How did You Start.......

[ginJAH]

Im interested to see how you started making computer based music?

I started on my 'family' computer with a magix studio, then the first version of fruityloops

before going all out and building a PC and dedicating it to audio.

[Brendan again etc]

I bought meself a Time PC about four years ago for general use. Then I realised I could record music on it. Then I broke it about a year later trying to add a second hard drive (it wasn't very good for computer music as it turned out). Then, after about three months of fussing, I built my own PC, and after about another two months of trying to get the soundcard to work properly, finally I was happy. And that's what I've been using ever since.

Apart from the PC, the only hardware I use is a controller keyboard (ie keys) and MIDI controller (ie knobs). And a guitar and mic!

[ginJAH]

I had a time PC too! What a piece of shit it was, pucking hateded it! and time are a shower of batsards, when it broke it took them 3 months to fix and then they lost it and made me come and pick it up and carry it home!

cheers for your reply btw brendan

[Bimma]

it all started back in the day when i had an amiga 500 with med & octamed along with the stereo master sampler 8 bit (i think) which was slightly bigger than a matchbox and just plugged in the back and used a single headphone jack for input. I used to sample at 25khz from cd or tape then edit the samples and run them through octamed. And that set up never crashed once, everything ran so smooth and stable. After that i never owned any computer for a good few years then a few years ago i built a pc (for office stuff at the time). After realising how much things had moved on and that it was possible to create music using soley the computer without need for any expensive hardware i designed to get back into my own music. Played around with ejay (a free version off a mag cover) then quickly moved onto acid pro, now i have built a newer, more powerful pc, have various vst's at my disposal, monitors, midi controller and use a couple of different sequencers, one being muzys.
What more could i ask for.....

Bimm

ps
I also bought the first ever computer music mag back in 98 and still have the cover disc.

[Brendan again etc]

Ah, well, if you want to go that far back, the first computer-based music I did I suppose was a BASIC program I wrote for my ZX Spectrum that enabled me to quickly identify notes on my guitar. Utterly useless, but tecchy fun!

I would have done it on my ZX81 before that, except it didn't have sound.... 8)

[imported_j0E_Tokyo]

I made a basic program on the speccy when I was about 10 that slowly drew a sine wave on the screen while making a beep that descended and ascended in pitch with the wave.

Even more utterly useless than brendan's...

[kamina]

We had an advertising agency ask us for help in choosing music for an ad. We did it and they really liked it. Inspired by that, (and the fact we wanted to start making music) my friend bought a korg trinity, and my brother ordered a yamaha a3000. I had a computer built to the highest spec at the time, and ordered a turtle beach pinnacle pro studio from the states for it.

[Sonik303]

My start was PC 386 33 MHz, 2 Mb ram, 300 Mb Hdd running Win3.11. Music soft - Scream Tracker v1.0 (4 mono channels, no fx whatsoever)

That was back in '95

sOnik

[mutedcensor]

I had a 486 DX 33Mhz PC with 8MB RAM. I ran Windows 3.11 I think and I went to Soho SoundHouse and bought a package called Mastertracks and ran it through my Soundblaster AWE32. I don't think I physically ever recorded anything with it on the PC - it was a complete waste of time.

Then I bought a Tascam 4 Track Portastudio and I recorded about 10 tracks. I used to record some midi stuff into this using the mastertracks stuff but it all sounded pretty ghastly. God how bad was that sound... Talk about demo sounding - really poor quality thinking back - but remember at the time being quite pleased that I had actually recorded something. It's also quite nice to listen back to the very early ideas of songs that have now been developed a bit - getting that very raw feel - it reminds me of the demo of money by Pink Floyd - really porr quality etc but the idea and the structure is there.

Then I bought a Boss BR-8 from digitalvillage and that's when things took a turn for the better. Proper sound quality and dead easy to use. I burnt my full cd's worth of material using just that piece of kit. I still use this kit as a pre-amp for my mic's and guitars.

Now I have a Digital Village PC running an M-audio 2496 with Studiocase. Very soon I can see myself setting SX, a digirack 002, trading a few of my guitars in for a lovely Martin or something, and a few of the full blown vst's but I have to buy my house first..... oh but for priorities in life!

[JOBU]

Started out in 1994, just of curiosity, bought a midiinterface (midiman 2x2) and put it into my office desktop. A New world opened up, where I've lived since then.
Regards