Since most of the main brands (ableton live, pro tools, reason, …) offer you the same basic and advanced functions, you still want to have a good experience, make basic to complex compositions, and of course add internal as well as external effects in the mix. So in order to make up your mind you need to have a good understanding of the basic steps involved in any recording.

Although it may seem odd, there is also a huge difference whether you intend to record multiple or only a single instrument at a time. For the latter, obviously you have more time, more control of the input and it will enable you to really taylor the final mix to suit your taste.

Any modern audio production software has the ability to create a history of events recorded.

However, make sure you have sufficient space on your hard drive, allow at least 15 Gb for everything to run smoothly. Besides, everything has been designed to allow users to record, edit, and mix digital audio files. Those can be already existing music, and of course your own music.

The audio output of any serious brand is simply awesome, but very few people take into account the quality of hardware associated. Your sound card is responsible for letting everybody listening to the output, but more importantly to capture and encode the audio that will be sent to the audio production software.

There is also some confusion as to the versatility of recording modes, so here are some tips to help, provided the sound card has indeed the corresponding features built in. General public over the counter sound cards or integrated sound cards are not for music production purposes.

Recording modes in audio production software.

The recording modes terms range from multi-channel recording software, single-channel recording software, to programmable recording software and some others. Each brand has a different name to it but here is what it boils down to :

The multi channel or multitrack feature has been implemented very early to automatically record more than one separate audio source, up to a virtually unlimited number. Not all free audio production software have this implemented however. With audacity for example, you cannot record multiple sources in the same time.

Radio stations use this when they deal with interviews or incoming live phone calls for example. But in music this is of course used to capture several musicians playing at the same time, or assigning multiple tracks to one single instrument. The main use of this is for drums recording, but it can be extended to any instrument, once you get past the basic skills.

The single channel recording mode, mostly used by home studio owners, is also widely used by non musicians who need to record. Examples are dictation of text documents (doctors frequently do this for analysis reports), audio newsletters or basic pre-recorded radio station broadcasts (including street interviews).

A single channel can be stereo and can implement high quality sampling features to enable quality music formats such as WAV or high mp3 rates.

The programmable recording software are not used by musicians but it is nonetheless an interesting feature to enable to record any sounding source for future listening and editing.

This could be a TV program, a radio broadcast, or a live internet stream that you want to capture while being absent or doing anything else. Beware that few professional audio production software dedicated to music production will have this feature implemented.

The multitrack recording software is really the heart and bones of music production. This powerful feature is running behind the scenes of any major live concert you can think of worldwide. By recording in separate channels and tracks, it gives the mixing engineer maximum flexibility to come up with an outstanding rendition of the live event.

Furthermore, since nearly all major brands such as cubase and fl studio provide products that can record multiple tracks at the same time, as a home studio owner, you can design a very precise set up as to which instrument will be hooked to which audio input.

The last bit not to be forgotten is the ability to burn CDs from the audio production software itself.  Not all audio production software reviews mention this. Diversity is king with several file formats and cd modes available : create a true audio cd, burn the raw files for sending purposes, or else built an ISO image which will be easier to pass on to different people.

photo © 2010 musescore | more info (via: Wylio)

When was the last time you sat down at your table and wrote a letter to a friend or your family ? Does this perspective sound strange to you ?

Well, apart from small postcards from where you happen to be on holidays, people don't write letters anymore. They use email.

Not surprisingly, this new approach to express something is also common among classical type music composers. They use a music composing software.

Classical music composers use a music composing software.

Here is why.

Such a software brings speed with it. Indeed, you can try several ideas very quickly, especially if you happen to know how to play the piano. Any serious audio production software has the ability to record from midi. So you just play your idea and the score is writing itself in real time. You would have to write very fast using the traditional pen and paper method to come up with something close to that.

It is easy to restart from scratch. If you are not happy with your trial(s), it is just a breeze to erase all and start over. With pen and paper, either you erase some parts or the whole score. But still, as to time consumption, the winner is the software. In fact, with the software, the editing features are numerous if not endless.

Ready to use end results. Once your work is finished with the software, midi export is a click of a mouse away. As is neat printing. The same applies to sending the score to any partner participating (film maker, musicians, editor) in your project. No need to manually duplicate, no need for envelopes and stamps. No need to check whether mail reached destination or not.

Music composing software – For serious composers.

There are so many advantages of a music composing software over the traditional way of writing music. No wonder any serious score composer uses one. Speed, almost unlimited edition features, not to mention the ability to use colors to enhance the readability.

If you intend to write even a small piece of score music, it is highly recommended that you get your hands on such a software.

photo © 2007 Chris | more info (via: Wylio)

Have you ever noticed the importance of the groove in any of those genres : RnB, Rap, Hip hop or even more electronic ones ?

Did you see any drummer, I mean a real drummer, in any of the corresponding live clips ? Probably not. That should tell you about the importance of a drum machine software.

Back when there was TR909 machines.

