Re: FN-FORUM [OT ish] Computer Music & John Major

date posted 1st October 2002 11:11

> That's great, Paul. Thanks for the encouragement. I am a complete novice
> to computer music, so if you could point me in the direction of what to
look
> at first with regards to 'Cubase/Soundforge/Protools' etc, I'd be very
> grateful. I am a song writer and would love to expand my knowledge to
keep
> up with the technology.
>
Oh, where to start? Depends on what sort of music for one thing, and whether
you want to get your songs down for demos/sale or just so the rest of the
band can learn them etc etc. Also whether you want to record on the PC or
just edit/normalise/eq etc do you have outboard instruments (midi or not?)
or built in synth/sequencers...
You'll need a decent sound card if you want to import guitar/vocals etc,
there's mics to consider, and probably a bigger HD. A friend of ours has
filled a 27GB just writing jingles and incidental music for the Beeb...
If you haven't done any audio editing at all, you might want to have a play
with Goldwave - it's only stereo, so not for 'real' recording, but I think
there's a free trial and you can get the feel of the interface and fx and
it's great for quick and dirty CD ripping/editing and web optimisation.
Moving beyond that Cakewalk is cheaper and easier to get to grips with than
the pro stuff like Cubase, but perfectly capable of turning out a CD of
saleable professional quality, given a decent mastering in a fully equiped
studio (which won't cost much, and always adds that bit of 'fairy dust' as
we call it). Anyway, enough from me for now...

Cheers, Paul.