What follows is a guide to some of the gear that an aspiring computer musician should consider investing in. Not all of it is essential, but these are the basic building blocks of any computer-based home studio setup. For a whole magazine's worth of beginner-friendly tutorials, tips and gear advice check out the latest (issue 57) - which is on sale now. NEXT: Prev Page 1 of 7 Next Prev Page 1 of 7 Next. As a computer musician, your DAW is the single most important piece of software that you’ll have installed on your Mac or PC. In fact, you could make a complete track without having any other software installed at all. DAW stands for digital audio workstation, the term given to ‘full-on’ music-making applications.
RECORDING YOUR ORIGINAL MUSIC. Once you have all the gear you need, recording your original music with your computer is a matter of making the connections, opening the software, hitting “record” and playing your tune. Depending on how elaborate your setup is, you can record one track at a time, or a live band with several performers at once. Create Music on Your Laptop Like a PRO more. Create Music on Your Laptop Like a PRO. The Envelope Of A Sound. How To Create An FX Soundscape (Part 2). If you’re completely new to making music and still struggling with the question of how to create music on the computer.
In this case, though, ‘full-on’ doesn’t mean intense and hard to understand; DAWs have actually got much easier to use over the years and you can learn them at your own pace, picking up new skills as and when you need them. So what exactly does a DAW do? ‘Everything’ is the short answer, but broadly speaking, you can break down the functions of a DAW into recording, editing, processing, arranging and mixing categories. When it comes to recording, you have several basic options: use your DAW to trigger software instruments (synthesizers and the like), use pre recorded audio samples, or record real sounds (guitars, vocals etc) as digital audio. You can, of course, mix and match all three methods. Typically, each of your recorded parts gets its own track in a DAW, and these can be edited in all manner of ways.
Whether you want to carry out basic timing or pitch edits, move recordings around or make wild and crazy changes, your software will have you covered. ‘Processing’ is a good catch-all term to describe the many ways in which you can use your DAW to make parts sound different (and hopefully better). Your software’s arranging features, meanwhile, will help you to flesh out your ideas into a complete song. Finally there’s mixing, which involves making all the various parts of your song sit together properly. READ: Prev Page 2 of 7 Next Prev Page 2 of 7 Next. Although computers have been involved in the music production process for decades, it was the invention of software instruments that really shaped the way many of us use them now.
Before these came on the scene, sounds had to be created using additional hardware, but now they can be generated by our PCs and Macs. If you buy a DAW you’ll probably find there are several instruments that come included as standard. You should be able to produce a wide variety of sounds using these alone, but should you decide that you’ve exhausted their potential or that you need something different, you can add more as plug-ins. Plug-in instruments come in various different formats. It’s important to understand, though, that it’s not just synthetic sounds that they can create: you’ll also find plug-in pianos, guitars, drums, strings and much more. As such, although you’ll often hear people talk specifically about ‘soft synths’, this term can be a little misleading.