Live Instruments

- 13 piece drum set
- Pearl Championship FFX 1311 Marching Snare Drum
- Various auxiliary pecussion


Audio Equipment

- Aiwa NSX-D30 Digital Audio System - negligible; most people have a stereo
- Boss BR-8 Digital Recording Studio - $800
- 2 Shure SM57 microphones - neglible; very cheap


Software

- Image-Line's FL Studio 5: Producer Edition - $150
- Sibelius Software's Sibelius 4 - $300; academic discount
- Steinberg's Cubasis VST - came with GPO; free
- Noteworthy Software's Noteworthy Composer - free
- Geniesoft's Overture SE 3.5 - came with GPO; free
- The freeware program Audacity - free


VSTs/Plugins

- Garritan Personal Orchestra - $300
- Garritan Jazz & Big Band - $200/300?
- Virtual Drumline 2 - $200
- Slayer 1 & 2 - $50
- WASP - negligible
- FL Keys - negligible
- SimSynth - negligible
- Steinberg's Universal Sound Module - came with GPO; free
- Steinberg's JX 16 Polyphonic Synthesizer - came with GPO; free
- Steinberg's Neon - came with GPO; free
- Steinberg's VB 1 - came with GPO; free
- Massive library of various soundfonts - all free; free





I think it's a nice set up. It's done me well, and it's not too expensive. In total it's probably around $2200 (not including Live Instruments). Don't freak out though. The 8-track recorder was $800, and you won't need that unless you do live recordings or rip music from various hard copy media. Also, Garritan Personal Orchestra, Garritan Jazz & Big Band, and Virtual Drumline 2 were all $200+. Finally, Sibelius was $300, so that's a big chunk. But no one here really needs to write sheet music, and that's all it's good for. So really, without these things that you may not need, it's only $500.


Really depends what styles you're going to write. I've found that with the stuff I have, I can cover a wide variety of genres.

If you're doing orchestral, obviously you need GPO.
If you're doing anything percussive, VDL2.
If you're doing a marching band show, you need GJBB (for squealing trumpets :) ) and VDL2. It's probably a minority here, but I'm into all that DCI stuff.
If you're doing rock, definetely Slayers.
If you're doing anything, get lots of free soundfonts and vsts from places like hammersound.net.




I know there's SO many software options out there. So many pieces of equipment. It's hard and confusing to know which one's you need. Just try not to feel overwhelmed, and just research the hell out of it. My general advice though... get FL Studio. Very easy to use, very capable, and very cheap. Also supports many standard formats. It's a good starting point. You can build off of that.



I also know that it may seem like I'm rich. I can assure you I'm not. It took me a while to build this up, and if I was asked in the beginning to spend this much at once, I wouldn't do it. Just slowly find different things and different/cheaper ways to get them. In the end, it is a lot of money. But what I have now is such a great set up (I think) because I can do just about whatever I want. It's SO worth it. If you get a nice freelancing job, you can make back all the money in a few songs. It pays for itself.


Have fun,
Doctor

Quote:Original post by dfalcone
I havn't done sound for games, but I have self-produced many albums (my friends and mine) with:

Sonar (The best in my opinion)
Cubase / Nuendo (Very good too, but Sonar has better performance)
Fruity Loops (Very good with sound effects, loops, techno. Bad for recording.)
Acid (Trictly loops and basic audio recording. Pitch shifting is great.)

You will definitely want to invest in good plug-ins. I recommend:
Waves Bundle (Great for mastering to weird freaky noises. $COSTS$)

MIDI Keyboard is essential, or else I would be sitting around all day writing out the notation...boring...timely....

I use a Roland VS-880. I love it for all the orchestra sounds. Gives that big title holywood soundtrack type of sound. I really like Korg better for all around keyboard though. Roland has cartridges for specialized pro sound patches.

I could do it all with Sonar and my Roland VS-880, even without plug-ins. With a good keyboard, all the mixing/mastering is done pre-master from the keyboard output.

Also, I like manipulating sound clips with pitch and time bending for weird effects.

I have to disagree with you saying that FL Studio is bad for recording. I've had no problems getting it to do what I want it to. I get great results with live recordings. Just check out my single "Christmas Eve Dream" on vincentrubinetti.com. It has an acoustic intro part. Sounds fine.

Most of this is thanks to my great mic and 8-track recorder, but still, FL Studio made no hinderance. I record with the 8-track, hook the 8-track to the usb port with a digital out -> usb cable, record while playing in the 8-track with Audacity, render it to wave file, and then import into FL Studio.


I still HIGHLY recommend FL. Image-line unfortunately advertises it as a program good for techno and drumloops. I disagree with this advertising strategy because it goes far beyond that. With it's capability to import just about any VST or DX plugin, you can do orchestral, jazz, etc. Basically what I said before: just about anything.


Plus, when you buy it, you get a lifetime of free updates. You'll get ALL the new versions or updates. Also, you get a free membership access to SampleFusion.com where you can download gigabytes of samples (it's the same company I think).


Now I've never taken a glance at Reason, Cubase, or ProTools. Supposedly they're the industry standards. But I don't get it... it seems to me like FL can do mostly anything one could want, but it's never acclaimed highly. True it's not aimed towards recording, like Cubase. But you can ultimately still do it.

I hear Cubase has good pitch correction. Perhaps it's really easy in Cubase, whereas in FL you can change the pitch, but manually. Maybe someone can fill me in on what point I'm missing?



Doctor

Quote:Original post by Kylotan

Quote:Original post by Dr Mean
I have to disagree with you saying that FL Studio is bad for recording. I've had no problems getting it to do what I want it to. I get great results with live recordings. Just check out my single "Christmas Eve Dream" on vincentrubinetti.com. It has an acoustic intro part. Sounds fine.

Most of this is thanks to my great mic and 8-track recorder, but still, FL Studio made no hinderance. I record with the 8-track, hook the 8-track to the usb port with a digital out -> usb cable, record while playing in the 8-track with Audacity, render it to wave file, and then import into FL Studio.

I don't think that really compares to recording directly into the app though. It sounds like it would take 2 to 3 times as long to do it, for a start. Plus, I use a lot of punch-in and punch-out stuff in my audio which I don't think would be practical with that set up.

So you mean you do a lot of complex rhythms, hard to cut in and out? I don't see how my set up is impractical. I do percussive ensemble writing, which has more complex rhythms than any other genre, and I'm still able to do it. I think there must be some miscommunication here...


It does take pretty long though, like you said. Still doable though. And who knows; I might've overlooked a feature to accept a live direct line in signal in FL.



Doctor