MIDIMusicWorkshop

Hi, my name is Quinten, Regular HackZone visitors may know me as that grey haired dude who hangs around in the dome. Recently, as a member of the CZ20 Badge team I rediscovered how fun it is to make music. I also found out it can be quite a challenge to actually get the right tools set up, get a hold of instruments and samples before being able to play a single note.

In this workshop I'd like to share what I've learnt and how we can use our awesome Ærpane to help us make some funky tunes using DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software. The focus will be on the follow aspects of music creation:

• Installing your DAW
• DAW basics
• Adding instruments, effects and samples to your DAW
• Adding the Ærpane to your DAW
• Configuration options for Ærpane
• Using Ærpane with the DAW
• Creating your first tune (time permitting)

The DAW we will be using in this workshop in Reaper (https://www.reaper.fm/), a great multi-platform (yes, it even runs on a Raspberry Pi), easy to install piece of software by the same people that created Winamp.

Thanks to No13 we have a dedicated Reaper control App for your badge: Midi Reaper Control You can install it through your badge's WebUSB UI. The Reaper keymap for Ærpane is included in the App directory.

Here some useful resources to get started:

Other DAW software worth taking a look at:

Tracktion Waveform Free is a very good, fully loaded free alternative to Reaper, but, in order to install it you need to register an account.

Cakewalk by Bandlab, an excellent, feature packed DAW for Windows only. You do need to register with Bandlab and install their companion software though :-(

Steiberg Cubase has been around a long time and a favourite amongst musicians. It's not cheap, but you get what you pay for.

FL Studio is the latest incarnation of another "old friend", Fruity Loops.

Ableton Live, the de-facto standard for Live performers and many music producers.

Bitwig Studio, my personal favourite, created by a group of former Ableton employees.