First drum machine software – robotic

The first breakout of those software was back in the eighties with the famous TR 808 and TR 909 electronic sounding machines. The robotic feel was perfectly assumed and got a tremendous reception from the audiences. As a side note, TR 808 and 909 are still widely used today, although emulated within other software, like the famous ReBirth for example.

The step further in drum machine software : samplers.

At the same time samplers started to emerge and enabled musicians to sample just anything they wanted, not just artificial sounding drums. That is when many software synthesizers were born and all kinds of loops as well.

It all evolved towards trackers and a new way to design music.

So a big part of rookie musicians started to assemble loops and samples into trackers, focusing on the feeling and the groove. They came up with bouncy and catchy arrangements not based on melody first. But they usually spent long hours on designing the skeleton of their production with a software that would get the killer groove they were after.

At the core of this music resides the all important drum machine software.

No groove, no hit song. Period. So RnB and other similar music producers made sure they have great sounding groove by using the appropriate software first. Take any Mariah Carey hit song from the 80′s or 90′s and you’ll immediately notice it.

So if you are aware of the existence of high standards in modern music production, as regard to sound quality, that software component cannot be overlooked in order to achieve the desired result.

photo © 2007 eyeliam | more info (via: Wylio)

In one of the documentaries telling the Abba story, you can see this huge mixing desk while the producer and arranger are being interviewed. There is apparently no software or computer running in the studio.

But still, I remember watching this documentary helped me understand one very important trick that I have used many times in my mixing works.

The importance of layers in an audio mixing software

Simply put, the trick consists in layering tracks of the same instrument or part.

Come to think of it, this way of working was not new at the time of Abba. It was just a secret among producers that was brought to my attention on this occasion. The Beatles, or rather, the Beatles' producer, George Martin, already used it.

If you want to spot this effect, just listen to early recordings with John Lennon's voice. You'll notice that it is as if he had a clone of himself singing at the same time, although with a slight delay. John Lennon has used this technique over and over in his career, including his solo works. That is part of his voice's signature.

As a result, the voice is thickened, it sounds more present and more powerful. Abba's producer first mentioned track doubling with the drums part. But as for me, I have used this layering in my audio mixing software every time I wanted to make something sound bigger to the listener's ears, without resorting to heavy compression or pushing the sliders upwards.

How to use your audio mixing software to get loudness.

I have already tried to increase the individual volumes of each track, but the result is not the same, not to talk about the risk of the whole mix clipping. There are plugins today that do a similar job so you don't have to actually layer two of three tracks to get the desired result.

But this does not stop you to try and listen for yourself. One thing is for sure : by implementing this, suddenly there is a natural loudness and power to your mix.

A very cool way of using an audio mixing software, indeed !

photo © 2009 Tobias | more info (via: Wylio)

There is often times at the beginning of the journey that tough question of willing to make quality music without spending a fortune on software.

Music composing software – The Linux way.

The obvious idea but not so easy to implement is to give linux a try. There are quite a few linux distributions that are specialized in music, and there are some awesome applications that will get you some very interesting results for zilch.

You can check linuxaudio.org for a breakdown of available audio bundles and distributions.

The only detail is you have many many things to learn, especially if you are just starting out. It is not easy to master any music composing software past the first quick start procedures. So with linux you would also have to learn how the operating system is working, and what the thinking behind all the software are. 

It is a completely different way of thinking if you come from the microsoft world, despite all efforts made to make the install and first steps as easy as possible. You'd better not be in a hurry, and I kind of worry about your creative juices that could be drowned in software and system understanding struggles. I know this firsthand.

Music composing software – A great online resource.

So if you happen to run on mac or pc, making music blog will of course tell you about linux applications, but this is nowhere near the whole picture. In actuality I haven't been able to reach the end of this huge database of music application, with a whole section dedicated to free software.

There is plenty of pc or mac audio production software to get for free. Sequencers, synthetisers, vst instruments, effects, loops, sounds, you name it. Granted, the navigation logic might not strike you as very evident at first, but hey it is not that easy to categorize and put proper order into such an amount of software. 

You will definitely find happiness with the free software section. Your only problem will be the time spend to pick and choose the right software.

So, without further ado, go ahead and get some cool music composing software !

photo © 2008 Create Digital Media | more info (via: Wylio)

Early drum machine software : very synthetic.

If you recall at least those two songs : Tainted Love (Soft Cell), In the air tonight (Phil Collins), then you cannot deny the use of drum machines in them. With very deliberate artificial synthetic sounds embedded.

If you are familiar with the Miami Vice series, the main music theme was also enhanced with very synthetic drums tom sounds.

Well at that time it was not really software in as much as they were not integrated into computers yet. There were few, if ever, audio production software, and drum machines were really machines of different sizes with different sorts of knobs, cursors and controls.

Today, the synthetic sound is not necessarily the target or desired outcome, except for techno and dance beats (including some forms of RnB). On the contrary, the drums application is often used to simulate at best a real drummer.

Real drummer – Drum machine software : can you tell ?

