Need some newbie advice with DAWs?

[ghettosynth]

Easy.

1. He's already adamantly said what he doesn't want and will not do, use instrument plugins that have to be loaded.

2. He's already also said what he kinda "wants" to do, use a daw.

3. He then asked "what direction should I go" which I took as rhetorical since he clearly already himself spelled out the direction he should go in his own original post.

Use hardware keyboards with the daw (?) and don't use any plugin instruments. Problem solved? Not exactly rocket science.

I'd bet that our "one post ghost" is doing that right now! He's totally missing out on this sweet sweet conversation, I tell you what!

[Rappo Clappo]

"Could anyone please advise me on what direction to go in?"

You mean EXCEPT all the nonsense you have stated already? Go get a life, troll!

Joe Melody... rrright?

[ghettosynth]

"Could anyone please advise me on what direction to go in?"

You mean EXCEPT all the nonsense you have stated already? Go get a life, troll!

Joe Melody... rrright?

See, I knew there'd be more. Bring on teh kerfuffle!

[flugel45]

My emphasis is on SPEED. When I'm composing music, the LAST thing I would want have to do is go looking for files, or waiting for something to load. I want fast access to my entire library of samples, ideally with facilities to arrange them in sub-categories, or tag them.

Could anyone please advise me on what direction to go in?

You can hire a symphony orchestra to live in your house and be at your beck and call...

Or you can decide on a DAW that fits your needs and take the time to use it (and yes, VSTs) fluently. People who have done this and put in the time and effort can work very quickly. There are templates, macros, screensets, shortcuts and various other things in the DAW to speed up your workflow. But you have to learn them before you can make them do your bidding.

For example, there's no reason you have to search through VSTs every time you start a new project. It's a small matter to set up your desired instruments as a screenset (template) to load all at once so you are ready to start composing as soon as the DAW boots up. That's just one shortcut.

First step for you is to stop saying you don't want to do this or that, and learn what the possibilities are. Because I can tell you, they are way more flexible and wondrous than what you are doing now.

[ghettosynth]

My emphasis is on SPEED. When I'm composing music, the LAST thing I would want have to do is go looking for files, or waiting for something to load. I want fast access to my entire library of samples, ideally with facilities to arrange them in sub-categories, or tag them.

Could anyone please advise me on what direction to go in?

You can hire a symphony orchestra to live in your house and be at your beck and call...

I think that we should expand on this idea just a little bit. You could probably get these kids pretty cheap.

[JonSolo]

Something something turtles...

[xbitz]

http://www.airmusictech.com/product/ignite#overview

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

You only need to load the instruments you might want to use, once. Then, just save the project as a template, with a shortcut saved to the desktop.

[shidostrife]

Many DAWs come with basic sample player with bread and butter libraries that cover most instruments you'll need for composing. Cubase has halion sonic, studio one has presence, tracktion has collective, etc.
Yes, these are plugins, but they have tons of sounds in one plugin and you won't need to install any other instrument plugins if you don't want to. You want drums, load halion sonic and search for drums, you want pianos, load the same plugin and search for pianos, guitars? same, strings? same, etc.

[jancivil]

KVR SNAFU

[jancivil]

*bated*. past participle of bate, ‘restrain,’ from abate.

Thanks for the spelling lesson....durn smart phones in the auto complete mode.

That's my story and I'm a sticking to it.

I used one for a couple days, I kept trying to say the colloquial 'youse' which the Stupidphone had to replace with 'house'. Machines spelling for us spells the end of civilization.

[jancivil]

Easy.

1. He's already adamantly said what he doesn't want and will not do, use instrument plugins that have to be loaded.

2. He's already also said what he kinda "wants" to do, use a daw.

3. He then asked "what direction should I go" which I took as rhetorical since he clearly already himself spelled out the direction he should go in his own original post.

Use hardware keyboards with the daw (?) and don't use any plugin instruments. Problem solved? Not exactly rocket science.

Yeah, and that progresses the idea not at all. Apparently Mr. Melody has used a hardware synth.

