I'm just getting into this

[Afi]

Hi, my name is Afi and I heard about this site from a story on NPR. I was so intrigued I went to the Net and tried out Fruity Loops, but didn't buy it.

I'd love to get into this type of music. Do you have any suggestions for reasonbly priced software that's easy to use. I've got lots of acoustic music experience so composing isn't a problem. I will need help with the terminology, etc.

And any suggestions about generic places to perform would be appreciated. By the way, I live in Ohio.

[tekdaddy]

A good program to start off with would be Reason for making original material, although Abelton Live is the main program used in Laptop Battles. If you are really going to go for it, i think you will need to eventually get one of the badboy programs from steinberg (cubase/nuendo) or Logic from emagic. A lot of electronic music made in the u.k. and abroad uses logic or cubase etc. The best is to have all the programs and gets as much as you can out of them. For example here is the list of some of the progs i use....

Logic 5 Plat (not available for pc anymore)
Nuendo 1.5
Reason 2.0
Abelton Live 3.0
SoundForge 7.0

Go to google and vistit the corporate websites for these products to get you on the road. Also i have tons of VST instruments/Plugins. These are VERY helpful when it comes to mastering and sound design etc.

Also alot of this comes down to preference and most producers are using alot of different established and new programs. So be versatile and try and do as much research as you can, and read the manuals if you can...

Hope this helps,
TeK