This blog was written for primeloops.com – check them out for some ace samples and to see my blogs 2 months earlier!

It’s a battle of the sequencing titans!

When you’re looking to go pro in audio, most people in the business would say there are two choices: Pro Tools vs. Logic.   PC vs. Mac.

But which is the best choice?   Which has the most useful features and which is the most intuitive to create music on?

Let’s put them head to head and find out…

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I had an e-mail from boyinaband.com reader Ash…

Hi David,

Firstly thanks for putting in so much time & energy making a great website that I’m sure many people such as myself get to benefit from.  It’s great that you’ve done all those brilliant tutorials, well filmed and narrated.  It’s funny how I found your site – my new american girlfriend told me about this Saturday Night Live sketch – “I’m on a Boat” and that eventually led me via Youtube to your site.  Being into music production, I of course then spent hours reading your site and looking at the tutorials – I love how serendipitous the internet can be!

Anyway enough waffling and onto my main question.  I’m getting back into music production (as a hobby for now but I’d like to make more of it) after a break for a few years.  Last time I was playing around with this stuff it was Cubase SX 2.0 and Reason (2.0?).  Anyway, I am looking at what software I should use now – the market has changed a lot, all the packages have tried to become all-encompassing – even Ableton Live is now purporting to be a production/recording suite.  I’m tempted to have another play with Reason 4, but I want to make sure I invest my learning curve in something that can go “all the way” …

So, the question is: do you believe that Reason 4 is a serious music production tool – can it be used to produce a professional quality track to the standard that other software (e.g. Logic, for example) can?  That is really my only doubt about Reason, holding me back from buying a copy.  I’ve had fun with Reason before and I guess it’s easy to see it as a scratchpad, something for prototyping, because it is quite dinky and novel to use – but perhaps I’m judging it unfairly and missing its power?

Anyway – I hope you can find time to answer me!

Best wishes

Ash Dando

Yeah, I left in that first paragraph partly for my ego’s benefit and partly because I frickin’ love the word “serendipitous“.

But yes – the question.   Can Reason be used as a production tool to rival the big players like Logic?   My answer…

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If you’re into chiptune, you’ll know the community around it is like none other – giving things away for free is an innate part of the culture surrounding the genre.

When it comes to making chiptune, it is no exception.

Here are 10 of the best free chiptune VSTs and Plug ins on the interwebs!
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Christ on a bike – some of you may remember my post on the DNA feature of Celemony’s new Melodyne Autotune software, in which you can change the pitch of individual notes within audio recordings.   Well here’s the news: It’s not a dream any more…

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I recently downloaded Record from Propellerhead for a trial to see if it was as amazing as all they hype makes it out to be.

I mean – Line6 Pod integration, Reason integration, pretty much ridiculously amazing timestretching… it sounds like it’s got it all, but in practice, what is there that it doesn’t do?   What stops it from being the next big thing?

There’s a few things, actually.   Let’s see what’s missing…
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Thanks to my homeslice Åge, I’ve made a tutorial explaining a bit about some of the awesome less commonly used oscillators and filters work in Thor!

With some futuristic techno as an example, score!

So it’s kind of a techno tutorial.   But not just for techno heads!   Watch it and see

Check it out here