MOTUnation.com

Just wondering what types of music people here were into making with DP. I like and try to get better at producing electronic (dubstep/idm/breakcore/dnb/etc.) music but come from a more traditional indie rock band-ish background and have found DP most versatile for that type of stuff thus far (recording guitar/bass/vocals to programmed drums and or synths/etc.).

I do all sorts of things, anything that doesn't make money that is

Progrock, orchestral composition, currently finishing a piano/vocal album, recorded a few folk artists. It's pathetic, I've never made a dime off music production (except for a few CD sales), yet I'm probably better at it than my professional job, where I'm a video producer. I'd love to quit and do audio production full time. But I'm no good at digging up work.

I'm working on a new project where I will use backtracks done in DP. Its a mix of dark rock, orchestral stuff, eastern european ompa and tango. I call it Requiem Rock. Or Doomsday Tango. Whatever

I use EWQL Symphonic Orchestra and Gypsy a lot for the backing tracks that will be augmented by live drums, guitar, vocals and possibly accordeon and violin. Depending a bit on what musicians I find.

So far so good. DP is working great. But I'm still trying to figure out the fastest way to go from the compositions to pure audiofiles for the backtracks. First show is May 14th, so it's getting closer

Doumentaries; pop, folk, rock, jazz CDs; narration; If it makes a sound in my studio, DP records it!

Whatever moves me - pop, rock, R&B-ish gospelesque stuff, experimental things.

You will find everything from full blown concert classical orchestra & choirs, to sound design for experimental film, animation, silent film, forensics research, heavy metal, bluegrass, jazz, and at every possible level imaginable.

The answer you seek is: everything. People here pretty much do everything in terms of sound creation, manipulation, and production in DP. From the very provincial to the grand international, super glitz of H'wood and TV to hole in the wall theater productions, porn, and just plain old personal gratification (I didn't mean to connect those last two items... mia culpa).





Ah... DP... is there anything you can't do?



WHERE'S THE MEAT?



Right! Allen! Allen! Al! Allen!...

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:

Ah... DP... is there anything you can't do?

Mark Of The Unicornucopia

Virtually anything that comes through the door. This is how I make my living, so nothing gets turned away. But to tell you the truth, I love recording and I haven't had any jobs that I truly hated - a few artists that ticked me off perhaps, but I've always enjoyed the music.

Phil

OK, so follow me here... now THIS is a question I'd like to know the answer to..

Did you know that the first time I came to the site, I read it wrong in my head as, "Unicoronation"? Does anybody care?

That said, I believe the original post was simply interested in the musical directions of the 'nation community, not in what the program can do.

Prime Mover wrote:That said, I believe the original post was simply interested in the musical directions of the 'nation community, not in what the program can do.

correctamundo! i know the program doesn't care what genre you're into. i've just noticed people in the more straight up electronic/dancey genre's seem to almost ever use dp but rather graviate towards logic/ableton live/cubase/reaper/renoise/fruity loops/reason, and wondered why as dp seemed fine for electronic production to me. so i was wondering amongst the posters here what type of stuff most people did.

dp was the only one who's layout ever really made sense to me and i fell in love with the drum editor the first time i used it and have never found a nicer way to program drums in any other program yet (been using dp since 2.7).

The obvious reasons? Price, Demographic, and Bundling.

Frooty Loops, Reason, Live, and the like are all less expensive, come bundled with tons of presets, aren't quite as complicated, and have a lot of functions designed to get off the ground quickly. They come loaded with drum patterns, arpegiators and sequencers so young, inexperienced techno people can throw a few things together quickly without having to understand a lot of music composition techniques.

Not sure why Cubase and Logic have more appeal. They're traditional DAWs with relatively similar functionality to DP. Probably marketing and price. Logic has a few different levels, including a Logic "lite" to young people with not a lot of money started. Cubase has this as well. I think that's a big part of it.

I've always wondered why MOTU has never created a DP lite. I don't think it's out of the question for the near future. It seems with DP7, in their bundling of a lot of "spiffy" guitar effects, that they're wanting to break in to the amature demographics. But they've never been committed to creating a real solid amature userbase.

