Paid my 80 Euros to upgrade to Live 2.0 a couple of days ago. Awesome new features like different timestretch engines (acoustic guitar tracks actually can be used in Live now), ability to turn those engines off for individual samples, better automatization, etc.

Performance looks to be the same like 1.5 - which means that it still isn't Altivec optimized, and faster on PCs, but the Ableton guys are Mac users themselves and are promising to add this (requiring a bunch of rewrites) for the next upgrade. Anyways, especially with software like Live the performance is nowhere near as important as creativity.

Hi,
I read a post the other day about Logic and does it make sense to buy Logic since they should have the best info on what is coming next on Mac's and how to best use the OS with music.

I am still whatever comes prior to being a newbie as I haven't even bought any soft yet. I have been receiving good advice from various members though.

I was thinking of buying Live and Reason, and then I got to wondering if it made more sense to buy the Logic Big Box bundle, as perhaps a better long term investment.

What do you think?
Is Live plenty good and thus no worries?

Happy to hear any and all comments.


Charlie

Difficult to answer without knowing what kind of music you want to make.

Live + Reason is a great team for electronic music, but I personally do not like Reason's user interface. with live 2.0 it's become easier to sample/record live using punch in/out, but if you want a serious recording/sequencing solution Logic is the way to go. Live is great fun and my favourite piece of software right now, but despite it being easily accessible I believe that you need a certain experience and discipline to use it like a tool and not a toy (but hey, it - like Reason - is a fun toy). so, my advice for seriously exploring the groovy world digital audio would be the Big Box bundle...

filarion,
Thanks so much for your opinion. And I am waiting to hear more.

Is there no such thing as a Logic demo? I did not see one on their site.

Thanx,
cb

mmh. there used to be a "fun" version with very basic functions.. your best bet is to set up a demo at a local dealer though. those guys usually have a clue about the major sequencers and even if it's a 2 hour drive an investment like that should be worth it. emagic here in germany is also doing "demo tours" through music stores across the country holding free seminars and stuff.

Hi Filaron,
A little confusing for me to understand your meaning. Please clarify:
You say that Live and Reason together is great. This is clear.
You say you don't like Reason's interface. Do you have another synth that you prefer?
You say that Logic is the "serious" way to go, which I get.
Then you say that Live requires a "certain experience and discipline". In this regard I thought that this statement would be even more so for Logic, and thus I got a bit confused.

And with the Logic Big Box Bundle, would I still want to get Reason?

Thanks for your help.

cb

I don't like how Reason tries to "emulate" a real rack. Sure, it looks nice, but it's not very effective to work with in my opinion. I prefer clean, nice GUI's like Live and Logic use. I work with a lot of MIDI gear, so no, I don't use a lot of software synths. I like reaktor, absynth and max/msp though (all of those are pretty experimental - not for everyone).

what I meant with Live requiring discipline is - it is a relatively focussed and limited working environment. you're working with samples and only samples. arrangement, finetuning of loops are everything. plus, I could never use it as my only music production tool because of those limitations. Logic has a lot of functions you might not use for a year, but that's no problem since there's so much to learn and discover. logic platinum (the gold bundle probably too) also has a great written tutorial book that comes with it. to put it simply, you don't learn how to make music on computers (in the "classical" sense) with software like Live or Reason, but with soft like PT, Logic or Cubase.

of course, I still don't even know what kind of music you want to make - reason + live will work great for minimal techno for instance, good luck scoring a movie or tracking vocals though.

as for the Big Box Bundle, you'll be busy for a while. The EXS24 is a very musical sampler.

Hi filarion,
Thanks for keeping up with me in more than one thread.

My main work is leading workshops in which I help people to enter into what I sometimes call "everyday trance states" in order to facilitate learning, and a sense of health and well-being. I help people to tune into their experience, and then with the help of some circular space cowboy music, I help them to feel into the movements in their body that they are not usually aware of. Sometimes I suggest "Let the music play you."
I have been using a lot of CD's by artists such as David Parsons, Steve Roach, Steve Roach, Steve Roach <g>, etc.
Lately people have been asking me to record my workshops so that they can buy the CD's of the workshop to listen to and continue to learn from. This creates the problem of creating a legal, ethical, and workable copyright situation.

Sooo, I thought that I would like to try creating some simple "heartbeat rhythms" for people to listen to and move with. Something ambient and circular in nature.
If I was able to accomplish this first step with some reasonable success, then my next thought would be to overlay my voice on to the music tracks, giving suggestions concerning relaxing and becoming more aware.
I was thinking of Live, with Reason, and perhaps an Edirol PCR-50 or a Radium.
Then I got to thinking about whether or not Logic was a better long term buy, even though I got scared off by people saying it was pretty hard to learn.
So, I am in no particular hurry, and wanting to make a good decision.

