almost nothing you are right about djing.

Thats cool. Real instruments in EDM = The nuts.

I have been playing around mixing in Ableton for a couple of years and recently started trying my hand at production. I quickly realised I knew very little of the technical skills you need to make your stuff sound ok. Keeping things in frequency groups, avoiding muddying the bottom end with unnecessary low frequencies, avoiding transient clashes, all the delay, fill and build techniques and how to go about having an efficient workflow to make production easier. Most importantly had zero clue about music theory, keeping things in key, chord progression etc.

So I decided to do a course and am just coming to the end of it now. I feel like my production skills are so much better now, and I think have always had a good ear for sounds, but still lacking in actual music theory, and certainly clueless on real instruments.

If ever you are interested in a collab for ****s and giggles, or anyone reading this thread for that matter, feel free to pm me and who knows we maybe could do something interesting.

Id be particularly interested in anyone that can play instruments/understands music theory and can send me samples and loops to use. Id be happy to trade any knowledge ive picked up in using ableton to make tracks.

Just a hobby, but its really fun to get better and I love actually having something to show for my spare time rather than just a hangover

I am pretty much in love with writing melodies. I do not like working on drums as much.

I'm trying to figure out how to do gating in FL studio, specifically when triggered to a key/button on my midi keyboard. Basically, I want to tap a key and have the synth be cut on and off to my heart's/rhythm's desire. When I try linking my controller to channel on/off, and I cut it off to try to get a gating effect, the sound cuts off but doesn't turn back on when I press the key again. It has to wait for the loop (and piano roll note for the synth) to hit again.

Any help? I'm sure this is hella muddy, but I can answer questions if people have them.
I'm trying to use this on saw/grimy synths to make a NERO-like effect (or tons of people in bass music/electro house/glitch ) use.

Thanks, and I'm all about collabos too.

I know what you mean but cant help as I dont use a midi controller.

Having to actually play notes scares me lol. Automation ftw. I would just use a gate plug in and set the timing/parameters to what I wanted.

I know sometimes you lose that natural groove you get from a human playing, but there are ways around that to trick your ears.

u can use a sidechained compressor for this but it has to get the on/off signal from another instr like the kick or some other synth.

yup, you can use any input for the sidechain. It tends to be more subtle than a gate though just dipping the volume unless you crank the threshold and everything to extremes. The gate is actually on/off as you say.

I don't use FL. Can't you control the gate with a midi controller (so set up a keyboard key to control gate or whatever you want to do) or set up something like an envelope control and control/activate it with midi controller?

Thanks for the positive feedback guys, feel's good to know my first attempt ever at EMP wasn't total ****.

B/C this thread isn't getting as much traffic, what message boards out there are the 2+2 for EMP?

Hello
I've been making beats for over 10 years. I use mostly vinyl samples chopped and sequenced on my MPC and Ensoniq EPS. I use cakewalk, reason, and fruity loops occasionally. We have a indie hip hop label and I have two full instrumental albums I put out in the last few years available on itunes etc. Soundcloud.com/iota_arcane
www.Gutterwatermusic.com.

I can only post from my phone atm. I have a few garage band tracks I'd like to post. Any recommendations?

Here's my new Akai MPK Mini. Now I just need to get better at writing melodies and making drums.

I haven't used FL Studio in a few years and never tried what you're trying so I don't have any specific solutions, but based on what you're describing it seems like you're messing with the midi instead of/as well as the audio signal. If you're using a plug-in to gate sounds, you want it inserted as an effect in the instrument's mixer channel, as opposed to a place where it's effecting the midi that triggers the sound in the first place.

If you have access to a gate plug-in, check out if it has sidechain functionality. If it does, you should be able to trigger it with another channel and in turn trigger the content of said channel with your keyboard.

If you haven't done so already I'd also strongly recommend reading the FL Studio manual. This is a basic enough feature that the manual may even have some sort of step by step guide for it. If not, check their forums and/or the KVR forums.

Good Luck

Dude, did you mean to spell your screen name as it is?

Guessing you mean me. If so, no. I just didn't know any better at the time since the 1st H isn't as clearly audible as the 2nd and it's spelled "rytm" in Swedish.

