So I accidentally picked up a used Toraiz SP-16 and holy shit I love this thing.

The default samples are a little cheeseball and I'm already finding them limiting. My intent is to eventually create my own samples in Ableton with softsynths and then transfer them to the Toraiz to arrange, but in the meantime I'd love to have something that sounds a little better to play with.

To be clear I'm less interest in full clips with a preset melody and bunch of processing, more interested in good synth notes, drones, drum samples, vocal samples, SFX. stuff that I can chop up and arrange myself.

Someone also mentioned in a video that you can sort of emulate a synthesizer using this sampler if you drop in a Square/Saw/Sine/Noise or more complex wave sample and use the envelope generator and effects to process it. Is there a good place to get a selection of varied basic wave samples so I can try this? Sounded really interresting.

So I just bought these studio monitors the other day and have been having an issue that will happen on and off. When I try playing low frequencies through the speakers at a volume I like there is a dampening buzzing that happens. I am using balanced cables and it only happens sometimes. Does anyone know how to fix this?

I'm curious if there is an interface—if not a vocal-effects pedal—hat is anything close to having a dedicated limiter (to keep the clipping of live vocals under control)... or if that's something that is meant really for the rack and/or an expensive mixing board. Would also be amazing if it such a thing is around $250

EDIT: Clarity

I’ve personally never understood why some people hate Splice so much. It does have a lot of mediocre samples but I find it’s pretty easy to find ones that I can make sound better with some mixing and EQ. I’ve always been under the impression it’s not about the sample, but what you do with it and thus don’t understand all the sample hate.

Where do people get drum samples if they have no kit?

I am looking for a vst / sample library with ethnic vocals similar to the ones in Dune soundtracks https://youtu.be/BdtiYwSP9ko?si=mPsnkhUeY6Oiuumw&t=285

Strong and tense ethnic vocals basically. Any suggestion?

So, I've been dabbling in music and occasionally creating short films and animations for a while now. Whenever someone listens to my music, I tend to receive the same comments: "Why aren't you more popular?" or "You should have a million subscribers!" It's starting to frustrate me because it feels like people get excited about my music, but then they seem disappointed when they see my modest number of plays and followers.

These comments make me cringe because every time I think about sharing my work, I start questioning why I'm bothering with social media at all. Who am I trying to please? I simply enjoy making and sharing my music, but now I find myself worrying about the few likes and plays I receive. It's led to self-doubt and a fear of posting because I'm afraid of being seen as a failed artist.

These thoughts have become so intrusive that I rarely post anything nowadays. I'm constantly plagued by anxiety-inducing thoughts like, "I invested so much time and effort into this just so people see me fail with 10 likes and focus their comments on THAT fact instead of the content I post"

Does anyone else experience this anxiety before posting something? I never used to until people started making these comments about my music. It feels like social media has made us hesitant to experiment and be open in our art. Many artists resort to making memes of themselves to avoid being taken too seriously and risking being labeled as "cringey" if they don't receive enough likes. Or maybe that's just me. IDK.

Just to clarify, the music I create has a very niche appeal with a lot of 90's vibes, so I understand that my audience is probably millennials and Gen X. I'm not aiming to be a "hip" artist for the new generation, and I'm completely fine with that. So I think the people who come across my music might not get that fact and that's why they send me comments like those in the title...

I'm just venting now, I have ADHD (who doesn't?) so this post might seem very confusing and have no point to most of you... but I hope someone out there can relate to my frustration(s).

EDIT: Thanks to some of you, I've actually come to the conclusion that I'm the main source of my frustrations because people comment on my music with something related to self-promotion, and I'm really bad at self-promotion, which kind of frustrates me. I'm one of those guys who just likes making music and doesn't care about self-promotion, but at the same time, I'm frustrated by that fact.
As someone pointed out, I should be lucky because people comment on my music. And I am, very much.

I love Redditors. Thank you all.

I currently have a 2015 macbook pro. Really good specs, but the battery almost blew up from just general use so know I have to find a replacement. My dad is willing to give me his really nicely spec'd out macbook pro with an M1 max chip, 32 gigs of ram and 1 terabyte of storage. He also gave me the option of buying a mid range macbook pro with an m3 chip. Either a m3 pro with 18 gigs of ram and 1 terabyte of storage, or a regular m3 chip with24 gigs of ram and also 1 terabyte of storage. I mainly make music and use things like logic pro that are pretty cpu heavy, and I don't know if its better to have the latest model with really decent specs, which will last me longer, or a beefed up computer from 2020.

Name some synths vintage and new that have great character and even some of their presets sounds good.

