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[skilletaudio]

[PROPOSAL] ILoveBees Music Competition

[tsioc]

sounds fun... if I have the time I'll write something.

[Dragonrider]

Awesome idea, man. I kind of suck, but I'll see if I can add something mildly cool.

[Ranger D]

primer/info links

[skilletaudio]

Glad to hear your interest! Feel free to post questions. I've already recieved one submission so far, so here we go:)

[Halrandir]

Re: primer/info links

[daboking]

I would love to participate as well, but seeing as I have three jobs and little spare time.

I will have to see if I can at least throw something together.

[skilletaudio]

Okay, a quick primer/ list of links is coming soon. I wanted to get to it today, but I've had a bit of a situation come up in my family that is gonna suck a little time, but I am gonna get one together for yall.

[vector]

My first question would be what is a good free software that we can use. I Acid Xpress 3.0 good or is there another one out there?

[DreamOfTheRood]

Here's some pointers:

1) Obtain a copy of FruityLoops, AcidPro or some other music-creation and sample-manipulation program. GarageBand is becoming a popular one, but I've never used it before.

2) If you want you can use the samples that come with that program, but I'm much more a fan of downloading other samples or creating my own.

http://www.waveform.dk/showcat.php?cat=drums&catID=1&offset=0
http://www.samplenet.co.uk/
http://www.bluedistortion.com/samples.php

3) Download and copy some of the ILB waves. Cut up whatever samples you want and put it into your music program.

[skilletaudio]

Quick Music Making Primer

Okay, here's a little bit of info to help those who are interested, but a bit uninitiated, try their hand at some of this. Let me know how these links work out for you, if they are broken, or if the things they link to suck too much, and I'll see what else I can do.

Things you will need for music production:
At the LEAST, you will need an audio editor. This is the program where you play back your music or sound files, edit them, chop them up, apply effects, do your audio engineering work. Here is a link that looks promising, let me know if anyone likes some of these supposedly freeware editors:
http://www.nonags.com/nonags/auedit.html

The best editors are, of course, not free. But some come with feature-limited or time-limited trials:
Adobe Audition(Formerly Cool Edit) - http://www.adobe.com/products/audition/main.html

Sound Forge(Formerly of Sonic Foundry) - http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/download/step1.asp?CatID=1

Goldwave editor: http://www.goldwave.com/


Now, if you are just interested in playing guitar, or other live instruments, ,and just adding in some sound effects, an editor alone will suit you fine. Of course, you will have to get the recording into your computer somehow, either by recording on your computer as you play, or transferring the recording at a later time.

But, if you want to go the more digital route, and actually compose your music on the computer, then you've got other things to think about.
Do you have a musical background, and want to compose using staff notation, and whatnot? Cakewalk( http://www.cakewalk.com/) is probably your man. However, many of your staff-notation programs pretty much only output MIDI files. If you arent familiar with MIDI and really want to know, let me know and I'll dig up some resources. For now, I'll just say that MIDI is a limited, but universal format. In its simplest form, its what you hear playing when a website embeds a song into the front page.
If you compose a MIDI song, you'll probably want to do some work in the audio editor, especially to add in your special effects(ILB sounds, etc) because in basic MIDI, you only have a certain amount of instruments to choose from and nothing else.

Doesnt sound too good to you? A very popular way of making music involves soft synths, or software synthesizers. Usually, these programs, at their simplest level, are a sort of recreation of a Beat-In-A-Box drum kit, with the ability to add in other instruments(what kind of instruments? Depends on the program you choose, really) as well as raw sound files for use as effects, or as musical instruments. Sound files that would be used in this way are referred to as samples, ie samples of a musical instrument.
A very popular software of this type is Reason(http://www.propellerheads.se/). Another is FruityLoops(http://www.fruityloops.com/).

If you're still reading this, then maybe you're interested in the old school flava!
Trackers come all the way from the Amiga days, but there are newer, better trackers and I've had immense luck using them to create very sophisticated music.
A tracker is a programs that relies entirely upon you to insert every single sample that you will need into your song. Then, you work in a sort of spreadsheet, ,indicating which sample will play, at which time, at what note. The way this works is similar to a player piano – the notes scroll by vertically, and as they pass, they play.
Perhaps the most straightforward tracker of today is ModPlug Tracker (http://www.modplug.com/index.php3) which works in exactly the way I described. Other latter day trackers are mort experimental, as in Buzz Tracker, where it treats your music more like a soft synth. Each instrument, or machine, is programmed and connected in neat ways. You can find info on this one, and machines for download, here.(http://www.buzzmachines.com/)

Now, it goes without saying. If your going to track, you're going to need samples. Well, its a big world of samples out there, do a little research. I wont kill anyone for using copyrighted samples, after all , this is just a fun little compo. But, if you need a kickstart for finding samples, you can try these spots:

www.analogesamples.com

http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Music/Recording/Sampling/Samples_and_Loops/

Be sure to ask for more info if you need it, but also be creative in trying to figure out the answers to problems that arise when learning these tools.The best way to learn is through trial and error![/b]

[daboking]

if you are not running XP, then you can download a legit, fully working version of pro-tooks. I am not sure exactly where to find it (I run it on a mac so no need to go fishing), but try:
www.digidesign.com

[vector]

If anyone is looking for a direction to take your song, i was thinking about when this is all done it would ge cool get put all of the audio on one cd. but to get the feeling of ILB right there has to be something between each weeks audio to seporate them from eachother and to denote the passing of a weeks time. so what would be great would be to have enough songs by beekeepers to put at least one song between each weeks audio, and probably one at the begining and one at the end. anyway thats just an idea i had.

[Nightmare Tony]

Countme in here. For Protools, its the Digidesign website, its called Protools Free. It supports 48 midi channela dna only 8 audio, but doesnt support the DIGI I/O or other renderfarms. It will work on Win98 but not XP.

Since changing soundcards killed my mdidi, went for Anvil Studio for note entering. An interesting program, me likes the simple musical staffs...

[skilletaudio]

Great, glad to here all the interest and suggestions. Of course, everyone is welcome to be inspired in whatever way they like, but if they envision a certain "plan" for their song to fit in some way with the stories or whatnot, just let me know on submission, and I'll make sure your "note" for the song is posted along with the song itself.