I got pwnd My ****ty low intermediate level of Spanish is as far from mono lingualism as I stretch at the moment.

no DJ thread so i guess i'll plop this here

used to have 1200s, mixer and vinyl a few years back before CDRs and consoles caught on and have the itch to just eff around and make some progressive mixes for ****s n' giggles.

thoughts on traktor kontrol S2? novation twitch is another possibility but NI's interface looks a lot more intuitive to work with (hardware and software)

anyone on here use propellerhead reason 5/6? Been watching some youtube tutorial vids on how to use it but there's so much that it's overwhelming for someone pretty new to this.

I use Reason 5. I'll admit, there is a whole lot going on there and it's real hard to understand once you start.

Just keep doing what your doing in watching YouTube as its the best resource for learning new things.

Boyinaband.com helped me out a lot as he does instructional vids for entire songs. Be prepared as he is very annoying though and good luck!

i havent used the kontrol S2, but i have used Itch. As far as Traktor Vs. Serato goes - i havent noticed too much of a difference besides teh fact that most clubs have Serato boxes these days, and most of the more prominent DJs who made the switch to digital use Searto, since it arrived first.

Most likely this will change with younger folks becoming DJs though. I used to DJ on Vinyl only but grew tired of carrying my vinyl with me and also didnt want anything to happen to my more raer records so i made the leap to Traktor, the more inexpensive of the two. I still use 2 turntables and and control vinyl though because its what im used to. Im not some sick turntablist but have some scratch chops.

Itch is pretty easy to use and pretty much controls a software version of Serato all from the midi controller. The only problem i had with itch is the size of the turntable platters (they look like 45's) and how close together the platters are to the crossfader (whenever i scratch stuff, i felt like i was making T-Rex arms which i found to be uncofortable).

If all youre doing is blending, Itch is great. The latency on itch is almost non-existent.

As for software - i prefer Traktor's software interface, it seems to have more options at the click of a button as far as performance is concerned, however a lot of folks tell me they like Serato for the side by side vertical layout of the songs Waves as opposed to the horizontal layout of traktor. I dont DJ by sight and having my transients line up visually isnt that important to me but i can understand how some folks have grown accustomed to this - it does make it easier to see when a track appears to be going off time relative to the other track playing especially if youre doing long blends say.

hope this helps you out a bit.

i use reason 5 as well but not as a standalone device and always in ReWire mode inside ProTools. I think the sequencer on Reason is maddening and frustrating and i like playing with raw wav data in protools as opposed to the click and paint blocks of reason. I started off with reason before getting in to ProTools and glad i did, but i wouldnt recommend it if all you're trying to do is make songs. I also do mixing and mastering which i feel a lot more comfortable doing in ProTools vs Reason, although i hear great things about the Reason6 2 bus (the master bus that sums all the other channels together).

Best advice was already stated - keep at it. Try and make a 30 second song a day and attempt to do something new each time which will help you discover other routing possibilities and force you to be more creative on the more "technical" side say.

i can try and answer any specific questions you may have as well but there is no "oh go to this website you'll be making awesome **** in 10 minutes after watching this video tutorial".

Smokingrobot -

Why do you not suggest Reason if you're only making songs? What would you suggest? Abelton or just ProTools?

thanks.

the novation twitch uses the touch strips rather than platters, so while it seems like it'd be fun and a novelty i think i prefer a platter layout. plus i read that itch was crashing on people's computers more often than traktor.

guess i'm going traktor.

maybe my post was unclear - i actually meant the opposite: if you're only making songs in the box, i would recommend reason.

if you have instrumentation you want to record, you still could use reason 6 since i believe it comes with their program called "record" but im not super familiar with it and cant recommend it for recording sounds that require a microphone or DI.

oh **** dude, i thought you wrote "itch", which is a serato midi controller w/ 7" platters. i dont know anything about the novation twitch thats my bad :/

if platters is what youre comfortable wth then the answer is still go with platters though

I'm pretty sure that you can upgrade reason 5 and run record with it as well. My friend does use Reason 6 with record though and does a lot of love sampling and vocals. Pretty awesome program if you ask me.

I've heard only good things about Ableton too. Any experience with it?