Music programs

[Submeg]

Hey all,

As you know I am finally getting into DJing. The reason why I hadn't earlier was because all my music is on CD, so I didn't feel like it was fair that I had to fork out another $40 AUD for a record of a CD I already own!!

I have now found out about a product from Serato (http://www.serato.com/) called ScratchLIVE! (http://www.scratchlive.net/) It is excellent as it allows you to use your MP3 on turntables...so all scratching and juggling effects are the same as if you were using vinyl!! So awesome :shades:

So, what I need now is a decent music program.

What I need it for is to be able to:
1) Record songs (in wav) that are currently being played on my speakers. i.e. If I am playing a song on my comp, then it will record that
2) Cut and modify the samples

I have WaveStudio, but it was for my Creative soundcard and won't work with my laptop. All it needs is to be a very basic program....it seems that basic programs have the most strength, like paint!! go paint :)

[Harrison]

I recommend the completely free audio editing application Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/). It should be able to do everything you need. It is great for a free product.

[Submeg]

YOU LEGEND!!!!!! I shall send you a case of beer for that one! Exactly what I need!!! :thumbs::thumbs::thumbs::thumbs::thumbs:

I just had an idea...is it possible to lift the lyrics track from a song using that program? So I can use either the lyrics or beat underneath?

Also: looking for a program that can convert .m4a tracks to mp3...I can't be bothered re-ripping my 5000+ songs off my cds again...

[Harrison]

.m4a isn't a common format but doing a quick google "m4a to mp3" revealed this free converter (http://www.download.com/3000-2140_4-10682827.html). Also just to check, none of you .m4a files are from iTunes are they? If they are then they will be copy protected and cannot be converted. But you can convert them using iOpener (http://www.beatmixed.com/2004/09/07/iopener/) to remove the copy protection and then convert them.

As for extracting lyrics from a track, I'm not sure of any software that can do that.

[Submeg]

Well I did find another program AltoMP3Gold which can convert them. Yes they are from iTunes, but I made sure when I imported them I set them without copy protection.

I did find AltoMP3Gold, but that needs to be bought...it only allows 5 conversions....but it did convert my iTunes made m4a files. I made sure that I didnt put the copy protection on them (pretty sure you can select it when you set up iTunes...also I have bought all my music on CD, not downloaded from iStore or whatever it is called)

[Harrison]

You have been able to purchase unprotected tracks from iTunes for a few months now. There is a new attack against Apple though because it has now come to light that when downloading unprotected tracks from iTunes, Apple embed your name and email address in each file so they can track the origin of any files found on p2p networks. (Just to warn you to look out for that).

[J T]

For music conversion, I've always been a big fan of DB Poweramp (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/).

I had a friend that was quite into making music on the computer and he used to talk about 'CuBase' and 'Fruity Loops' a lot. I know pretty much nothing about them but if you look into them maybe they could be of interest to you???

[Harrison]

Fruity Loops is a loop based sample sequencer. It builds on the idea originally invented by a different program years ago that can take looped samples and example the beats to time stretch and resync the rhythm of the sample into the current composition so they fit perfectly into a music sequence alongside other samples, allowing you to build up multi-track compositions. It is a great program and comes with a load of samples to get you started, but it is expensive (legally that is! ;)).

Cubase on the other hand is a midi sequencer and has been used for a couple of decades now, originally released on the Atari ST and later the Amiga and Mac, it is still used extensively for multi track midi composing, controlling midi connected instruments and music hardware. I've used it in the past at University but as I'm not musically minded it was more just a passing interest that something I would personally use again as I cannot read music or play any instruments.

[Stephen Coates]

I used CuBase at school a few years ago on an iMac (The joy of not having to log on to the network and loading software locally from the hard disk!).

We used it with some USB midi interface which was conected the the Casio keyboards. I think we only used it for one lesson though.

You could play some music on the keyboard and then edit it. Quite interesting when you are only used to recording stuff into the keyboards built in memory and playing it back exactly as it was recorded.

[Harrison]

I've always found midi an interesting technology, and the fact you are actual just using the computer to compose and and control the midi connected audio equipment can be a very powerful combination.

In my university they had a load of audio facilities with racks of midi equipment to create some amazing music.

[Submeg]

midi equipment is cool, but you can get a program called Reason (http://www.propellerheads.se/) which does all that for you! You dont even need the equipment, but it sounds exactly the same! It is an excellent program, but alas $1000 AUD to buy :P I think I'll get some turntables first!

About the unprotected tracks: I won't be downloading/uploading my music onto p2p networks anyway...so I wont be worrying about that.

Fruity Loops I have heard before, but the program Harrison mentioned first was perfect! It is capable do doing all that stuff as well! It's excellent!

Cheers for the help people!

[Harrison]

I've heard of reason. There are many other programs similar to that that utilise the abilities of the sound card in the computer rather than requiring external midi devices. Some even emulate some of the best hardware from companies such as Roland and Yamaha such as drum machines and sequencing units so are great for a small studio without much room, or anyone on a tight budget.

But saying that, you still wouldn't be able to quite achieve the same quality or results as dedicated hardware.

As for programs like fruity loops, even for non-musicians like myself they are great fun to play around with. The best of this type has to be Adobe Audition 2. This used to come bundled with the Adobe production bundle, but with the latest CS3 studio release Adobe have dropped in in favour of a new package called Adobe Soundbooth with doesn't contain the power of scope of Audition, but is instead tailors for production designers who want to be able to easily clean up audio and combine sound tracks with music and other tracks in sequence with video and other visual sources. For this it is very good.

If you are interested in trying out any of this software give me a PM.

[Submeg]

So what was Audition 2 like? What were its uses?

[Harrison]

Audition is a professional audio production application that is designed for sound designers, recording and mastering engineers and musicians to use.

It contains a lot of features including multitrack mixing, as well as music loop editing with thousands of included loops ready to use. It also supports batch processing and scripting along with audio burning, extraction, and conversion. Out of all the music applications I've used over the years it is the most complex and contains pretty much everything audio based you could think of except for midi sequencing.

I had a look and it seems that Adobe will be continuing the development of Audition as a standalone product alongside Soundbooth. The official Audition site (http://www.adobe.com/products/audition/) gives a lot of details about audition if you want to see what it can really do and there is a comparison (http://www.adobe.com/products/soundbooth/compare/) of Audition against Soundbooth if you want to see what the differences are. Looking at the comparision it is easy to see why Adobe changed to Soundbooth for their production bundles that is aimed at video and flash developers who don't have a background in audio. Audition has also been renamed from Audition CS2 to Audition 2, showing it is now a standalone product instead of integrated into the rest of the Adobe CS suite.

[Submeg]

Ah, cheers for that. seems I will hold off on that for a while...Reason is complicated enough :S