MIDI Kinetics Forum

So, I'm just starting to delve into music making. I bought the lemur app for ipad thinking I could make music with it alone, but quickly found out I need more than this. I was looking at ableton live. Anyways, heres some questions:

What are some things that would be good to look into to start making good electronic music? I have a nice computer, wireless router, and ipad and lemur, but thats it currently.

Will Ableton live 8 intro work with the lemur?

What are the first 'big purchases' I should make besides the music making program?

With all respect, I believe this is the wrong forum for such questions - the reason being, its a bit specialised with the use of Lemur and other Liine products so I doubt anyone will be willing to offer you general information on music making. Do some research with Google and try to get the whole picture first, then dig deeper - its a very broad topic and lots of things need to be considered....

You might as well want to start by getting an idea of the basic terminology and software-hardware purposes first by reading here:
http://tweakheadz.com/guide-to-home-and ... c-studios/

Oh, by the way, contrary to the popular beliefs, the best thing you can do to start creating music (and then get better at it) does not inolve hardware-software purchases but book - educational material purchases. The notion that with today's hardware-software you can create music without any prior knowledge is false on many levels. Surely, you can get away with not having a classical music education (notation, playing a musical instrument etc etc) given that modern electronic music is not particularly complex from a compositional viewpoint (simple, basic melodies, even more basic chord progressions, etc) but you cant completely bypass education - knowledge. You still have to learn some basic concepts about digital audio processing, audio processors - effects, synths, terminology in order to succesfully use all this available "machinery" (be it hardware or software)....or ELSE your music will sound like a cheap, easy-to-make Nintendo beat thing.

thanks for the input! i realize im at a disadvantage in that i dont have a lot of the knowledge and education that you speak of, but i would still love to just tinker around with sound and music and make stuff. im not necessarily looking to make music to build fame or whatever. i'm doing it for fun and to maybe show my friends some cool stuff that i've made if anything comes of it.

could you suggest a good digital audio workstation for me to use to start out?

should i just save up and get the best ableton live version or should i go with ableton live 8 intro and maybe 'ease' into it a little bit? i realize learning the programs will take some time and there will be a great deal of skill gap involved in conquering this task, but im still very interested and the advice from a seasoned veteran like some of you guys probably are would be greatly appreciated!

I think, for the time being its best for you to use the lite version you have, and try to get the "feel" of the software. All DAWs have their strengths and weaknesses mainly relating to the way things are done - workflow. Dont ever buy the whole "it sounds better than the competitors" marketing thing. All modern DAWs are equally capable of creating pristine quality finished tracks - music pieces. Id say keep up with Live and, for the sake of your own curiosity also try a demo of one of the rest "major" competitors, cubase, logic, sonar etc etc just to see what the differences in workflow and features are so that you may make an informed decision on which to stick with - the one that suits you best!!!

As I said though also be on the look out for educational material covering the basics of terminology, audio processing and why hot, even composition and music in general!