So designers went out of their way to record and fine tune thousands of drums patterns played by real drummers. Then they cut every phrase into the most possible basic element and even midified it so the way to work with it is very similar to building a real midi drum track that is afterwards trimmed with samples.

A drum machine software is the ideal choice if you are in a mood of composing from an arrangement perspective. That is to assemble together great beats, loops and licks first, then let the whole mix play to inspire you the best possible melody and lyrics.

As a side note, there still exists drum machines that are indeed hard boxes with lots of recording possibilities. Those machines correspond to a certain way of rehearsing, practicing and / or recording that still have their defenders.

At the other end of the spectrum, those applications have gone beyond the limits of one single computer, since you can find some of them that are online based.

Nevertheless, with today's industry high standards combined with the budget involved in hiring a real drummer, no doubt a drum machine software, being for pop/rock or electronic music, is a must have.

photo © 2008 Michael | more info (via: Wylio)

Or else how to transform midi to audio so I can do all the mixing with audio material ?

Use an audio mixing software to get … audio.

Well at first if you don’t even understand the question, here is a short reminder. In many sequencers that also are doing the mixing, you can input midi and audio data. But the final mix has to be an audio stuff.

It is very common that pianos, synth, all types of keyboards are at first played and recorded via midi. That gives you an incredible amount of flexibility and forgiveness for errors. You can easily quantize misplaced notes, and more importantly adjust the velocity levels, that is to say the degree of pressure upon any key, to introduce great nuances in the way you play.

This is really cool, because you cannot do those sort of things with vocals or guitars recordings. Or else you can, but the process is much more complex and time consuming. So with midi you either have external midi devices such as expanders, or you are using virtual instruments. If you are using virtual instruments, there is generally nothing to worry about, since many audio mixing software have dedicated tracks to treat them as audio.

Use your audio mixing software to record midi

So here you have all the advantages, since you can tweak the midi and audio parts in there assigned tracks. If you are using the old external expander method, then you can always resort to fix all midi events first, that is panning, velocity, tonality, quantization, you name it. After that, you mute everything except the midi track, and you play the part and record it in the same time.

After the recording is done, you can forget about the midi track (but don’t forget to mute it), and there you go applying effects and audio tweaks on your newly born audio part ! You can do this for any midi signal going into your audio production software.

A cool part indeed of audio mixing software features !

photo © 2010 Anita Hart | more info (via: Wylio)

In this article, I will explain how I personally have been using it for nearly a decade now.

Music composing software – Not to spark ideas.

Right off the bat, I seldom compose or write a song using a software. I have done it, but most of the time a song is born while playing the guitar or the piano. Or else while doing nothing a melody pops up into my mind that triggers the need to grab the guitar so then the creation process is engaged.

So any audio production software comes after the song has been written. But what is really interesting is I seldom have an upfront idea of how the song will sound as regard to arrangements or orchestration. That’s where my music composing software comes in handy.

Music composing software and the rhythmic section.

So first what I force myself to do is put the rhythmic section in place (I write mainly pop / rock songs). I spend a lot of time trying and testing all kinds of drums parts, for I want to make sure the not really apparent groove is exactly sounding the way I want.

Indeed, once the song is finished, that is to say fully produced, arranged, mixed and all, the groove will be perceptible, but not really audible. That’s when people start to move along the music without really realizing where the groove is coming from.

photo © 2006 Flavio Ensiki | more info (via: Wylio)

“So what” is some famous piece of jazz rock music.

But more “seriously”, that kind of software is what makes the difference between quality and so so to me.

Audio mixing software – It's about quality.

I remember, back in my early days of music production, when I was trying to get a killer demo out of my digital audio work station. When compared to a commercial production, I first found out that there were much more instruments involved in those songs than in my demos. In other words, commercial songs are always hugely produced.

Even when you think there are maybe two or three instruments playing, when you listen carefully, you discover other things. The best example I could use is the famous The Police band. Only three people involved, right ? Ok, now listen to any of their hits, especially from the second album on. More than three instruments.

Use an audio mixing software to make everything audible.

So how does this relate to audio mixing software ? In as much as it is all a question of perfect mixing if you want everything to be audible. Another memory is when I attempted to sound like Koll and the Gang, I added some synth strings to my mix, but in the end the synth had eaten all the sounding space. Although I felt it was great while playing and recording it.

This was a first lesson learned the hard way because it took me a lot of time to figure it out. There are many ways of having some instruments to be present without turning them into invaders. First of all volume and gain of course. Then panning. When this is done, you are starting to think about compression, equalization, low cut, noise gate and all effects that are indispensable in any audio mixing software.

I won’t go into the details of using all fancy effects mentioned above yet, but suffice to say you will definitely need those to have your demo sound great !

photo © 2009 Ethan Hein | more info (via: Wylio)

Provided you have something recorded at first. Although we have found out that mixing was indeed interfering with the way the actual recording is done.

In this article we will quickly browse through what mixing is really about, in addition to panning and applying some reverb.

Audio mixing software – What really is mixing ?

Audio mixing software – Cut it.