Music Production
This is Music Production. A place to share anything and everything you want about your music making journey! Learning is the goal, so discussion is encouraged!
RIP Waveform.
Rules are as follows:
- Don't share other people's music without commentary, analysis or questions. This is not a music discovery community.
- No elitism or bigotry towards other people's music tastes. Be polite in disagreement.
I will update rules as necessary, but I promise we'll stay light on them and only add new ones after discussion!
Here are some useful examples of what a great post would be about:
(in no particular order)
- Stuff you made/are making. Get valuable feedback and criticism!
- Learning resources - videos, articles, posts on any topic concerning a production process, be it composition, sound design, sampling, mixing, mastering, DAW workflow or any other.
- Free plugins, presets and samplepacks. Giveaways and self-made stuff included!
- News about production software, releases and personalities.
- Questions and general advice about music production.
- Essays on your favorite productions. Inspirations and insights!
- Your physical analog gear! Let us know how it performs!
Good to know: As a general word of caution, avoid posting complete compositions, mixes and tracks on the internet before backing them up on a remote and reputable server. Even small snippets or watermarked tracks should be posted AFTER backing it up to cloud. Timestamps from cloud services will help you in case of theft. And, as a public resource, lemmy is not a safe place to post your unpublished work, so please make sure your work is protected.
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Yeah, I use Cardinal sometimes. I spent a few months getting really into and then nearly buying physical hardware and ruining myself financially. I'll have funding soon so I'm excited to get back into it and develop a minimal set in Cardinal then build it out in real life.
Why do you use Cardinal and not vcv rack ? So you can use it in a DAW for free ?
I get the temptation to build it with physical hardware too, but as you said, I don’t want to ruin myself financially hah. There are also so many synths and semi-modular synths out there that are so much more affordable than physical modular. For now I’m happy in vcv with some external controllers, that really makes it worthwhile imo.
Edit : I forgot to ask, what kind of music do you make with Cardinal ?
Using it in a DAW for free was my initial reason but I liked using it more standalone on my Steam Deck so I could have something to mess with when not at home. A lot of what I've done with Cardinal is making the weirdest noises I can and trying to make generative tracks. I'm not sure I've ever recorded something I made but I do learn a lot about synths when I experiment with this stuff. When I go back to other softsynths I feel like I'm tweaking settings with a bit more knowledge and with more intention instead of just twisting randomly.
What are you using for external controllers? I should probably get into that as a next step.
I've seen pictures of VCV/Cardinal on the steam deck, how is it ? Does it work well ?
I've also definitely learned a lot more about synthesis since using VCV.
I'm using the akai midimix, the cheapest mixer-type controller basically -> 9 sliders, 24 knobs, 18 or 20 buttons. I have a default patch set up that assigns the faders to an 8 track mixer + Master volume, and then I assign the knobs and buttons to whatever I feel like going along, it's nearly instant with a module called MIDI-CAT. The midimix is not the best controller obviously, but at 50€ second hand it's great.
It definitely makes using vcv a lot better, you can really play the patches you make, it's so much better. I really recommend trying it out.