have some interesting ideas and plans, and I have been at it for awhile with my guitar and my prog, hard rock, metal, blues, and underground (etc) interests.

Edited by mlkpad14 - April 30 2017 at 19:13

ALotOfBottle wrote: Because I record my stuff onto a tape deck, I am fine with using just GarageBand to run my virtual instruments. Therefore, I doubt I can recommend any free DAW at the moment. As to synth plugins, there are tons of great free options. I personally really like the sound of TAL's Juno 60 recreation, which I downloaded for free somewhere. There are many more and your best bet would be to download as many as you can and see which ones you like the most. In which case, Google is your best friend. I'll point at vst4free.com, many plugins I use were found there. Good luck!

ALotOfBottle wrote: mlkpad14 wrote: ALotOfBottle wrote: Because I record my stuff onto a tape deck, I am fine with using just GarageBand to run my virtual instruments. Therefore, I doubt I can recommend any free DAW at the moment. As to synth plugins, there are tons of great free options. I personally really like the sound of TAL's Juno 60 recreation, which I downloaded for free somewhere. There are many more and your best bet would be to download as many as you can and see which ones you like the most. In which case, Google is your best friend. I'll point at vst4free.com, many plugins I use were found there. Good luck! Thanks! But how do I figure out if the synthesizers are safe?  I've downloaded tons of virtual instruments from various different sources and I've never come across anything that could qualify as "unsafe." But, if you want to be sure, always download instruments that have ratings and come from places that do deal with VSTs (like the aforementioned vst4free) and you'll be fine, I guess. Just avoid anything that seems smelly. I know that's not specific, but it's the best I am able to come up with.

There are, of course, two schools of thought about VSTs. 

(1) VSTs are great. This is usually the position of people who can't afford the "real thing" or don't want to spend money on it. Now, that's fine, everyone dabbles. Theory says that a VST combined with a MIDI keyboard / control surface is going to give you something like a decent approximation of a real MiniMoog or Korg Polysix. 

(2) Second opinion. VSTs are rubbish. This most always comes from musical snobs who have "the real thing". I don't subscribe to either of those views entirely, as some VST plugins are pretty damn good. Usually, the effects plugins can be of a very high standard and it saves me from spending a fortune on rackmount or pedalboard kit. I just don't like the synths. If you play a real classic synth and compare it to a VST one, the VST invariably sounds flat and dead. Mind you, it hasn't cost you $12,000.

Where I feel the problem lies is when companies like Arturia tell you that a $200 plugin sounds like a $35,000 classic Moog Modular. It frankly..... does not. Despite all the oscilloscope traces, nope. No chance. Some people believe the marketing and then label anyone who's gone off and bought a Moog 55 or 3C or Dot Com system as musical snobs, and they tend to earnestly believe that their $200 / free pirate torrent VST is "as good as, nearly", a real synth. That's where I have a problem. 

If you've been following my "The Mighty Modular Synth" thread in Tech Talk, or my home made synth one, you'll probably know that I built a modular synth (at component level) (ie using a soldering iron) - and this is about half of it below. The finished synth will turn goat pee into gasoline. I frankly had to build it as it was going to be ruinously expensive to buy pre-made modules. And this is the tip of the musical equipment iceberg. 

Not snobbery, honestly, just a point of view. 

Free VSTs. Thank God they're out there, ditto DAWs. Please do remember - in life, and especially in music, you get what you pay for. I can only give you every encouragement to continue, but I do hope you consider getting a second hand synth as soon as possible. 




Edited by Davesax1965 - May 01 2017 at 08:12

Davesax1965 wrote: Believe it or not, playing music costs in both time and investment. There is no cheap or easy way to attain a high standard of playing, or to produce quality results.

hieronymous wrote: Glad you are getting some responses! I wish I could give some concrete advice, but I can't in the areas you are looking. I have been fortunate to be able to acquire some basic recording gear over the past 10 years - ProTools LE on a 10 year old Mac - mostly recording bass guitar and synths - drums almost always at a friend's studio, they're the hardest! Here's a bunch of stuff I've recorded, in case you want to check it out: https://soundcloud.com/hieronymous-seven/sets/progonymous But yeah, there's a lot of potential expense. You can go deep either in the recording side or the instrument side. It is definitely rewarding though - I had left music for 5-6 years, and when I came back around 2001 now you could record at home! You could before on a crappy tape cassette but digital hard disk recording really opened up new worlds. Maybe the best thing is being able to work with other people and swap files, etc. I could record at my friend's studio in ProTools, then take the tracks back home with me and overdub more - it really changed everything for me. Best of luck and have fun!

Dean wrote: The entry level Magix (Samplitude) Music Maker DAW is now free - but they stopped making a Mac version 5 years ago so it's PC Only. www.magix.com/us/music-maker/

mlkpad14 wrote: I always forget to copy my posts, and of course I just lost mine cause of Captcha... Your compositions are definitely interesting. Also interesting is that I actually listened to them earlier today - quite a coincidence, right? As far as creating music goes, I guess it's way more expensive than I thought it would be. In addition to the recording software and online amplifiers, I need an electric guitar, an amplifier, better earphones, and a lot of time and practice and dedication. The practice and dedication part of it is obviously huge, but it should be simple because of the reward and the fun that I find in music. I guess it's a plus that I already have an acoustic, guitar tabs, backing tracks, GarageBand, a decent speaker, the archives, the computer, a notebook, and the sources to listen and sample existing pieces. Plus I've got some practice and a lot of understanding in the way of musical theory and creativity... Woah, this stuff is huge... Is it safe to say that music is, in itself, infinite?