Not to mention 'one post ghost', I felt the chances of post #2 to be pretty low.

[LawrenceF]

Was just saying... he kinda answered his own question... unless (no clue ??) he's just not aware that using a DAW doesn't **require** using virtual instruments. People that use them use them because they want to and prefer to, not because they have to.

There actually are a couple of DAW's (Digital "Audio" Workstations) that don't even allow using virtual instruments and have no facility for them, so it's obviously possible and not unheard of.

[James Melody]

First of all thank you to everyone for your responses. I wasn't expecting so many so quickly! I really appreciate it.

I am ignoring the rude people here.

I likely won't be back here tomorrow but I will try to check back on Sunday.

Many DAWs come with basic sample player with bread and butter libraries that cover most instruments you'll need for composing. Cubase has halion sonic, studio one has presence, tracktion has collective, etc.
Yes, these are plugins, but they have tons of sounds in one plugin and you won't need to install any other instrument plugins if you don't want to. You want drums, load halion sonic and search for drums, you want pianos, load the same plugin and search for pianos, guitars? same, strings? same, etc.

Ah. Thank you. I got some helpful replies, but this one was the most helpful of all, so I've responded to it first.

So instead of having one plugin for each instrument, I can have one plugin which provides a whole bunch of other instruments. In theory that sounds great.

But what about using my own samples that I have on my hard drive? Will I need a plugin to use them, or can I just load them directly in the program. It's my own samples that I'm really interested in being able to load quickly.

You talk of composing and MIDI, so I'd go with Cubase. Has the most powerful MIDI editing tools.

Thanks for that. I will strongly consider Cubase.

You can set up your external kit and use its sounds and run it like a VSTi.

Oh, I had no idea you could do that! That is very interesting and I'll look into that.

The richness of say my experience is not separable from the complexity of the setup. I love setting up, sound design, creating the orchestration with all of this tech. This is actually a plugins forum and you're dismissing the whole process as too inconvenient.

My apologies. We're all different. I am a simple musician who likes simple tools, so perhaps this isn't the best place to ask, and I probably don't belong here. In retrospect I may well not have made this thread, but it is done now. Sorry.

My advice for you is just to approach this with an open mind.

Thanks, I will try to. This DAW stuff is all new to me.

Sounds like the OP wants a standalone sampler.

Thanks, though I'm not sure a standalone sampler is the right solution for me.

Since a standalone sampler doesn't seem to have more samples than my own keyboard, it would seem more logical to hook up my keyboard as a VSTi.

But then I don't want to be confined to the samples of just one particular device and would like to be able to buy more samples and expand my library. I also notice that standalone samplers seem very associated with drum loops, dance music, and DJing - which is not the kind of music I make.

not until you respond and engage. All too often newcomers don't invest sufficient energy to accompany the requests that they make.

That's fair enough. I wasn't expecting so many replies already, this forum obviously moves very quickly. Many online conversations I get involved with can go weeks, months, or years between people responding.

To the OP welcome to the forum even if you don't respond as soon as some would like or not.

Thank you

Actually, I though I came back pretty quickly, less than 24 hours after my OP. I posted it last night before bed. Then, like most people, I had to get up and go to work in the morning, and today has been a busy work day, especially with it being a Friday.

I don't spend my whole day online. Who does? Like most people, I get a bit of time in the evening to come online. Maybe the men in this forum all go home in their lunchbreaks, boot up their computers and check their emails? I'm not like that. I leave the internet at home and get on with my life. I made a special point of coming back here after 1 day because I had left a message and wanted to see if anyone had replied.

Added to this, I'm a very slow reader, and replying to this is taking me quite a long time… I don't know how the people of this forum would treat a disabled or elderly person but probably not with a great deal of patience.

Use hardware keyboards with the daw (?) and don't use any plugin instruments. Problem solved? Not exactly rocket science.

Thanks... though it is rocket science if you're me. I hadn't heard of VSTis before today. I'm afraid my passion is writing music, not using technology. I'm here to learn.

So, given this, what route do you wish to go?

