Where did you start?

[swampfeotus]

well, talent is talent, but training can help those with less talent express themselves. not everyone can roll their face on a keyboard and get signed.

[Psykkle]

well, talent is talent, but training can help those with less talent express themselves. not everyone can roll their face on a keyboard and get signed.

Rolling your face on a keyboard. That reminds me of Aphex Twin.

[soyuz7]

i started when fruity loops was a drum machine only and on cakewalk. course before that i was making all sorts of crap with a homemade 4 track and poly 800.

[INNKEEPER]

I started with a Kawai keyboard my mom bought on a shopping channel when i was a kid.  I played guitar too, so I sent it through my pedals and such.  I had a 12" tom that I found at a backyard gig.  I used my walkman headphones as a microphone.  At Radio Shack I bought a bunch of cables: Y-cables, 1/8th" to 1/4", RCA to 1/8th", etc.  I'd record bits of records (anything we had in the house: Front 242 and Chameleons, to Doris Day and Wagner), my keyboard and my headphones and my drum, live into this badass Aiwa walkman I had.  A bit later i procured a 4 track from a music store, raising my capabilities greatly.  With mute buttons and faders, I was doing a lot of noise and collage, like Nurse With Wound, Coil, etc.  A bit after that I got Cakewalk Professional 5 and an AWE 64 Gold; now, i could edit samples and trigger them with the computer keyboard. 

To start making noise, It's really helpful to get to know a piece of hardware that interests you.  Find a synth, or drum machine, or a piece of audio software, and learn it and know it like a favourite book.  Speaking for myself of course, being curious about how things work, how sounds are made and what I can make with them is what naturally drew me into music, thus making music.

ACID's a good prog, and theres a free vesion, and im sure there is still a free veersion of Cakewalk.  Of course, you can get an entry level piece of kit, like a 2 channel audio and midi breakout box, which will come bundled with all sorts of rad shit, like Cubase or Pro Tools or Performer, etc.

[Straw242]

I really also would love to start creating my own Industrial music. What is the cheapest and best way to start out? I've always wanted to know how this music is created but do not now how to play the keyboards :( I heard that Fruity Loops is a good program to start out with?

I love the hardcore stuff like Combichrist, Skinny Puppy, KMFDM, Imperative Reaction, Frontline Assembly, Front 242, Birmingham 6, Virtual Embrace, Project Pitchfork, Brain Leisure and Icon of Coil to name a few. I also am a devoted heavy metal fan and would aslo love to incorporate guitars into my music as such bands as Fear Factory, Static-X and Hanzel Und Gretyl do with adding synths and beats to their stuff.

Gimme some advice, help out a fellow Digital Gunfire listener! Thanks friends! Stay sic!

[Yawn]

LMMS, no doubt
http://lmms.sourceforge.net/

[RenRevenge]

iv only ever used cubase then again i havnt toached a board in 3 years but i found that program really easy to use would probly be a good start

[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.

i think that about concluds it!

Bset of luck

Kord

[RavenX]

I use FL Studio 9 a lot with the Toxic Biohazard pluggin. The Toxic Biohazard has a lot of nasty and sounding effects. You can always program your own effects but be sure to use a lot of 'saw' waves.

[Normal]

I started so very long ago with a Mac clone, running Logic Audio Discovery 1.0 (w/ the audiowerk8 soundcard).  I had a consumer stereo system, 2 4 channel radio shack brand passive mixers for monitoring and input.  I used a Samson S11 mic running through a Zoom505 guitar effects pedal.  Lastly, the heart of my studio was my beloved and now well worn Alesis QS6 synth.

I do not know how I wrote ANYTHING on that setup, much less master it in a semi acceptable manner.  I later bought some outboard effects processors mainly for vocals and post production.  I got a Mackie 1202VLZ mixer, which helped a lot.  That gave me 4 channels for the mic, VCR (for soundbytes) 2 for the Alesis and 8 for the audiowerk8 outputs.  Plus Mackie's handy alt 3-4 feature to feed channels selectively back into the computer.  Also I upgraded to Event 20|20bias monitors, which helped a lot.

I used that 2nd setup for another few years and it worked rather well.  In 2002, I got a shiny new PowerMac G4 and Logic Platinum 4.0.  Most of the built in effects made my older outboard gear obsolete.  The audiowerk8 card still helped somewhat with the load on the processor.  I wrote music for a number of years.  Most of which came out pretty well.

I was in the army when I did my next studio upgrade.  I had some deployment cash as well as having no real bills at the time...  so I wandered over to the local Session music store and got a Mackie 1220 Onyx (+ firewire card) then proceeded to buy a MacPro 2.66ghz with 4gigs of ram and Logic 7.  Logic 6 and 7 both included all the software synths you used to have to buy separately.  I found myself using those more and more.  My QS6 and my Supernova 2 started collecting dust.

After my 2nd deployment, I picked up some Mackie 824mk2 monitors.  Those things greeted me with a giant face full of clarity about what was wrong with my mixes.  Good monitors are a godsend.  I also bumped up to Logic Pro 8/Studio which have pretty much anything you'd need to get started included in the box.  I bought a AT2050 mic, which also makes much prettier recordings than my old dynamic mic.

I found out I was going to spend my last year and change in the army in Korea.  So I grabbed a Apr 2010 model MacBookPro 2.66ghz with 8gigs of ram.  It's possibly slightly better than my desktop.  I had to leave most of my studio in Seattle.  But with just my laptop, korg nanoKEY (for diddling out melodies) and my crusty old Sony 7509 headphones.  I'm able to work on remastering and revamping some of my older songs, I didn't bring a mic do to barracks living...  so no new vocals while I'm here.

TL;DR

**The moral of the story is**

If you pick up a good laptop (2+ghz 4+GB ram 7200rpm HD) and a software package like Logic or Sonar? (help me out there PC peeps).  Some type of usb keyboard/controller, a usb or firewire audio (and or midi) I/O device, a decent (pro) microphone and some decent studio monitors (minimum 6" woofer).  You could build a decent project studio that would fit on a coffee table for 1000-5000 dollars.

M-Audio is a good place to get ideas: M-Audio

Also, swing by a local Guitar Center or other music store where you can spend a few hours fiddling with software, mixers, controllers, monitors, etc.  Even Best Buy is trying to get into the home studio market in some stores.  Their selection is more low end consumer stuff though.  All depends on what you can afford.

Or you can get something like FL Studio (PC), Garageband or Logic Express (Mac) and poof, you're a band.  Don't do that though, people point and laugh.  *No offense intended* towards the people who actually use those programs to their fullest extent and make good music.

[aphxero]

I started out using old 80s gear from pawn shops which was awesome. korg dw8000, boss dr5, etc and free midi and wav edit software on 150mhz pc. This was forever ago and doesnt really apply now.

Nowadays I just have a modded drum machine, one VA synth, cubase and a sampler. It's plenty for my own enjoyment :) Yeah I wish I had better sounding kit but it doesnt matter much.