Last night software saved my life...

[cptgone]

...from a brute!

After 13 years of inactivity, I felt the itch again yesterday. After a sleepless night trawling the web, I ALMOST went out and bought an Arturia Drumbrute.
I've always liked step sequencing, and the Drumbrute's sequencer's polyrhythmic feature tempted me.

3 things didn't feel right though - esp. the 3rd one:
1) it's hardware, yet it doesn't do all I want, I may still need a proper DAW sooner or later
2) it's hardware, it may break (e.g. noisy outputs)
3) sound parameters not recordable / automatable along with your patterns (http://www.musicradar.com/reviews/tech/ ... ute-645254)

Getting my DAW running again would take time (my last attempt stranded on Cubase's VST scan), and require me to use another room - while what I wanted was: play around, having fun from my couch, without losing the option of turning the result into a fully fledged track later on (IF I ever feel like doing that).

And then it struck me: there HAD to be a software alternative. I had been looking at FL, Reason, mourning Rebirth... but how could I forget my beloved ancient copy of FXpansion DR008?
Before I quit making music, FXpansion had been releasing intriguing drum VSTi's (Guru, BFD) that didn't truly fit my desires - and in the meantime, they've added (Geist and) Tremor!

So I bought Tremor, and DL'ed Reaper and ASIO4ALL

Thanks to the customer friendly people from GForce, adding my Minimonsta and VSL (which, to my shame, I hadn't truly used since buying it 7 years ago, for a number of reasons) was effortless. No dongles, no hassle: lots of value for money well spent.

Result: a set-up with functionality that is somewhat comparable to the DrumBrute and Korg Minilogue I had been eyeing, with strings on top - and all the advantages of a real DAW.
All this power at my hands, from my couch, with no cables or lost desktop space... auto backup to the cloud...
lovely as hardware like the DrumBrute seems to be, I still prefer the PC + software way

[kokotte]

it's good to make music again!
enjoy, and have fun with your new tools( the next time you can't sleep, you know what to do-:))

[masterhiggins]

Tremor is one of the best drum machine plugins around. HIGHLY underrated and often overlooked. The sequencer is unmatched (not a fan of Stix) and transmod has yet to be defeated. I hope that fxpansion continues to develop it.

[acYm]

unmatched even by Nerve?

[neverwhere2410]

Oh man, you're totally where I was in November of 2015. I'd sold off all my gear and only had licenses for a handful of vst's. Downloaded reaper and got a Korg MicroKey 2 and started making music. I got the Korg Legacy bundle and thought there's no way I need hardware again... Now I've got a couple guitars, a novation Ultranova, Roland JD-Xi and I'm about to pick up a jx-03 since the price dropped; then start saving for the new se-02.

[cptgone]

unmatched even by Nerve?

Didn't know that one, looks great - but it seems to be sample based (like FXpansion Geist).
(What I like about synth drums is their adaptability, it's easy to make sounds fit the mix. But of course sampling, too, is very powerful for these purposes)

[cptgone]

Oh man, you're totally where I was in November of 2015. I'd sold off all my gear

I never sold my guitars

I used to feel some regret about buying so much software in the past, thinking "if I had went the hardware route I could have sold it off" - but this episode shows me I was wrong there:
- I could have resold most of my licenses, but never seriously considered doing that
- hardware goes defective / obsolete
- I've had a lot of fun the last few days playing with my old software, and it was very easy to get everything running on my current PC. All is integrated, my work is backed up... If my house burns down, I can simply buy a PC and re-install.
- on the other hand, some software companies make customers' life hard with dongles and complex license activation schemes. Which is the reason I still haven't updated Cubase, and use Reaper for the time being.
(I even had to contact Steinberg to find out how to prove my ownership of an old version, as their site fails to tell me that. No reply yet, 24 hours later...)

[cptgone]

it's good to make music again!

So true.

[DuX]

So how did it save your life again?

[fluffy_little_something]

Maybe he was referring to the song

[cptgone]

So how did it save your life again?

OK, silly title, but:
software saved my wallet when the DrumBrute tried to tempt me, so I didn't stray from the righteous path of open standard plugability, and found myself cleaning my soul by making music (without delay!) - which saved me in a way that, before open standard plugability, would have required the assistance of God, or a DJ.

[DuX]

Maybe he was referring to the song

I also thought of that song "last night the DJ saved my life" immediately...

Good title, man. Even though it turns out not to be as serious.

[cptgone]

[necro alert]
I'm sad to say that today, I caved in and ordered a Korg Volca Beats. I blame fxpansion (they discontinued Tremor, so I had to put my PC on fire - I'm posting this using smoke signs and a HTML converter).

To be fair, it was the Korg Monotron Delay that made me turn. If all goes well, I'll have a wireless setup soon, consisting of 2 Monotron Delays, the Volca and a cheap old Korg Sound on Sound recorder

[vurt]

come back to the dark side

[Acid Mitch]

- hardware goes defective / obsolete

I’m using several things from the 1980’s that are still quite reliable and far from obsolete where as my music software is all far more recent than that. Everything from 90’s to start of this decade has been updated or replaced because it became defective or obsolete.
The only old software I’m still running are games.