Any and all input is welcome, and I have been talking to some of you nice folks some in the Just Gettin Started Forum.
I am happy hear any and all opinions.

Regards,
charlie

your work sounds very interesting and I think that you'll be extremely happy with Ableton Live then. my previous suggestion was from a producer's point of view. from an artist's pov I'll heartily suggest Live, especially since you're in a dynamic environment and not only producing by yourself

I'm not really comfortable with suggesting Reason as addition, but it is the easiest way to create new sounds to use in Live without external gear - well, sampling your soundcard's input is even easier if you want to use external gear. For instance, I usually play my Waldorf Pulse basslines into Live - loops really come to life when recorded live in my opinion. extreme vocal manipulation and basic "clean" vocals work in it too.

you can also crossfade between different patterns easily in live, plus, you can put complete songs into your arrangement if you still want to go back to steve roach without interrupting the flow. :>

have you tried the Live 2 demo? there's also some free samplesets at the ableton homepage (check out the david moufang/move d. samples, the guy's a friend of mine).

.martin

OK, so we are getting closer, and perhaps going in the same direction that others have suggested.
To be clear:
1. I want to be able to compose some interesting music, and then have that music on CD and play the CD as part of a workshop. So sort of, "OK, let's begin to relax by listening to some music and loosening up some." and then the music starts.
2. AND, the entire workshop gets recorded and then severely edited as there is always a LOT of wasted space.
So, I do not currently plan on actually "Performing" any music I create on the spot, just popping in various CD's. Paying full attention to the people is already a full time task.
3. And yes there could be times as I do now where I would fade one of MY songs into something by someone else, but again, I would prepare this ahead of time, so as to not get lost in the equipment.
4. I would do prepared CD's that I would sell, where my voice is added to some music tracks to create hypnotic suggestions. But again, not live.
5. I do do a fair amount of hopefully interesting talking while music is playing in my workshops, but this is just getting picked up by a mike that is picking up the entire room.

Sorry, but "Sampling your sound card" is something I do not understand
at all.

Reason seems to be the synth that most people have suggested, and even though you have reservations, this seems to be your suggestion as well yes?
Interesting that you say that Logic is best from a producers point of view, but perhaps Live is best from an artistic point of view. Very interesting difference.

Yes I have tried the Live demo some and it seems pretty accessible. Again, a shame that there isn't any Logic demo. I live in Japan, and I might try to find a place that might have a demo.

Again, thanks for sticking with me.

Regards,
charlie

with "sampling your inputs" I simply meant recording something you play, for instance on guitar or keyboard, directly into Live/Logic so that you have a waveform you can loop and work with.

when working with melodies within Reason you will always input notes and values with the mouse (unless you own an external midi keyboard like the Midiman Oxygen 8), something that may work for dance music (not in my opinion, but that's another topic), but you end up with "quantized" music that doesn't groove/swing/whatever unless you reallyreally know how to construct melodies in a software sequencer or know how to write sheet music.

I'm also a declared enemy of "factory presets" - and Reason comes with 2 CDs of samples and patches other people made. they sound great, but spotting a track made with Reason is pretty easy... I prefer to make my own (even though they may be of worse quality), but that's just me. again though, Reason also lets you do that. for the 450€ it costs you can almost get a used Logic Platinum on ebay here in Germany though...

filarion,
I am definitely planning on buying a midi keyboard, and will most likely go with either a Radium or a Edirol PCR-50.
I understand (I think) how "quanticized" sound is different than the "real" thing. What is the way for someone like me to get around this?

To me at this stage, two CD's of samples sounds great.
And you say for the cost of Reason at 450Euros- The websites I looked at have it for about US$250.

Thanks again,
charlie

First, it simply isn't true that in Reason "you end up with 'quantized' music that doesn't groove" unless, of course, you have all of your input notes snap to the selected beat value--whether input with a mouse or with a keyboard. But that's the same in any sequencer.

A "quantized" MIDI performance is one where the MIDI note-on events have been "snapped" to the nearest "grid line" for whatever note value you have selected in the sequencer to quantize to. E.g., if you have "quantize" (think of it as "snap to grid") on and set to an eighth note, then every MIDI note you enter with a mouse will snap to the nearest eighth note. You can also turn quantize on for recording MIDI, in which case even what you play on a MIDI keyboard will "quantize." You can also quantize selected notes *after* the fact of entry by selecting them and clicking the quantize icon. In Reason (and other sequencers, too), you can set the strength of that after-the-fact quantization on a percentage basis. E.g., if you have the strength set to 50%, Reason will only move the selected notes halfway toward the nearest eighth-note position.

