A tip for newbies

[kord1977]

The best place to start ,particuly if you are going into creationg your own industrial/ebm is to download various plug in softwares of the internet,i don't encourage piracy but if you must use it theres a wealth of torrents out there of various plug ins or vst,for creation of your own ebm/industrial i recoment the top plug ins by creators such as arturia/rob papen/refx and korgs own legacy collection,also look for native instruments,steinberg and rgc audio's z3ta synth,a good standard usb midi controller keyboard is recomended but most keyboards/synthesizers will work just as well, look for DISCODSP their descovery softsynth is a true clone of the clavia nord lead ,if you go to http://www.soundburst.com/northmood.html then you can order Northmood which is the clone of the clavia nord modular and is avaliable for around 100 dollars or 90 pounds if you are in UK ,keep a good hardware synth with you too the more the merrier, look for arpeggiators /samples/etc you may wanna visit my website to give you some pointers www.myspace.com/kordnetix i use a lot of arps and samples on there and if my music does not appeal to you then i gladly point you in the direction of bands like covenant/vnv/vigilante/grendel and psychopomps all thease can also be found on you tube as these bands use a wide veriety of arps loops samples etc a pc computer p4 anything above 2ghz cpu or a mac g5 a gig of memory and a 24 bit souncard with low level latency,any desktop or laptop of these specs will do! look for vst apps like sony acid (used by prodigy for fat of the land album) Cubase,cakewalk,synapse orion,imageline fruity loops version 8 recomended,ableton live and reason 3 or 4 by propellerheads (an excellent synth/sampling module) and used by a lot of bands including depeche mode and the cure,i recomend a trance plug in called adventus df and you have to try refx nexus with its 16 gig of mind blowing presets you will be banging out tunes like a bloody jukebox in no time.

[elektrozid]

Good recommendations but I'd advice any newbie not to buy a bunch of plugins where you'll probably need many months or even years to learn and use(!) the full potential of only one of them. Also, a good soundcard is nothing withouth some good studio speakers and a proper room with low reverberation time. Buying new gear for hundreds and thousands of $ is completely useless without a proper way to monitor your production and adjust basic stuff like EQs, panning etc.. Just buy a small Midikeyboard as said or (if you wanna start with a real synth) a midi-device like the UM-1EX which has good driver support for most OS. When it comes to the plugin part, download demos or try different pieces of software at your local music store - TRY before buying anything - because every plugin has it's own personality, handling and (of course) way it sounds. Of course, even if plugins have a standalone-version in their package, you should also decide for a DAW that fit your needs. There is no über-DAW or "THE" DAW you should use. ALways keep an eye on usability, because working with software that makes you search and try all the time instead of expressing your creativity with it will result in a bad production and also might drive you nuts within a couple of weeks :-) and always LEARN, learn how to use your software, listen to other tracks for some good reference when it comes to the mixdown process.

OK, enough of that and sorry for bumping up that thread but I thought this might be really helpful.

[RavenX]

Thanks for the advice. I needed that

[Normal]

Always record your vocals raw.  It's a good idea in general, especially if you intend on having anyone do a remix of your tracks.  Add effects later via plugins and or outboard gear.

As was said before, decent to good monitors (studio speakers) are a must.  Anything "consumer level" is not going to give you a true sound and your mixes will sound odd on other sound systems.  I'd recommend ones with an 8" woofer, bass is always tricky in electronic music, the more you can hear the better.

Keep it simple.  When I started out, I was layering drum tracks, arps and samples and anything else I could get my hands on to make a good full sound (which sounded like muddy yuck).  It's much easier to write, mix and master with the minimum of what you need to make a song what you want it to be.  Not to say that you can't have lots going on during the writing process, but you may find yourself dropping some of the elements that aren't needed.

Lastly, keep your vocals out front.  Don't hide them in the mix.  Even if you're self conscious about your singing.  Fans like songs they can sing along with, not ones they have to google the lyrics just to figure out what you were singing.  Though there are exceptions of course.

That's all that's on my mind at the moment ;)