I know this is subjective but tell me your opinion

I'm a begginer slowly getting the hang of the program so i'm trying to learn as much little techniques and tricks as i can. I have really wanted to be able to get a vinyl mixing effect. For the record i use ableton. I'm talking bout a smooth but rapid glide between parts of a sample or at least just the pitch, for example like brent faiyaz has on forever yours. I would really appreciate some help.

Short story is I have way more samples and VST's than will realistically fit onto the internal drive of my M2 Max. I have a 4TB external NVME drive that I could use for music production purposes but I'm unsure of a few things:

1. Is it possible to put all of your sounds onto an external drive?
2. Considering it's a very fast NVME attached through a thunderbolt 4 port, will I see any noticeable limitations in performance when making music?
3. Is there an efficient way to move everything to the external drive once it's already been installed on the internal drive? Or would I be better off just wiping everything out and reinstalling directly to the external drive?
4. Are there disadvantages to working from an external drive that I hadn't considered?

I currently work in Logic. My controller is a NI Kontrol S49 (the newest one). I've got Komplete Standard, Arturia _V collection, a bunch of stuff from UVI and a smattering of samples.

Thanks!!!

A pretty noob question, but here I am asking it over 2years into my production journey..

I struggle to fit new sounds into my half finished tracks. I normally start with drums and bass, lay out a few one shots or vocals here and there (obviously this part is easy since it's like an empty canvas and everything goes), but when it comes to finding pads or leads or even some fx, I am lost.
I can identify which frequency spectrum they need to occupy to not clash with anything else and what key to be in, but most of the things I try playing feel like they don't belong in my track, they feel like from some other universe entirely.

This is probably me just depending on presets too much, since some of them can come from wildly different genres. I do find the sounds that are like 80% there eventually and tweak them, but it takes absolutely ages. I can sometimes sit down for 2 hours and not make any progress because anything new I'm introducing sounds like it doesn't belong.

So please give me some advice on what I should focus to be able to find matching sounds quicker - would it be focusing on sound design from scratch? Is there some reverb or compression secrets I don't know that help the sounds fuse better?

So, I want to experiment with doing some tracks with some friends providing vocals. I have access to a decent recording studio to get said vocals, but there's just one problem; I own a Chromebook, not a Windows laptop.

Are there any DAWs that comfortably run on ChromeOS?

Is it possible to make some kind of serum-like sound with default VSTs/plugins?

I’m finding it hard to do so, why is that?

Do I have to spend money to have really nice sounds?

So, I mainly produce electro pop, Pop, synthpop, synthwave. But I really love dubstep and for a long time I wanted to produce one of my own dubstep track. I have never tried to make dubstep ever so this is my first time.
But Im having some problem in it, so If you guys can help me in what should I add/remove in this track then I will be so thankful. I havent finished with the track, it is still in its production state.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0p4haqes5duyhv2vzpap4/dub-2.mp3?rlkey=u2bi2lnsggk9fyfml54qwldye&dl=0

I use ableton 11 suite, and my main synth is Spire.

In metalcore you can often hear riffs like 000-pause-000-pause-000 etc. Attack Attack is the most popular example, such a riff starts here from 0:07: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDzt6yI3Dw8.

In my mixes I sometimes do this thing also, here starting from 3:10 is the similar thing in my mix: https://youtu.be/CbMXBzYhNBk?si=unLnNzYC8H65ibie&t=189

I have a feeling (I don't know is it true or not) that these gaps in my mix sounds too empty, like I jump from sound to total silence and back. How can I avoid this besides using some synth pads?

I’ve been ‘learning’ music production for about 7-8(?) years, although the first few years I was pretty young and didn’t put a lot of effort into actually improving

I’m now making music that I’m pretty proud of, it’s my biggest hobby by far and I can’t quantify what I’ve gained from it all. More recently friends have heard what I’ve been making/ know that I make music and approached me asking me to teach them music production. I’m happy to hop on calls etc and walk them through sections but I don’t think anyone realised how much you need to know for some things.

For reference the last friend to wanted to learn didn’t know what an eq was and honestly I don’t think many people outside of audio handling would either.

How can I let people get a realistic image of expected progress without demotivating them to continue? I’ve had plenty of friends ‘give up’ after not long as it’s so much more than they thought

Sorry not sure if this is the right sub to ask, but any chance someone would be able to ID the keyboard in the TikTok? It’s in the thumbnail itself if that helps.

Thanks!

https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSFbDtkye/

Hey, looking for an audio interface to record some vocals in my car. My process is to bounce my track, then throw it on my iPad, drive far far away, record some “vocals” to finally drive home fast and add some destructive plugins to make it all sound ok.

