Wow, it's been awhile since I posted here. Looks like most of the old regulars are gone. (I guess that makes any of you NEW regulars?)

I am at this point MUCH more knowledgable about music than about the technical side of producing it. I major in piano/keyboards. I write/compose a fair amount and would like to know the feasibility of my plan, outlined below:

In the past, I was always on the hunt for "THE PERFECT WORKSTATION", but soon figured out what a losing battle that was. No matter what's out there, there's always something I don't like about it... As soon as you buy something it's obsolete... Every manufacturer has their own strengths and weaknesses (and why should I pay $2000 for a board if I only want the guitar sounds, for example)... So you see why I decided to give up looking for everything I wanted on ONE board.

Here's what I want to do: I want to do all my sequencing/mixing/etc. from a PC, which of course is standard. But if I just picked up a simple MIDI controller, is there any way to buy just patches/banks from manufacturers and download them onto my PC, rather than having to buy whole keyboards from them (which are full of overpriced features I will never use)? Then I can pick and choose: I want Yamaha's pianos, Korg's electronic sounds, and so on.

I have no way of knowing whether this is common practice, or whether it's unheard of. Or impossible. Or a stroke of genius.

If it is possible, how does one go about purchasing patches? (I've tried to figure it out and I can't.) I am looking for ALL KINDS, from orchestral to funk to psychadelic.

And if it's not a good idea and you know why, please enlighten me so I don't waste my money.

Please help the poor clueless boy!

I've never heard of buying just certain sets of waves from certain manufacturers. Why don't you go the soft synthe route? Why not buy Garritan personal orchestra for your orchestral sounds, and check out a bunch of different giga-pianos, and go the sample route? That sounds like what you are wanting to do anyway. Plus with samples you willl have much higher quality sounds than the very short sampled, compressed sounds in the workstations.

I apologize - all that lingo is confusing to me. Remember, you're talking to a novice. I have recorded in the past "amateur style", using nothing but ONE workstation. That's it!

I have a feeling I know what those things are, just from watching the manufacturers, but I'm not familiar with the terms. Please describe "soft synth", and I'm sure I'll go, "Ooooh, that! I've seen those before." (Ya learn something new every day.) And what is Garritan personal orchestra/giga-piano/samples?

You're probably thinking, "Whoa, this dude's waaaaaay out of his depth." Please humor me. I gotta learn somehow.

Thank you.

Hi DM,
I can give you some help on this but the answer is far more complex than I can explain on a single post. So I'll try to make it simple and hope that other users help so you can understand along the way. To start with I can say that your “plan” is fully executable – but probably not in the way you're thinking. Although the PC platform to produce music is becoming more and more popular as opposed to the “hardware” perspective I personally believe that for now the good way is some where in between. If the PC is more flexible you've got to consider to have the fastest processor, the highest RAM possible, a large hard-disc, a good audio/midi interface (you have to analise your needs on this namely on the number of audio inputs/outputs) and of course the software. The other side on this is that, has it happens on music “workstations”, you've got to continuously update/upgrade your system (I wont bother you talking about the PC/MAC& Windows/OSX saga). So there it goes the financial advantage. That's why I personally think that the best is to have a mixture of both worlds (if I can say that). Now you have you're PC system ready and you choose a software workstation like Reason, Sonar, Cubase etc (please make a search on this). What you can do now is buy not Patches but instrument plug-ins (some are included with the original programs). There are far to many to name them (you have also to search for these) but what these generically do is to play a specific (or generic) kind of instruments/tones/patches. So you can have one plug-in to play orchestral sounds on one track, another to play organ in another track and another to play drums on a 3rd track. Or you can use the same plug-in on several tracks to play different instruments. What the plug-in can play or do depends on it. Some are specialized on piano, some on virtual analog synthesizers, some on orchestral and so on. There are also plug-ins for processing sound like reverbs and compressors. After choosing you can buy the “patches/waves” to suite your needs or load them with your own. You can easily download demos from the net to have an idea of all this and try for your self.
Hope to have helped you to start in some manner.
Regards

DM - Hi, I'm from the Arranger's forum and saw your post there. To keep it simple, I would suggest you download the Yamaha SYX50 or 100 and the Roland VSC3. Off hand I don't have the sites, but a quick search will lead you to the FREE downloads. The free stuff will let you practice and evaluate. If you want to purchase one of these all around softsynths, they will do the job for you 90% of the time. As you get more experienced and comfortable with the idea of softsynths and plug-ins, you can buy any instrument(s) you want from A-Z for anywhere from $20 to $1000.

