Quote:
Originally Posted by TweakHead
About Reaper. Never got to try it, but saw some very good reviews on specialized magazines and have an idea of how it looks like. Looks very organized to me and actually know of some pro producers who have moved from cubase to reaper and swear they're never going back.
There's a couple of things I feel software does better these days: one of them is Bass. I know that hardware synthesizers can put out huge bass sound, specially if we're talking analogue. But having free running oscillators playing the bass isn't ideal imo. In order to use those great sounding basses from non-digital hardware, most people tend to go through the tedious process of re-sample, so as to build a sampler instrument from the "good" notes. You then need to zoom in on those waves and choose the notes with the best transients - which is related to the initial phase of the notes - for each note.
There's plenty of good sampled bass instruments from famous instruments in such things as Spectrasonics Trillian, and even some Moog notes (at least) in EXS24 (logic's own sampler) and certainly a loot of good sounding sample instruments for Kontakt (that's Native Instrument's super sampler).
But if you're like me, you really don't mind using software synthesizers for Bass. Digital synthesizers are more precise and software saves you the trouble of having to adjust timing issues by hand - so it's a no brainer for me: either software or sampled instruments.
The other thing I think software handles much better nowadays is drums. Sure there's the good old drum machines still around, and even new ones. But I honestly feel one is better off using samples inside some dedicated software or even arrange the samples on audio tracks (which I do often). Or make use of a lot of options to synthesize your own from different sources, layer them... Again, no timing issues and the ability to process the sound very fast to your liking.
Also think that one's better of mixing inside-the-box these days. There's plenty of high-end tools out there, and you're able to use many instances at once. Honestly feel that with good enough ears, one doesn't really need to waste a awful lot of money on expensive hardware equalizers and effects.
So, why do we need the expensive hardware gear - and I mean mostly synthesizers here. The sound and the interaction with the instruments, of course.
Composing today is different I think from what it used to be. Many musicians make some arrangement decisions thinking like producers - the frontier between the two is more ambiguous now then ever before - but if you know your synthesis and your music theory, all it takes to sound good is to develop some mixing skills.
Of course there's some daw specific stuff people do often nowadays: such as fading in and out on the audio recordings, applying time-stretch, reversing pieces of audio, tunning and transposing pieces of audio, inserting silence by cutting pieces...
This is the stuff there's to know about a daw software. Where and how to do such stuff. Once you're good with that, ideas flow more quicly.
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All great stuff. Interestingly, I have this copy of Novation Bass Station vst that came with the Remote SL61mk2 and wondered what you thought about that? (I have not installed it yet, and have another health issue "speed-bump" going on right now, but this will be a life-long ongoing affair and indeed disabled military veteran...I tend to be in denial of this a lot)
Definitely agree with drums as well.