Re: Re: Acid?
personally, i think Acid is very simple and easy to use (except for the MIDI sequencer, which is awful and not worth bothering with). it pretty much does one thing, though they're starting down the slippery slope that Cakewalk (RIP) followed, wanting to be an end-all one-stop music app.
on the other hand, Fruity Loops is very complex and can be difficult to understand, but i never feel that it has a case of featuritis. and it does manage to be everything and the kitchen sink when it comes to making music under Windows, and it's really annoying that there's not a true FL alternative on the Mac. Reason is not an alternative to FL. you can't use VST synths or your own effects in Reason, for example. i've been using FL for a long time on the PC and still don't know everything about it. it gets a lot of flack, maybe because it only costs $99, but there's no difference in using Reaktor in FL and using Reaktor in Logic, except for elitism amongst Logic users.
i would even suggest that FL is a lot more complex than Live or Reason, which i also own and use. it takes a lot of audio apps to get things done, on either platform.
if anyone here is a Nine Inch Nails fan, just keep in mind that Trent Reznor (die-hard Mac user) and some of his bandmates bought PCs during the recording of The Fragile to run applications that don't exist on the Mac.
http://www.9inchnails.net/remix-files/keyboard_mag.htm
platform loyalty is no different from political loyalty, really, it just takes away options that might actually work pretty well for you. that's not "PC propaganda."
but but but... you're not really creating music, you're just picking loops that sound good together. it's sort of like clip art. the people at Apple, Sonic Foundry/Sony, or wherever have gone to great lengths to make sure that you can pretty much put together any combination of loops and have it sound good. when i got Acid 2 back in like, 1998, i told my roommate that i wanted to show him this new software... he sat down, with no prior musical experience besides a huge CD collection, and put together a pretty decent track (as far as clip art goes) in about five minutes.
this is not a criticism of Garage Band (or a criticism of the thread's author, who actually did a pretty cool thing with the built-in loops). i'm sure Garage Band it can be a great tool for people who are making their own music and want to quickly mock up certain loop-based compositions... but to download Garage Band and click around on the screen and put A + B + C together doesn't mean you're any more of a musician than someone who uses stock photos and calls herself a photographer. would you spend $15 on a CD if you knew that the "creator" had put it all together with sample CDs and loops from the internet? you might, because it might be something you enjoy. and i'm sure a lot of the music out there draws from such commodity sources. but it doesn't have very much credibility, nor is it what i would call "creating music."
personally, i think Acid is very simple and easy to use (except for the MIDI sequencer, which is awful and not worth bothering with). it pretty much does one thing, though they're starting down the slippery slope that Cakewalk (RIP) followed, wanting to be an end-all one-stop music app.
on the other hand, Fruity Loops is very complex and can be difficult to understand, but i never feel that it has a case of featuritis. and it does manage to be everything and the kitchen sink when it comes to making music under Windows, and it's really annoying that there's not a true FL alternative on the Mac. Reason is not an alternative to FL. you can't use VST synths or your own effects in Reason, for example. i've been using FL for a long time on the PC and still don't know everything about it. it gets a lot of flack, maybe because it only costs $99, but there's no difference in using Reaktor in FL and using Reaktor in Logic, except for elitism amongst Logic users.
i would even suggest that FL is a lot more complex than Live or Reason, which i also own and use. it takes a lot of audio apps to get things done, on either platform.
if anyone here is a Nine Inch Nails fan, just keep in mind that Trent Reznor (die-hard Mac user) and some of his bandmates bought PCs during the recording of The Fragile to run applications that don't exist on the Mac.
http://www.9inchnails.net/remix-files/keyboard_mag.htm
platform loyalty is no different from political loyalty, really, it just takes away options that might actually work pretty well for you. that's not "PC propaganda."
but but but... you're not really creating music, you're just picking loops that sound good together. it's sort of like clip art. the people at Apple, Sonic Foundry/Sony, or wherever have gone to great lengths to make sure that you can pretty much put together any combination of loops and have it sound good. when i got Acid 2 back in like, 1998, i told my roommate that i wanted to show him this new software... he sat down, with no prior musical experience besides a huge CD collection, and put together a pretty decent track (as far as clip art goes) in about five minutes.
this is not a criticism of Garage Band (or a criticism of the thread's author, who actually did a pretty cool thing with the built-in loops). i'm sure Garage Band it can be a great tool for people who are making their own music and want to quickly mock up certain loop-based compositions... but to download Garage Band and click around on the screen and put A + B + C together doesn't mean you're any more of a musician than someone who uses stock photos and calls herself a photographer. would you spend $15 on a CD if you knew that the "creator" had put it all together with sample CDs and loops from the internet? you might, because it might be something you enjoy. and i'm sure a lot of the music out there draws from such commodity sources. but it doesn't have very much credibility, nor is it what i would call "creating music."
