The FSOL Message Board

For me personally Fruity Loops is the best machine to start making music. Simple in use and fun to play with, if you decide to drop in your own samples than it can give very interesting results. I remember chopping off samples from my favorite instrumental pieces and manipulate these sounds in the Fruity. It was an old Fruity 3 yet so powerful.

Fruity Loops is great, but annoying when you're on a new computer and haven't used it for a while, that's a dilemma for me atm, those goddamn asio drivers... You go and add effects and things then record it out with Edison but the output file sounds nothing like it did in FL! I've been spending most of my time configurating everything instead of making music argh!

What's the best device to make field recordings with?

For the price you really can't go wrong with a Zoom H2. It looks like it's now been replaced with H2N with a 5th mic included for surround recording - " onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The quality is amazing and is real easy to use. Here's the demo page of various recorders that sold it for me - http://www.wingfieldaudio.com/portable- ... mples.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'll 2nd the Zoom H2. I have one and it was well worth the price.

I must agree on the Zoom products, I have the Zoom H4N and Im very happy with it

Ok thanks for the help

Good to see the forum is back up.

I'm saving up to get a decent laptop for making music. Can anyone suggest which types would be ideal for the job. I realise i'm going to have to spend a bit to get something decent.Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

To be honest there's no real definite go-to machine. The more money you can throw at it, the more plugins (synths, drum machines, effects etc.) you can use simultaneously. As you're just beginning most people seem to start out with FruityLoops, so maybe just check out the minimum specs of the latest version as a good guide.

My opinion is to buy a PC instead of laptop.
Laptops don' have that many / or that powerful ports that can be fed by the power supply if you decide to plug-in some additional machines.

mcbpete wrote:To be honest there's no real definite go-to machine. The more money you can throw at it, the more plugins (synths, drum machines, effects etc.) you can use simultaneously. As you're just beginning most people seem to start out with FruityLoops, so maybe just check out the minimum specs of the latest version as a good guide.

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Pandemonium wrote:My opinion is to buy a PC instead of laptop.

Yeah, thats my opinion as well. Ive always had PC's, never laptops. I think its better to work with a PC while making music, but if you want to be able to make live performances in the future, you are going to need a laptop. Thats the reason I desperately want a laptop (MAC is beyond the boarders for me), and thats the reason I finally decided to start learning Ableton. Like a few weeks ago, a friend of mine who we used to play music together 12 years ago (covering rock songs as a guitar duo at that time , came over my place and we jammed using my Cubase. He liked the working space so much that he even tried to talk me into making this kind of live performance using my PC. This is of course not going to happen, Im not carrying my PC anywhere. But having a laptop is still beyond my finances. Just wonder when it comes my way. So yes, if you want a standard machine for home, I vote PC.

I've made almost all of my music on a laptop.

A laptop will probably be easier for me at the moment. I don't really have a lot of room for a pc , so will probably be better with something portable at the moment. When i start to understand things more i can think about getting a PC then. I just want something that's good enough to get me started.

Thanks for the advice, i'll do some reasearch and see which laptops are suitable.

hows it going - you sort anything out?

my advice
buy a laptop - get hold of Ableton
download free sample packs from the internet in styles you like or sample from records you already like
and start messing with sounds and sequencing.

the rest happens rather quickly - Please post your stuff, I'd be happy to critique it.