Trance/Electronic producers best friend?

[tony702]

Sup all! Just wanted some opinions on sofware/hardware that might be very helpful when producing.. Ive used FL studio for a while and while im still pretty much a newbie compared to others I would just like some insight on other sofware/haraware that would be trance/electronic music friendly..

[Tarek]

Well there's always Ableton and Cubase...Reason....I like FL Studio though..hardware wise most people just get a synth and some powered speakers for monitors

[Ryuji]

Ableton Live is great for beginners thanks to its user-friendly GUI. Nonetheless it's also a great tool, even for pro's, although if you would like more options and to "advance" I've heard Logic for Mac is good (although it supposedly takes much longer to learn). I'd recommend starting off with Live, and from there you can pick up things much faster.

I'm not sure what trance artists use but try googling and looking around forums.

You could start using stock sounds and presets and then start tweaking them as you get more used to the interface and the buttons and knobs.

I'm also a beginner and just learning about producing. I started out with FL Studio, but found Live more easy to work with.

There are quite a lot of tutorials on Live on youtube, I especially like the one by Airbase, so if you youtube "Airbase lesson" you'll surely find something helpful.

In addition to DAWs (Digital Audio Workstation) like FL Studio, Logic, Live etc. you should get your hands on some VSTs, (Virtual Studio Technology) which are kind of like "plugins" that expand your possibilities to create sounds in a DAW, some that I'm trying out right now are reFX Nexus2, LennarDigital Sylenth1, Spectrasonics Omnisphere. Some of them have testimonials on their sites by trance artists like Above & Beyond and Store 'n Forward, so you know you can put those VSTs to good use.

Also, you should get hold on some stock sounds. I recommend the Vengeance sample packs. You can load these sounds on VSTs and tweak them.
Good luck.

[Aquinox]

About the professional artists using what software, I know Armin uses Ableton Live!

I think I will also start with Ableton, I tried FL but it is a bit hard to understand how it works. I am also thinking of Reason, but that's just because Robert Nickson's Spiral was created with it, maybe someone can make a chart of ups and downs of every piece of DAW software so everyone can make his/her decision based on individual priorities?