Electronic Music

Hi,

I have been in the Music industry for more than 20 years working in rock bands that took me to playing to 15,000 people at a time, to the sole composer as I am at the moment.  The great change though came when I left the band and married and did family stuff!  But that was not the end of it.  I decided that Music was for me and that led me down ‘that’ path plus providence!   The ‘Holy Grail’ of recording at home without the high cost of renting recording studio’s and getting the quality music out there through contacts etc.

Fifteen years ago, cash in hand I started to look for a computer and the problems started!  PC’s then were in their infancy, and all the claims that were made about their ability in music recording terms were about as useful as a chocolate fireguard.  After 3 custom made PC’s at £1000 every time, failures in reliable recording without regular crashing and glitching were ongoing.  I became somewhat of an expert in all things PC, and was able to fix with time most faults whilst not writing music!  I was using Cubase at the time and gradually upgraded to Nuendo 2.  I thought that this final professional DAW would end my problems.

Then problems seemed to revolve around constant crashing or high latency with plug-ins etc.  Further there were problems with the Cubase/Nuendo 2 not performing tasks correctly or locking up.  These would especially be during working in the midi note edit page where dragging notes or selecting notes would lock up the PC.  One that was never solved, was recording midi in time with the click, then on playback it would be time shifted by 0.25s-by the way not my playing!  Whatever I did-offsets etc I never did solve it and I went over to Mac!

In more enlightened moments, I have wondered whether the PC processors/speed though powerful were just not fast enough for the programs and what was recommended. But then I ask why do the Mac’s work straight away out of the box?  Can anyone answer this?

It must be 10 years later after working with PC’s I found out that the Apple Mac’s existed!  It is only in the last 3 years, that I believed what I had been told by every musician worth his salt, that the ‘Apple Mac’ solution to music recording worked!’  Slowly in the past 2 years I have gradually migrated my whole studio to Apple Mac’s.  It has been a steep learning curve-in some ways-new architecture-new procedures-but worth every penny of it, and wish I had not believed the Windows-PC  evangelists brigade.

Looking back, if only I have spent the three grand on a decent Mac, and not on PC’s, I would still have the Mac and be working with it!  I have looked at the quality of build, their speed and seeming robustness of the Operating System.  Perhaps the wisdom of sometimes listening/researching all camps before taking the plunge and also cheaper is NOT always the cheapest option, long term!  Time is precious, and I am sad about the time lost, but perhaps in other ways, I learnt a lot about PC’S.

Logic Pro had been recommended to me and the moment I started hammering it-it held up with whatever I threw at it-or was it the Apple Mac? Whatever the combination I have never looked back-Logic Pro Studio is great, and so is the Mac.

Currently I am writing an LP/EP and have laid down 3 tracks.  I have invested in the Native Instruments Komplete 6 package and have used this as my main writing tool and find it fantastic.  Most of the sounds have been drawn from this stable so far and the sound bank is so vast that this is all I might ever need.  The tracks are Electronic in nature and the writing style.

I hope this little explanation of where I come from shows my hand well and helps in your journey.

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