Very simple questions to audio programs

#1 Both Reason and FruityLoops are fairly complex packages which can do a lot of various different things - you should look at the architecture of each to find out what suits you.

I've never used FruityLoops personally, but I've heard it recommended as a good starting point. I trying to look at their site to get information for you but it seems to be down at the moment, so perhaps someone else can fill you in later. I assume it can be used to create melodic elements as well as just using drum loops - it's now a reasonably full sequencing package, so I wouldn't be too worried about your first concern.

I can talk about Reason with a bit more authority - I'd recommend going for it if you're seriously starting out in music production. It allows you to combine synths, samplers and drum machine-type elements together, and has a good sequencer built it. It's very self-contained, and is great for learning studio basics, as well as being perfectly able to produce quality results. The last Prodigy album was mostly constructed using Reason, and then taken to a pro-studio for mixing, so it's actually been used at a very high level.

Reason (and potentially Fruity Loops) can be used to create primarily electronic sounding sound effects for your game...it's important to stress that. Boops, beeps and blips will be easy to come by. Both of these packages (definitely Reason) should be able to do this "from scratch", but then so should any software synth.

If you want realistic sound in your game, you should do a search around the internet for sound effects bundles (these tend to be expensive) or have a look around here at the various content packs that people are putting out. Or, you could go down the route we tried and record some stuff yourself! Get a microphone and bang some stuff together. You'll get a lot of mixed results...

You could use the sampling elements of either Reason or FruityLoops to manipulate this pre-sampled material, whether you've bought it or recorded it yourself. For example, you could download a gunshot sound from the internet, and then put it in the sampler in Reason, and then run it through effects or other processing to alter it.

However, for the purpose of editing the pre-sampled material, you should also get a sound editor. This is perhaps the most important area to look at first. A good free starting point is Audacity, but if you want to splash out you should go for something like Cool Edit Pro.


So, in summary, I think you should do this:

1) Download Audacity. Look into getting Cool Edit Pro. Play around with it.
2) Search for any realistic sound content.
3) Try and compare the relative merits of FruityLoops and Reason, then pick one!

Hope that was useful!

#2 Thanks, Paul.

Who here has used Fruity Loops Studio? Paul's told me about Reason, so I'm wondering more about what Fruity Loops Studio can do before I choose to buy one of them.

Does anyone use FL Studio?

#3 Do you have a MIDI controller/keyboard? I feel I should ask this as it is most likely to influence the decision.

Go for FL Studio if your looking to create music made up of patterns and loops (ie. Dance music)....it focuses mainly on patterns so that you can easily build up a song by block building, it can be quite difficult to create linear pieces of music but I have managed it before....you just need to look past the whole pattern/loop system, as I say...it is very dependant on this particular factor and isn't exactly the best sequencer in terms of free movement.

It uses mainly sound samples but you can also use VST instruments and soundfonts (although this is an extra that doesn't come with the initial program), the use of soundfonts I would say is probably the most appealing thing about FL Studio for me. I guess you could use it to create some interesting sound effects....it certainly has a lot of FX for you to be creative with and I have done a few SFX with FL Studio before, although I wouldn't really recommend it for sound effects....only because I think you could do much better with other programs out there.


With Reason it's more of a friendly sequencer in that you're not forced to work in loops as with FL, it's great in terms of getting to know how music technology works in terms of how everything is connected via cables....as with a real studio environment, I think this is a good aspect for beginners to learn from. Again you can be quite creative in Reason to create various sound effects but I haven't really done much on that front with it to be honest....the big must for me though with Reason is that you have a MIDI keyboard, if you don't it can be very frustrating and time consuming....but with one it is up there with the best sequencers going I would say. If you check out www.dolphinmusic.co.uk they sell the Reproducer pack with has Reason, ReCycle and two of the Refills that go with Reason....i'd recommend this if you decide to go for Reason as if is worth it for the ReCycle package, it is a brilliant piece of software if you can take advantage of it's abilities.

In terms of sound editors I use Sound Forge mainly, or Peak if you're using a Mac....you can do a lot with both of these programs in terms of turning sounds inside out.....

#4 Be sure to check out Buzz.
buzzwiki.wipe-records.org/index.php/Main_Page

It's another loop-based sequencer
and has a bit of a learning curve,
but for sound effects i find it way more intuitive
and most importantly organic than Fruity.

It's got a fairly large community,
support for keyboards,
scads of instruments etc.

Also it's free.

- um, the site which has the actual downloads seems to be down, which is a bummer,
but maybe it'll be up by the time you read this.

#5 Alright, thanks (sorry for the late response).

I just want to clarify: Reason comes with different "instruments", right? (I'm pretty new to music programs) Is there a list somewhere of these instruments, just so I could take a look to get an idea of what it consists of? I've tried checking on the Propellorhead site, but I don't recall coming across any such thing.

Thanks.

#6 As of yet I haven't upgraded to version 3.0 of Reason so I don't know if this has been updated or not, but you can't actually upload VST instruments with Reason unfortunately....it has it's own components as part of the rack:

ReDrum - Drum sequencer
Dr.Rex - Rex file player (very nice indeed)
Subtractor - Synth
Malstrom - Synth
NN-19 - Sampler
NN- XT - Sampler

As a stand alone piece of software you pretty much just have those synths and the samplers to upload your own sounds onto, if you have Cubase SX however....Reason can be used in conjunction with it so that you can use Reason sounds along with VST instruments or external equipment that you have running in cubase. And you can even sequence the reason parts in cubase so that you don't actually have to keep flicking back and forth. It's very handy as this also means you can use effects within Cubase on the sounds you're getting from Reason.

