So, I'm mostly a four or five piece rock and or roll guy, but I've been following the trend lately and adding some synths and samples into my music, but I still feel kind of lost.

I've been using the free version of IK's sampletank, NI's kontakt, and a few random moog and rhodes emulations, as well as an old 808 emulation. There's a lot to be done with those for sure, but for the kind of swirling, percolating, evolving, electronic music I'm hearing these days - what should be my essentials?

Of course, free or relatively inexpensive is best, but what should my basic toolkit of samples, vst's and vsti's be?

Thanks!
Last edited by cactuseskimo on Tue Nov 13, 2012 10:35 am; edited 1 time in total

i think you can do that wobble bass stuff with pretty much any synth; i would check youtube for a wobble bass tutorial on whatever synth you like to use.

nice to see people broadening their horizons BTW

Get Massive, FM8 and some dubstep presets for them. Add a halftime beat and enjoy.

Native-instrument's "Massive" is the Goto Synth for Dubstep wawawowwowowowo(wobble)

Sugar-bytes' "artillery 2" (buy Computer magazine for a "lite" version will save you time in terms of editing "the drops". its an effect plugin that responds to your keyboard's notes. press a note and it effects the other tracks, audio
http://www.sugar-bytes.de/content/products/Artillery2/index. php?lang=en


Abelton's live is the DAW of choice for dubstep, its pretty much the best for Loop based music. you get a drum loop at 120 bpm but your song is in 160 bpm, no problem just drop it on the screen and it'll take care of synchronizing loops of varying tempos together.

But mixing everything so it sounds like a song from a professionnal album thats another thing, i suggest you making your music and then once you are done, hire a professionnal that will do the mixing in a fully equipped recording studio with loads of Hi-end gear. Making music and Mixing music are two very different things you will loose too much time trying to mix the songs yourself with a home-studio

Thanks for the info! I've been mixing for over 10 years though and even do it on the side for $$ once in a while . . . not going to stop now!

ah! i wasn't aware of that lolol