Reason also, though, offers two or three "groove quantize" options in its drop-down where you select the quantizing factor, and also allows the user to create a "groove quantize." Read the manual for more on how to use this more randomizing form of "quantizing."

There are many ways in Reason to avoid "quantized" sounding music. One is, if entering with a mouse, not to have snap on at all. Set a moderate zoom level, and put the notes in at approximately the correct beat. See how it sounds. If it's too far off, select "All," and try quantizing 25% or 50%, or only do that with the most troublsome sections or notes. Another way to avoid quantized parts, obviously, is to just record a part using your MIDI input device--*without* "quantize record" turned on. If you can't play the part at speed, slow the tempo down as much as you need to record it, then put the tempo back up to speed and see how it sounds. Use judicious editing and quantizing as needed to get it how you want it.

Here's another very useful trick for those on a budget: get Band-In-A-Box, select an appropriate "style," generate your song (absolutely ignoring what it sounds like with Quicktime Musical Instruments or any other "built-in" sounds assigned to the part), then export as a standard MIDI file. Import it into Reason, set up four or five NN-XTs with good samples, assign the parts, and listen to an amazingly realistic rhythm section playing your song, ready for yer hot leads and vocals. (Tweaking the parts is recommended, but BIAB has many recent "styles" created by real musicians playing real MIDI-enabled instruments, and now can produce very realistic parts for many instruments with a great variety of groove and velocity variety.) This will, at the very least, give you a "groove" for various of the parts, which you can then edit to make into your own very personalized song.

In Reason, you are *not* locked into the Robots-On-Speed hyperquantized '80s beat-box electronic diarrhea so popular with those who can't make actual music--but which fad thankfully appears to be headed toward its inevitable and welcome demise. Reason certainly doesn't have the best and most flexible sequencer around, but with a little reading of the manual, a little experimentation, and a little patience, you can get completely convincing sequenced parts that can utterly fool seasoned producers into believing that a popular studio band laid down the tracks.

And that last statement is something I can *personally* guarantee you.

thanks for contrapuncting me Levon River, I almost felt bad for dissing Reason as much as I did. I did mention that you can get great results out of Reason however, I was just having a hard time balancing personal opinion and objective suggestions.

charlie, the Reason you saw on sale is most likely version 1. version 2, which was released earlier this year, has aforementioned 2nd sample CD with orchestral samples, a new synthesizer, a new sampler (the NN-XT Levon mentioned) and other new features that improve a lot on the older version. However, I think that a good deal on Reason 1 will probably be your best choice to check it out. Upgrading to v2 is probably cheap. Check www.propellerheads.se for more infos.

I'll stop commenting on the quantize-issue though. just not my way of working (took me 2 years to work myself up to almost never using quantization on the mpc)

You did, in fact, make a point of mentioning that it's possible to get great results out of Reason--which I sort of glossed over on my first reading and I got into a typing frenzy.

Charlieb got a lot to chew on, in any case.

Thanks to Levon for a great detailed post, and thanks to filarion also!
You folks have given me so much useful info.

filarion- Reason 2 is $279 on a couple of US websites. Just so you know.

Seems to me that I will wind up getting
Live 2; Reason 2; either a Radium or a Edirol PCR-50; and maybe Band in a Box as well.
From what I feel like I have been told, this will do me better than jumping into Logic.

Now, I am just going to wait and see if Apple comes out with any new PB models in Jan. If not, I will jump pretty soon!

Thanks so much for everyones time and energy.
It is greatly appreciated.

Charlie

Charlie,

I don't know if you would qualify for the educational discounts or not with the workshops you lead, but I just ordered both Live 1.5 with the free update to 2.0 and Reason 2 for a grand total of $348.70 with free shipping from mtlc.com (reason 199 Live 149.70) Screaming deal!

Levon,

I'd love to hear this NN-XT drum kit I've been hearing about. Do you have a tune we could down load?

peace

Wonx

Wow, sounds quite interesting.
Is mtlc.com short for a complete name of a site?
When I tried mtlc.com I got a site that does leasing of equipment.

wow, at $199 Reason 2's definitely worth every cent. I'm almost tempted get my own copy - re-drum rewired to Live is a very funky combination.

as comparison, I just looked at purchasing the new Spectrasonic's virtual instruments (Atmosphere and Stylus) for one or two seats at our University's media lab but at 400 respectively 300 bucks this is definitely too much for a simple AU/VSTi, Spectrasonics-quality samples or not.

I'd love to advise on either of those midi keyboards, but I really don't know them. At first glance I like the Edirol better though.