#7 Sorry, but I'm very confused now; if it's not the "instruments" that are used, how do you create music then with different instrumental properties? Games use different varieties of music in them, so how is it done?

#8 I think he means that you're going to be limited to the synth instruments that come with those packages, and that you can sequence sounds (instruments) from other sources, say a live instrument or another program.

You're not going to be able to easily create traditional sounding instruments using the synths in these packages since they are fundamentally samplers. But in addition, you are not going to be able create sounds from traditional instruments that sound like the synths, so its down to preference i guess.

Fruity Loops is awesome. I would at least check it out, it is incredibly complex and I couldn't label it as just a drum machine. I'm pretty sure some Creative sound cards bundle a version of it, at least mine did.

#9 I think I'd second that. I doubt you'd be disappointed with Fruity Loops for music creation - I have heard good things. On the sample editing front, did you check out Audacity?

#10 Just to share my experience (im not a professional musician, but one of our associates is, and myself was doing .. well.. hiphop vocals for some time, so i got the knowledge of using fruity, etc) ::

fruityloops is very simple to use, you have a pattern, insert samples (cut outs from other audio files or prepared samples like a piano note) and mark buttons, at which the sample should play. you can also alter almost everything, equalizer, effects, duration (=speed), etc.
the pattern will be combined in the song editor to a complete layout of the track, e.g. please, fruity, play 4 times pattern one, then 2 times pattern 5, then pattern 2 and then 3 ....

you can also do midi-stuff there, but for that side of the coin im not experienced, midi is in basic prepared instruments, for example most polyphone ringtones are done in midi.

in addition, as mentioned above, you 'll need an audio / wav editor, like audacity (which is free at sourceforge.net), to cut samples, extract a drumslap from a song, for example.

in conclusion, fruityloops is an easy-to-go programm, you can play around with it and it makes fun.

-------

i also used tools like sonic foundry acid or sony soundforge, but the are someways different. more complex. in acid, you combine beatloops, not solo instruments (but it can be done with onehit samples, either), and soundforge.. well, i mentioned my associate, he uses it.

thats my experience.
ka
www.3dtowns.at

#11 Just in case all the above leads to massive confusion, here's an attempt at clarification:

MIDI is a system for sending musical note information between things. traditionally a computer running a MIDI sequencer, and an external MIDI sound module. By "musical note information", I mean things such as which note is being played, how long the note is, its velocity and so forth. A song may be created using MIDI by "sequencing" notes in a software program (a "sequencer", like Cubase SX or Logic), then having the sequencer send these notes as MIDI data to something which makes sound. This "something" might be an external hardware sound module, or a software synthesizer (like a VST instrument).

People often confuse MIDI (the technology) with General MIDI (a set of standardised instrument sounds used by sound modules so that the same track may be replayed on different hardware. This is the roughly the protocol used by mobile phone "polyphonic" ring tones.)

Remember, MIDI is not sound in itself, it is note data.

Danny, you seemed to confuse "VST instruments" and "synthesizers" in your post above. VST instruments are plug-in software synthesizers which can be used in programs that support them (apparently Fruity Loops does this). But software synthesizers in general (like the ones that come with Reason) do not have to be VSTs. They can be standalone "instruments", or, as in the case of Reason, modules within the sequencing package itself. So, in very basic terms, Reason has "instruments" as an inate part of itself; Fruity Loops can use 3rd party "instruments" but you must purchase or download these yourself. I hope that makes sense.

#12 I think I understand things a little more... is there a list of the synthesizer types that both FL Studio and Reason come with? I've looked around, but I've had trouble finding it (or I was blind that day >.<).

Thanks again.

#13 What I'm really trying to get at here is, with Fruity Loops Studio (without any plugins), would I, say be able to make the music from FF7, same instruments (not that I would do that, but I use it as an example, to help illustrate my question further)?

Or would I need plugins for it?

Thanks again.

#14 Without plugins then no, at best you'd be able to re-create maybe the 'bike chase' track or something electronic....but with the initial samples/synths on there you wont have anything like woodwind or brass for instance...


However, it's funny you mention FF7 though because I personally use the Final Fantasy VII soundfont with Fruityloops. As mentioned earlier though, you would need the 'Soundfont player' for this....although it's not too expensive really.

#15 Okay, so how much would it cost to get all of these plugins to make enough variety in the music types, such as FF7, for FL Studio?

Also, would Reason be able to do that large variety of music, or does it need plugins as well to add more variety to the instruments/synthesizers?

Thanks again.

#16 Hi. Personally I've never used Reason or FL. I've only used Cakewalk and Cubase. I'm not ready to give up my hardware gear just yet.

But, Reason is a $400-$500 program. It contains synths, samplers, drum modules, a sequencer and other features out the box. If you want realistic orchestra sounds with Reason you could buy a orchestra sample disk for instance, sample the sounds into Reason and there you go.

If you go here: http://vintagesynth.com/

click on Propellerhead and click on Reason. It'll break down the modules contained in Reason's rack along with some sound demos.