If you look around, you'll notice that many DP users originally used other DAWs first. DP is my third DAW after using Cakewalk 9/Sonar and ProTools. I think you'll find a relatively few DP users who started from scratch using DP.

Prime Mover wrote:The obvious reasons? Price, Demographic, and Bundling.

Frooty Loops, Reason, Live, and the like are all less expensive,

while you are correct about fruity loops ($200), reaper ($70), and renoise ($60), live is $500, reason is $400, and of course logic and cubase are also on par with dp price wise. as for bundling do they really come with much more than dp?

Prime Mover wrote:come bundled with tons of presets, aren't quite as complicated, and have a lot of functions designed to get off the ground quickly. They come loaded with drum patterns, arpegiators and sequencers so young, inexperienced techno people can throw a few things together quickly without having to understand a lot of music composition techniques.

which is ironic as i found them way more confusing and harder to get going with than dp.

Prime Mover wrote:Not sure why Cubase and Logic have more appeal. They're traditional DAWs with relatively similar functionality to DP. Probably marketing and price.

well with cubase i'd say it's because it's 2 main reasons, 1: it's been popular all the way back to the atari as a sequencer, and 2: available for windows (%90 of the computers out there) as well as mac. as for logic, it used to be available for windows and thus had an edge over dp from the get go, now is apples official DAW, so most people see the only reason audio-wise to use a mac as being to use logic, as dp doesn't even seem to be on most peoples radar unfortunately.

Prime Mover wrote:If you look around, you'll notice that many DP users originally used other DAWs first. DP is my third DAW after using Cakewalk 9/Sonar and ProTools. I think you'll find a relatively few DP users who started from scratch using DP.

guess i'm in the minority having started on dp. oh well, it makes sense to me.

aeser wrote:while you are correct about fruity loops ($200), R••••• ($70), and renoise ($60), live is $500, reason is $400, and of course logic and cubase are also on par with dp price wise. as for bundling do they really come with much more than dp?

Yes, this has been a constant point of contension. In recent years, many DAWs have come bundled with a lot of "complete" albeit lower-end VI Libraries and effects. DP has gone a little ways with their guitar effects last year, but they have yet to include any real obvious VI Libraries.

As for price, all the DAWs you mentioned also have lite versions, some of which come bundled with a lot of hardware for free. More than once I've openned up a hardware package to find a copy of Cubase CE. Many of these are arouns $100-$150, or come bundled with hardware.

The one exception is ProTools, which in fact, shot themselves in the foot much more than MOTU. Just at the time when a lot of DAWs started creating lite versions, they discontinued theirs. And their naming scheme is unfortunate. They're "lite" version (LE), is now at the same price and feature point as all the other full DAWs, while their "normal" versions are huge, multi-thousand dollar hardware packages for studios only. I'm sure many amatures have thought, "why would I want ProTools lite (LE) when I can buy the full version of Cubase for the same price?"

aeser wrote:which is ironic as i found them way more confusing and harder to get going with than dp.

The DAW is a fairly traditional interface. On the mixing side of things, most of it's terminology, graphics, and processes stem from variations of old "by-the-books" analog audio production. On the composition end of things, even though we may hardly ever use QuickScribe, the piano roll isn't really THAT far from conventional music notation, especially when compared to pattern generators and algorithmic processes. Thus, DAWs are going to be a lot more familiar to people with a conventional composition background than to someone who doesn't even understand intervallic relationships. Some of the music building processes in Fruity Loops and Reason that I've heard of don't really require any knowledge of how to construct music in a conventional manner. DAW composition requires that you have at least a cursory knowledge of conventional music composition and theory.

Every genre imaginable (and some not so imaginable).

Biggest emphasis is on classical, jazz/big band/Broadway, and synth-pop, along with world/ethnic/celtic/folk/acoustic.

Occasionally reggae, hard rock, pop/rock, metal, hip-hop.

My clients have odd requests at times, but I rarely disappoint, and love having my boundaries pushed, so never turn down something just because it's a genre I haven't worked in before (or have much familiarity with). Besides, I'm cheap (so far).

I also do a lot of soundscape work, whether for live theatrical presentations or films (and sometimes for interludes on album-oriented pop/rock). I originally designed my own patches, but lost the motivation and energy for this after all my gear was stolen a few years back. I only use and tweak presets now.