I already have an Apollo Twin X Quad that works great with my sm7b. But can’t bring that interface into my car without making that process annoying.

So, looking at an audio interface that is powered by USB-C to make this process easypeasy.

I’ve found the Audient iD4, or the EVO 4. They both have a mic db gain of 58. Also found the Apogee Boom but not interested in that dsp.

Any suggestions?

I’d rather buy something expensive that works great.

I have zero experience making music but I've wanted to for a while. I got a trial for logic pro and want to start making ambient music. What are some tips and advice on how to??

Hey all,

I posted a comment earlier today explaining that I’m currently learning theory (using the Open Music Theory textbook) as well as the wealth of knowledge in music production YouTube. This is a pretty recent endeavour for me (though I have prior experience with instruments and some theory, it’s been several year since I was involved with music in any capacity and nothing to this depth).

I’m someone who enjoys structured learning (but can’t afford tutorship in these fields). However when it comes to trying to create my own curriculum I’m not entirely sure when I should really start putting more DAW practice into my schedule. Every time I’ve tried to go in, after learning some simple scales or some simple chords I feel like I’ve struggled to actually make anything good, let alone anything more than a few seconds long. I don’t necessarily think I’m lacking creativity, so much as I think I’m still lacking a solid framework to base any kind of creativity around.

To that end I’d like to pose the question that this topic gets its title from. How would you go about structuring the two so that they tie together? How much theory should I learn before I start to put that theory into practice? I’m not necessarily looking for someone to tell me what to do or how to do things here as much as I am looking for opinions so I can get ideas on how others, who might have been through this journey, have handled these issues and come up with a solution that works for me.

Thanks for your time!

Hi everyone! I am looking to start building out a little recording set up in my bedroom! I currently have about 2 years of experience making music (recording and mixing vocals over beats) and have decided to start a basic setup at my house so I can practice more without needing to be at my friends place.

For right now I think I just need a decent audio interface and a decent mic to record my own vocals and mix it.

I was wondering if you had any recommendations for a budget of around $150-200? Up to $300 is okay if a $200 budget it too little but I’d rather stay around $200

Thanks!

Hi, I really love music and would like to have a hand on music making and production but I have no financial ability to purchase any app nor do I have any knowledge on how to get started and have checked out videos but it starts with people already having the software to create music.

The type of music I would like to try is like k-rnb, y2k, lofi, and plugging genres - these are the ones I found out that I enjoy a lot.

Some examples of such songs are by artistes like:

• NewJeans
• illit
• bad !dea

I’m open to any advice and anything and am willing to learn if anyone’s willing to help!

Thank you in advance! 🥹

I'm lookimg for good church organ plugins and what sounded the "best."

Thanks!

I'm interested in the concept of using singles to promote big releases before they drop. However-- and maybe this is just a me thing, but: the concept of having a ton of singles, with duplicate material from my albums, lingering up on my spotify page for years after their promotional use is over, just cluttering up the discography... it bothers me.

I've seen some artists post singles and then remove them once the full album is out... but I'm assuming that process removes them from playlists.

Any thoughts on this? Apologies if it's a dumb or irrelevant question.

I would like to know a few softwares that I can explore to learn more about how I want to sound

My songs tend to have a lot of mids and any time I try to intentionally add something to occupy the highs it never works

Synths, guitars, pianos, nothing works. Am I just doing it all wrong?

Please any advice you can give id appreciate

I'm on a 2013 mac and mostly ableton functions well but the more tracks i add the more it lags and loading time gets longer, not to mention 90 gb of my disk space is taken by undeletable system software. What mac do you guys recommend i buy that will not cause me lag issues so that i can make music smoothly for hours with lots of tracks?

Hey all! I think the time is coming for me to upgrade from my 2015 MacBook Pro. Retina 15 inch. 2.8 GHz i7. 16 GB DDR3 RAM. 1 TB.

Here is some of my DAW/gear: Logic Pro X, Ableton Live 10 Suite, Waves, Final Cut Pro, Push 2 apogee ensemble silver (firewire to thunderbolt adapter), UA Solo 610, Bass Station 2, Launchkey Mini MK3,

I am looking for something used/refurbished/older. I’ve heard good things about the 2020 MacBook Air and Pro M1.

Ideally I want something that can be my reliable compatible workhorse for the next 5 years minimum. Looking for something in the $500-$1000 range. I’d love to have some mastering software potentially too.

Any leads, questions, ideas or suggestions?

Thanks all.

https://youtu.be/rUflIVuPROo?si=iGlAJOEh4IzzOMd4

I love listening to this type of music, and would want to do some research on how to make it, but I have no clue what this type of music would be called.