i primarily use hardware but have recently decided to mess around with software when creating my tracks. i usually kind of make wonky (ugh
) hip-hop beats using MPC, some synths (micron and microkorg) and some FX units. i've never really done any producing on the computer before but i've been getting more into it as of late.
i have been messing around with the demos of both fruity loops and reason and i've been confused as shit. i can make loops and stuff but i cannot make whole songs as i can't seem to work the sequencer.
obviously the sounds, fx and synths that come with fl studio aren't the best but i would be hoping to add to that myself.
now i've been messing around with the demos and rewiring (the reason demo sucks as it's only 15 mins before it closes) and it seems pretty straight forward. i'm assuming though that all my sequencing after i rewire has to be done in flstudio and not in reason? what i'm talking about here is the redrum, matrix and arp from reason. there seems to be no way i can use those patterns in flstudio properly. i don't really know the technical limitations of rewire as i am kind of new to it.
what i was thinking was i could get both flstudio and reason and use reason as my "sound module", ie. use the synths within reason and sequence everything in flstudio. i am not very experienced in softsynths but there seems to be quite a lot of routing options available for the synths in reason and that alone means that they can be used to create some interesting sounds.
but would i be better off just getting some stand-alone synths, would they be better value for money? i am currently leaning towards reason because of it's CPU friendliness. my computer is crap, hopefully i am getting a new one when i return to college, and there is no way i could be running programs like massive or anything like that. i can run reason absolutely fine and i can run reason within fruity fine.
i was thinking that set-up would be ok and then i could add freeware synths. there was a thread here by future untold where he has a pack of a freeware music studio. so obviously there are a lot of good free VSTs out there to be used.
do freeware VSTs tend to be less CPU intensive? because that would be great.
one final question.
i've been obsessed with hardware for a while and have bought and sold a machinedrum, a jomox and some other crap over the past couple of years. i haven't been paying much attention to the software world.
the last time i checked in on it it seemed that reason was more professional that flstudio but after reading some posts here it seems that the opposite is true now? how is this the case? what has happened? i've also heard somewhere that fl studio isn't the best for complex/tight sequencing and editing. i don't know how much of this is true because i never payed much attention when reading it. i know the sequencer in reason is more "complicated" to use (read cumbersome), but is that purely by design, or is it more cumbersome because you can get more complex?
