12-06-2008, 09:40 PM

Hi everyone. Ok... I want to be the next Tiesto and create my own Trance music (I also want to be James Bond, but... that's even more unlikely); the problem is... I'm completely ignorant and have no idea where to even start. Honestly... I just want to create some music for the fun of it. I suppose I'll need a MIDI keyboard. Everyone seems to like the M-Audio line, though I'm not sure which one is best for beginners. I want to be able to hook it up to my Mac and work with some music software to record a melody from the keyboard, then play with the software tools/sounds to build a track by stacking/overlapping in a timeline (a la Mixmeister). I saw some videos on YouTube of FL Studio; it looks amazing, though a tad bit complicated for a newbie like me. I have Garageband, but... it doesn't seem as deep as FL Studio (which is probably the point; I'm sure it's entry-level). On top of that, I hear people saying they use Cubase and/or Reason. So.. my question is ... does anyone have a clue what would work best for me? What app has the best variety of samples? I won't be using it to DJ live. I'm never going to be a pro. I just want to play around with the keyboard, use different sounds (Trance, Cuban ... even Hindi) and try to record some nice melodies and ... maybe even something truly sweet.

In particular, there was a kid on YouTube who used an M-Audio KeyRig 49 MIDI keyboard to play Gouryella's "Walhalla"; it was amazing. Whatever I buy, I'm sure I'm going to be using the sounds from the software 90% of the time as my keyboard skills are somewhat lacking. I have VMWare's Fusion ... which I've been using to play around with an FL Studio trial. Virtualization, though, may not be best? I hear it's a memory hog.

Your thoughts?

Thanks...

12-07-2008, 10:05 PM

I was like you last winter. I got Reason 4.0 and an M-audio keyboard ($99 $ at Bestbuy) and started messing around. I found the software easy to use with many types of sounds to experiment from. The best part is the drum machine which you can use to make loops and then add as many sounds and instruments over top. Check it out, it is pretty easy to used compared to the other programs I have used (Acid Pro, Garageband).
Hope this helps.

If you want to check out what I did (remember I was just experimenting) you can check out garageband.com and search "DJ master beats" to listen to what I did.