Need advice on home studio setup for beginner into Skrillex & Deadmau5
Hi,
My buddy is a huge fan of Skrillex, Deadmau5, Porter Robinson, etc.
He’s interested in creating his own music, but he’s starting from scratch (so to speak). He can’t read music and doesn’t play keyboard or any other instrument.
For his bday, I’m getting him a home studio setup to use with his MacBook Pro.
I also enrolled him in DJ101 at Scratch Academy. (They say to begin with that before moving on to music production classes.)
Below are the choices I’m looking at. (Click on the image.)
I’d like for him to be able to create the kind of music he’s into – but I also don’t want to start him out with a setup that’s so complex he gets overwhelmed and doesn’t want to stick with it.
Get Logic, more value for less money. And if someone can’t make Skrillex/DeadMauS et rest music with Logic, most likely they don’t know what they are talking about.
Traktor is a Software for DJing, i.e. playing music and not for creating your own original tracks, so that leaves Ableton and Logic. If money should be an issue go for Logic, else the choice is all yours. Actually, which DAW to chose depends heavily on personal preferences regarding workflows, etc., so you might even want to consider giving him a voucher for the DAW so he can chose which ever he likes best.
The Traktor controller is also designed for DJing and not production.
If he can’t play keyboard there really isn’t much that would speak against buying a mini keyboard, as he probably will only be sketching out melodies with one hand and not playing complex stuff with two hands that would require a large key board.
yeah holy hell, for my bday i might get taken out for a beer and thats pretty much it let alone a studio set up lol
Go with Logic, forgo the piano keyboard and just have him use the computer keyboard instead, if he doesn’t know how to play piano there isn’t much point.
Thats it. That’s all you need.
If you have extra money to spend, which it seems you do, invest in a good soft synth like Sylenth over some of those other things. If he is interested in DJing as well, then get the Traktor controller, if not its completely unnecessary to get a controller for music production right now. Instead of studio monitors, i’d invest in a solid pair of studio headphones, much more useful for the beginner and you can use them for other things like not bothering ppl around you lol
Tell him to use Garage Band until he figures out what he needs to better his workflow. If you want to spend some money buy him some VST’s, Sylenth and Massive are popular.
[QUOTE]Even if he can’t really play, a small keyboard is helpful and the mkp mini offers good value for money.
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True, just saying its unnecessary thats all. I have a mini myself actually but i only got one this summer and I do know how to play keys. When i was fooling around with Garage band to start, i just used my computer and that was more than sufficient.
this is also true, we’re saving you money all over the place now lol
My personal recommendation is to see if he wants to learn to DJ first, produce second. The reason I’m suggesting this, is if your friend has no musical background at all, aside from liking some music, mixing tracks will teach him how music is structured, and teach him how to listen objectively and actively to his music.
The other route you can take, if he has no background in music, is fruity loops. The program makes laying out tracks much easier than writing the drum lines, bass lines, synth lines etc. all by himself.
Sounds like your buddy has a pretty solid friend. Do you make music as well?
Most likely he will already be overwhelmed by the time he has to invest in practicing to get (not even close) to sound like Deadmau5… by this im saying since everything needs practice and no one is born with super ears (though there are people with perfect pitch) my suggestion is as the people above have said, get him GarageBand first and go from there