(5 minutes later)

wow, is the PCR-30 identical to the PCR-50 apart from the number of keys? sounds like something I might pick up soon. sweet features. any opinions on Edirol in general? Never owned any of their gear.

My bad! www.mtlc.net It stands for Music Technology Learning Center. Click on the academic additions to get the academic prices. I teach English at a college in Mexico and just sent them my College ID card and that qualified me. Hope it works for you!

-W

Thanx Wonx,
I am going to give the address a try.

charlie

That will enable you to do a hell of a lot, but I do want to give you a couple of caveats:

1. If and when you do decide to add a more full-featured sequencer than Reason's, one possible bright spot on the horizon, especially for home/project studios, is Metro for OS X, which is already shipping as an upgrade to registered users of the OS 9.x versions. From their sketchy web site information it looks like that upgrade period will be over sometime in January and hopefully the program will be officially released to the public then. It seems to promise a lot of the power of the giants looming over it, at least under OS X, and it traditionally--in 9.x--had a lower price point. When Metro was a MIDI-only sequencing program, it was excellent at what it did--though it did take a different approach to some things than other similar programs. (I'm not saying it was worse or inadequate at all, just different.) Anyway, I'd keep an eye on it if I were you as a possible, because it also supports 64 tracks of audio now (with advertised support for audio units, VST, etc. under OS X) in addition to its very flexible and powerful MIDI sequencing/editing capabilities...

2. BIAB "works" as a Classic application under OS X--sort of. It has *severe* timing issues in playback, though, with QuickTime 5.x or greater if you're running it from OS X. Their brilliant "solutions": either boot into OS 9.x to use it, or DOWNGRADE to QuickTime 4.x. (Riiiiiiiiiiighhhhhht.) Hopefully they'll get around to fixing this, but they have always been so PeeCee oriented that you never know when they're going to get back around to dusting off whatever Mac they use for development. You can plan yourself some sessions, though, boot into 9.x, run it and create a little batch of .mid files, then go back into OS X and munge them there. If you do decide to get it, I highly recommend that you look over their add-on packages of "styles" and "soloists," find a few that seem to have the kinds of music that you would use most, and get those to augment the ones that come standard with the program. (Yeah, they, too, sell razors in order to sell razor blades. Who doesn't?) Also, while the developers bray on and on about how easy it is, the program is about as intuitive to manage as bra hooks in the back seat on a cold and moonless night: you might end up needing a little help.

wonx, there's no one drum kit I've been using in the NN-XT(s) for the various projects I've been experimenting with in Reason; in some cases I've had several NN-XTs set up for different kicks, snares, toms, cymbals, etc.--depending on the tune. I generally use the NN-XT because I mostly like to use drum patches that have multiple velocity layers, and I can adjust the velocity switching and even assign velocity randomizing or cross-fading in the NN-XT. In only one case, I think, did I use a pre-fabbed kit (one of the Wizoo Platinum sets, IIRC--I can check), but even then I duplicated that track/NN-XT and edited the copy for just the kick, so I could separately EQ the kick, since it was muddying up the mix a bit and fighting with the frequencies of a stand-up bass patch.

As for a tune you could download, unfortunately the projects I've been doing with this have been OPMs (Other People's Music ), and I don't have any okay to circulate it. I'm happy to load one, though, erase the song information, and use the same loaded patches to create a short little sample song you could listen to. (Maybe I'll use BIAB to just generate a tune from scratch, load whatever that turns out to be into Reason, and let 'er rip. ) I don't know where I'd put it so you could download it, but I'll see what I can conjure up as soon as I can carve out a little time here in the hectic holidays. Stay "tuned"...

Levon- That would be swell if you could throwsomething together. I'd love to hear a kit that can fool the pros. The possibility of developing an almost-human drummer I can put at my fingertips and tweek with the subtlest turn of a knob sounds dreamy.

After several months of playing with the Reason demo Santa took pitty on me a brought me the full version. Not only that but I was such a good boy that he stuffed a oxy 8, Live 2.0 and and a Duo in my stocking as well. Looking forward to scrapping my proprietary gear and finaly graduating completely to the Mac

Happy Trails

-wonx

YO!
What a great thread. I'm looking at both Reason 2 and Live 2, but have a couple questions. I love playing with samples, but I'm mostly going to be recording live guitar and vocals too. Would these two programs be compatable with Pro Tools? I've been playing with Shareware live, could I import one of those creations to Pro Tools as just one track or something? And what exactly does reason do, can I think of it as just a program with many rack effects? It doesn't do vocals or live recording does it? Would just Live and Protools let me do some live recording, some good backup beats, and some techno stuff?