Hi Bustedfist, thanks for all your info, and your patience with me. As I said, I am a newbie so I do need to take this fairly slow as it's all quite confusing to me at this stage. Much of your reply has confused me (the latter part) but I'm going to try and re-read it and understand it as best as I can. It might sound ridiculous to you, but I'm not entirely sure yet what "patches" are, but I'm figuring it all out slowly.

I will definitely take on board what you said about hard drives, thanks.

So, you mentioned various different routes. It seems people are recommending that I hook up my regular keyboard(s) as VSTi(s). That's something I'm happy to do if I have to, though I had been hoping to move away from the keyboards and do everything on computer if possible, both because it means I can use a wider sample library, and also because it's a more elegant way of making music.

I should mention that I've already bought a MIDI keyboard controller to do this, so now I just need to think about software. I bought a 61-key MIDI keyboard that is nice, simple, lightweight, and slim, with as few controls as possible - I wanted something fairly portable I can put on my lap in front of the computer to enter the notes. There's no way I could do that with my big Yamaha keyboard.

One thing I definitely do not want to do is just record tracks onto the computer without MIDI. Everything has to be MIDI so I can change the notes either immediately after, or decades later. I want to be able to adjust the properties of every note, including the duration, release, portamento, vibrato, and of course change the sample (using different velocities, durations, variations). Then I'll also want to change things like reverb, DSPs, panning, EQ, and filter envelopes. So I want everything to be MIDI rather than actual recordings.

Or you can decide on a DAW that fits your needs and take the time to use it (and yes, VSTs) fluently. People who have done this and put in the time and effort can work very quickly. There are templates, macros, screensets, shortcuts and various other things in the DAW to speed up your workflow. But you have to learn them before you can make them do your bidding.

I would be a fool if I randomly picked a DAW, invested months/years of my life building up skills in it, only to discover that it is fundamentally incapable of working the way I want it to work. Better surely to go online and talk to people first about the way I intend to work, and see if anyone can recommend a DAW to fit my needs?

First step for you is to stop saying you don't want to do this or that, and learn what the possibilities are. Because I can tell you, they are way more flexible and wondrous than what you are doing now.

Well I guess every composer is different and has different requirements. As for me, I'd say my big requirement is speed and fluidity of working, not having anything slowing me down.

If, for example, I was playing the piano and I found my hand going higher up the keys, I would not want to have to stop and "load" more octaves. That would interrupt the creative flow and by the time I'd loaded them, I would no longer be in the swing of the music. Even a millisecond's pause can interrupt the natural rhythm when you are composing music.

When I have a musical idea in my head, I want to be able to instantly "get it out". I don't want to be lumbered with settings and controls. I just want to be able to pick my instrument and start playing, with as little loading time as possible. Currently, I can do that on the keyboard. If it's impossible with a DAW, then I won't use a DAW.

Thanks for this. The software seems interesting, though as for the keyboard, I cannot use mini keys and need a bare minimum of 61 keys, which even then seems very claustrophobic. I am heavily into keyboard playing, I have huge hands and need lots of space. (Besides which I've already bought my MIDI controller.)

You only need to load the instruments you might want to use, once. Then, just save the project as a template, with a shortcut saved to the desktop.

OK, thanks. Is this using VSTs or not? And does it make any difference which DAW I use? If all the DAWs are about the same speed, I guess I'll just randomly pick any DAW (maybe Cubase) and take it from there.

[LawrenceF]

Thanks... though it is rocket science if you're me. I hadn't heard of VSTis before today. I'm afraid my passion is writing music, not using technology. I'm here to learn.

I wasn't saying that to you, sorry if took it that way. Was more saying that given your first post the recommended path (from us) is or should be pretty obvious. Having said that, this is the Internet and some people will still always try to get you to do what they do despite you already clearly (and quite adamantly) saying that you don't want to do that.

Demo a daw that works well with hardware keyboards, Cubase, whatever, make music. If later you change your mind about virtual instruments they'll still be just sitting there to try out.

Good luck to you.