BTW, a 'softsynth' or 'plug-in' is a form of synthesizer that will lie resident in your PC. If you use a midi controller and identify one or more of these as your sound source (MIDI option)they will play and make the appropriate sound.

Lastly, since I don't usually post here (as I am a grouchy old geezer of 54 - it's an inside Arranger's Forum joke), can you somehow transfer all this stuff or at least keep us updated over there?



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Cass Pawlowski - Motown
PSR2000, SC88, Cakewalk

They've done well explaining it. Just for your reference
Gigastudio is a software sampler. You can buy many instruments that are in giga format, such as pianos, strings, guitars, drums, etc. For instance, Virtuoso solo strings is 8 gigs of high quality solo violin, viola, cello, and bass samples. A sample is a recording of something. Take a gigapiano for instance. each of the 88 keys will be sampled at a number of different velocities. These samples are then mapped into the gigastudio format, and will be played as you send midi from your controller to your PC.

Some of the other posts might give you a better way to start out though. Gigastudio is for the person who needs the highest quality sounds for their musical productions. You need a heck of a lot of computer horsepower when you start using giga instrumets.

Thank you all for your help. It's not as complicated as I thought! I was right, I did know what those "things" were, I just didn't know the terms. This makes things much easier. If you have any further advice I'm still listening!

Hi,
I just started on this software-based approach in August with Garriton Personal Orchestra, after too, looking around for the "perfect workstation.

GPO, IMHO is definitely worth checking out. For $250 you get everything you need to get up and running, though you'll probably want to upgrade from the included soft notation program and sequencer.

As a registered GPO user I was then able to get a reduced price on Kontakt, Native Instruments flagship sampler and editor, which has its own included sample library. Some say the library's not all that great, but I think it has some very usable nylon, 12 string, and steel string guitars, as well as basses and percussive voices.

I've since purchased some "ethnic" instrument samples to round out my set, such as banjo, bagpipes, Chinese gong, etc. One nice thing about the high-end samplers such as Kontakt, Halion, or GigaStudio is that they have conversion features so you can make one developer's proprietary format compatible with another's.

I also got Cakewalk's Sonar to sequence/record tracks, and use both a Yamaha P120(a hammer weighted 88 key digital piano) and an Evoluton MK461 midi controller (no weighted response, but has lots of assignable midi controller knobs, faders, and such.) They're both plugged into my PC, and I tend to use the Yamaha for "percussive" voices, (including of course piano), and the light midi controller for "expressive" solo voices like violins or whatever.

I don't know this is the best way to do it, it's just what I've sort of stumbled into, and it seems to work great. Possible drawbacks before going this route include:

1) There's most definitely a front-end tech learning curve, and sometimes I'm farting around with technical issues when I'd rather just be playing music.
2) It does make powerful demands on the computer. 1GB of RAM (all that my Dell supports) doesn't seem like nearly as much as it used to. Plus, if my motherboard fries or something, I'm out of business. People who have been seriously doing this for a while, or are doing it professionally, usually have more than one computer for this with 2nd hard drives, back-ups, and all of that.

But your sound libraries can be built incrementally, and sonic samples exist galore at all price ranges, including free. I just know that I'm committed to going this route because you're not limited to one platform, and the sounds can be incredible. So I've no regrets. I'm just continuing to work on it until I can use all of these new tools seemlessly and well.

Good luck, and check out especially Frank and Rikki's posts here on the subject.