How to Make Music with Your Computer

[Jinsai]

I generally find the people who tend to go on and on about how terrible software is, aren't actually making music.

I've known some people like that. They collect massive amounts of vintage gear, short run rare synthesizers, spend thousands on top end hardware compressors etc... and then never learn how to use any of the stuff, let alone actually make a track with it. I think some people just assume that if they buy a ton of crazy equipment, the tracks will just make themselves.

On the other end of things, I've seen people get into a "gotta catch em all" attitude with warez. They collect every plugin that's ever been made, then spend absolutely no time learning how to take advantage of the software. With most of the good software, it takes some time to familiarize yourself with the layout and understand what it's capable of. Even relatively simple effect plugins require some patience and study to understand what they really shine at.

Options are great if you take advantage of them, hardware or software, but you can do amazing stuff under extreme limitations. I know someone who works exclusively in Reason, and his mastery of the program has really opened my eyes the possibilities of what that software can do.

On a side note, any Cubase users out there? I just installed version 7 on my computer, and never before have I found the installation process to be such a pain in the ass. If you're going to require me to use a dongle, please make the online registration and authentication process a breeze. Instead, they give me two different serial numbers, (one of which apparently does nothing?), then make registering the software a confusing process... I'm currently stuck in a situation where it says I've already made an account, but when I try to log in (or request login password info to my email) it says "no account with that login name exists. What the hell?