Getting Started

The first thing you have to do before moving into your virtual studio is to come to terms with the fact that you may never use any normal studio equipment ever again.

I'm serious. A lot of people still think that they'll continue using a drum machine to program drum parts or that they'll continue to record onto multitrack tape before moving it onto their hard drive.

By all means if you get great results using the pads on a drum machine and feel that anything else will cramp your style then by all means continue to use one, as a trigger. Go ahead, plug a MIDI cable into the back and use it to trigger percussion sounds and sound effects that any one of a number of virtual synthesizers have built-in.

As soon as you get started using your computer as a studio there'll be no turning back, but it will be tough at first. A whole new way of working, breaking old habits and wasting valuable creative time finding out how all your new equipment works.

So let's see if we can't get your multitrack tape recorder, sequencer, drum machine, synthesizer and sampler down to the size of a few molecules.

Next: Virtualising your studio

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