Greetings everyone. I am very happy to have found this bulletin board. It is precisely the resource I was looking for to get answers to questions that I have. At the risk of boring you, allow me to give you some of my musical background. I have been with the same band, Empath, for about 8 years, and we're established as far as our material goes. On the heavy side; a bit of a combination of Tool and Nirvana. Passionate, dark, and "arty". It suits me well. We are a 3 piece and I sing and play guitar. You can hear some here www.myspace.com/empath if you are interested. I'm the weeny in the white shirt... But the music I write and play is not the music that I listen to, at least not yet. I have a burning, raging desire to write ambient music. When I say ambient, I am referring to the likes of Steve Roach, Vidna Obmana, Steve Halperin, Brian Eno, and Coyote Oldman. This is the music that I love with every fiber of my being, and this is the type of music that I want to create. I have made attempts to do this in the past with a friend using guitars with effects processors, a 4 track tape recorder, a keyboard, and a microphone. Not quality work, but I was proud of the work that we did. Try to imagine a garage band ambient sound. Hey... it was original at least, right? Hehe. Anyway, I'm rambling. I need to know what I need to buy to get started. As far as recording, I'm all set up to record direct to my computer using a special sound card and Cakewalk Home 4.0. What I am wondering is what I should be looking for... I don't know where to begin, but I have a vague idea. This is what I am thinking, and maybe you can just correct me. I am assuming I need some type of a sound generator, like a rack-mount library of sounds that hooks-up via midi cable to a keyboard to actually execute the sounds. I plan to layer it 1 or 2 tracks at a time and just sit in my studio for twelve hours straight doing nothing but smoking cigarettes and creating the music that I love... the thought of that makes me happy. So, what should I be looking for? Where's a good place to start? As far as money goes, I will spend what I need, but I am looking for basics here but I also want something I can really create with, and then I will upgrade from there as I become more familiar with this new world. Pardon this long message... I do like to write, and I thank you for reading it, and thank you even more if you respond. I am looking forward to this new path.
I know I should just read some of the earlier posts, but I'm not really in the mood to do that right now. Thanks!



[This message has been edited by Atoms (edited 11-29-2005).]