Anyone into EDM
My youngest is well into EDM, and it’s rekindling the love my wife and I have for that as well.We are helping her out now to expand the equipment a little, and she wants to switch from GarageBand to FL Studio.
Also started some formal piano lessons as we’ve found a great teacher, to cement her music understanding better.
Just wondering whether anyone on the great AVForums is into it and can point us into other resources that are more focussed on that genre. Or other tips. Have been using FL Studio (formerly FruityLoops) since 1999 and it's great IMO.
Fairly straightforward to use for beginners, but can also do complicated stuff when needed. I use it with a Yamaha Piaggero keyboard, an Akai LPD8, a Korg nanoKontrol2 and a Novation Launchpad S. Not necessarily all at the same time!
The help manual is comprehensive but the best way to cement what it says is to watch videos on YouTube. Their looptalk forum is helpful too, as is The Flipside.
A decent spec PC, or now Mac since FL20, helps. Enjoy! Super thank you data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
She is taking piano lessons as well at the moment, and her teacher recommended a semi-weighted setup. We got her an Alesis 88-key semi weighted digital piano, which also has midi for when she wants to use it with a computer.
To get started with FL Studio we were thinking of Akai Fire which seems a nice controller and comes with a license Akai Fire | The World’s First FL Studio Controller
Plenty of Mac's around luckily data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7 Appreciate your insights... My two are taking piano lessons and we have a piano - my wife's from back before we got married - so I got the Yamaha Piaggero NPV80 to let them practise with headphones on if necessary. The Yamaha is 'graded soft touch' - the bass keys get progressively harder to press, but I don't think it counts as semi-weighted. It does have flat fronts to the keys which makes it a piano rather than a synth though.
But, when it's plugged into FL Studio, it's my Moog and my Jupiter 8 data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
Being soft touch/semi-weighted you can still do Rick Wakeman-style arpeggios. Yeah, in my dreams but the keyboard would allow it.
My wife frowns a bit when the kids want to practise on the Yamaha rather than the piano (it lets you play dog bark notes, so naturally there's no contest). Which is fair enough I suppose because there is still quite a difference in the action. Plus they'll be getting exams soon enough.
The Akai Fire looks interesting - I already had FL Studio waaaay before that came out and people have been crying out for a proper FL controller for ages.I got the LPD8 and the nanoKontrol just to see what they could do. They're both small portable things aimed at laptops really. They do make certain things easier/quicker on the laptop - e.g. the mixer. That said, at my desktop it's not loads quicker than with a mouse, really.
What the Fire does do much better is integrate properly with FLStudio e.g it allows you to directly edit the step sequencer for drum loops, which is great for beginners. Later on users will most likely progress to using the Piano Roll, but it will still come in very handy, particularly in a band situation.
There are keyboard controllers that come with a few faders and knobs, but the smaller ones are kind of doing a bit of everything, but maybe not enough of anything, so the keyboard-plus-Fire combination looks pretty good to me.
Re. the licence, you might want to look at Producer edition, because you need that for audio recording and handling, so vocals plus anything else that makes its own sound. You also get the Sytrus synth which is great, and a few other plugins like Edison and Slicex for manipulating samples (see here for the differences). Maybe for later on though.
If you're considering getting a Mac for FLStudio, have a read through the FL forums because there are different issues with this first Mac release of FL, it having come from a PC background. In fact there are a few people sticking with FL12 while certain issues are resolved. Which would mean a PC-based machine.
I would also recommend eventually getting an audio interface - dead handy for plugging in mics and guitars and other stuff (mic'd kazoo, anyone? Yes, thanks son that's enough. Oh look it's bed time...). Good audio interfaces will most likely also let you cut down the latency so your live playing is more in sync with the sound you hear from your computer. Lots of choice in that arena and a lot depends on your setup, but I looked at the smaller end of things and can heartily recommend the Zoom U44 I bought.
Christmas looks like it'll be bangin' choons round at yours then. Loads of fun for your youngsters - and you - to come!
PS don't let her quit the piano - stick with it and keep her interest by getting some simplified sheet music for modern tunes (you can buy books, maybe download some, or download midi files to play in FL - you can print out basic music notation from there). That Bobby Shafto stuff that music teachers dish out is nice and simple for learning but kids want to play the hits.
Sorry for the long post... Super useful. Thank you so much data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7 Just seen your post.
I don't know if it's any good to you, and you may already have bought FL Studio, but I have an unused Serial Number for Ableton Live Lite 10 which is no use to me whatsoever, and if it's any good to you, I'd be more than pleased to email it over.
It was included in the box with a cheap audio interface I bought. I already have Ableton Studio, and another licence of Ableton Lite, so I definitely don't need this one. (I write orchestral Music and use Cubase in any case)
Ableton Live is very big in EDM I believe, and although it's the basic version it's still good for live performance.
Anyway,if it's any good to you, drop me a PM and I'll email it over, all you need to do is download the software and register the serial number on the Ableton Website.
Regards, Mike Thank you so much. That is very kind of you. I’ll send you a pm. Just sent it over. Thank you. Received. Will help her install in the morning. @mikeybabes2 Just a quick update.
Thank you again so much for Ableton. Following some practise I arranged tuition and studio time for her at the Q Factory in Amsterdam. She came out with her first song which was pretty good.
Over the summer she’s been continuing to study with the London Sound Academy doing an course in music production in EDM.
She switched to FL Studio as part of that process as when she got into it and found her style that suited her workflow together with Splice and Serum etc.
She just “graduated” level 1 and wow and amazing track.
Just wanted to say thank you again. That was very generous and really helped her on her way.
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