Starting Out - Advice please!!

[philscott]

Hi everyone,

Looking for some basic tips to help me start out please!!

Have been working with a hard drive multitrack (TASCAM DP01-FX), but recently got a laptop so want to edit the tracks on that and add in some good-sounding drums...

1) What software is best? Tried the demo of MusicMaker but drum effects seemed pretty limited plus you can't edit the .WAV files the multitrack outputs. What about protools?

2) Should I be looking for drum effects in mixing software or separately? Don't really understand all the references to MIDI either - what is this??

Specs of my laptop...

Intel Core i5 460M.
2.53GHz processor speed.
4GB memory.
500GB hard drive.
Dedicated graphics.
nVIDIA GeForce G310M graphics card with 512MB memory.
Secure Digital (SD), Memory Stick (MS), xD, Multi-Media Card (MMC) compatible.
2 USB ports.
1 Ethernet port.
1 HDMI port.
Bluetooth.
E-SATA
Microsoft Windows 7 Premium

Thanks so much everybody!!

Phil

 

[mjbphotos]

For a DAW, try Reaper (for free, $40 if you like) REAPER | Audio Production Without Limits

Do some reading here.

 

[Spare Dougal]

Try this... MixTips

 

[philscott]

thanks for the tips guys - i'll give Reaper a go at the weekend

what about the drum samples? does Reaper have anything decent or will I need separate s/w?

And what does MIDI mean - see it referenced everywhere!

All advice much appreciated - thanks!

 

[Bobbsy]

MIDI = Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It's basically the set down format to control sequencers and samples in a digital world. If you input from a keyboard to trigger samples in your DAW/sequencer, you're sending MIDI commands.