Cheap / Free alternatives to common programs

pharmatic, I have also started using Reaper - and it is a wonder to behold... of course, it is not like let's say Live 7, it's slightly less intuitive.

However: there are very few cheap apps that invest part of their time to create an interface that is accessible to users. Most of the other cheap/free daws that I have come across are either damaging to the eye (some piano rolls seem to be half a pixel wide!) and not easy to grasp unless you read a 100 pages long pdf.

You can make simple stuff in reaper without reading anything about it, then with a few searches in their wonderful forums, you get the rest...

Atm, I am using reaper non-commercial (I paid around 35 quid for it), plus Iblit and Polyiblit for my leads (free), Dominator for my basses (Computer music, free with the mag), and Blue glitch to add extra fuziness to my rythm (free).

You can create wondrous stuff with only a few quid... although it is true that a tool like live would ease my live quite a lot, but paying 300 pounds for it... scary! :D
 
i got my hands on reason and not having much luck with producing much bass with the inbuilt patches
is it that im wasting my time or just not very good?

cheers
Freque
xyz
 
am freehand free. Tis a 3 osc synth with fairly basic modulation option, but still manages to sound ok with a few tweaks. I like it anyway.
 
renoise.... best tracker with the same capabilities as all other sequencers, such as cubase, ableton or fl.....

just have a quick looky look http://www.renoise.com/

beginners tutorial on the front page.... and the only thing you can't do in the demo is export to wav... you can save, use vsts etc so finish all your songs buy it then export them!!
 
For those who are looking for a tracker whilst still wanting to work in their own DAW, check out ReViSiT. The program is still free, so better get it while it is like that!
The cool thing about this app is, is that it's a VSTi which runs alongside your project in your DAW. So, whatever you want to track you can track in ReViSiT (it's also a high quality (multi)sampler) and whatever you want to do that can't be done in a tracker, like using the piano roll or audio lanes, can be done nicely alongside it in your DAW of comfort. It looks a little like this (cubase sx in this example):



As you can see, you can rout channels/samples in the tracker to vst insert strips in your DAW with an extra VST router called reBUS. You can also rout patterns to MIDI channels for triggering them in your DAW. In both cases, the plugin will sync flawlessly with your host, and can also be used for triggering your softsampler and other VSTi's. The program is also fully customizable with keyboard shortcuts and has extensive support for mouse as well.
I'm putting up this post a little big here since it's getting better every month now and find it a shame so little people take the time to look into trying it. If you feel limited by eg. Renoise lacking things a horizontal DAW has, I definitely would give this a go.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom