New Music Friday: Air Ignite
Feb. 8th, 2013 06:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
filkertomNo, the pollution hasn't gotten that bad. Air Ignite is a rather amazing program which allows you to put together song ideas in the most natural way I've found yet.
I've found a few interesting attempts at this lately. Stagelight is inexpensive (only $9.99) and surprisingly powerful -- basically a micro-DAW. Its workflow as a sketchpad is good but could be better. Same thing with Studio One Free, another micro-DAW, although it doesn't let you use VSTs -- you have to get one of the pay versions for that. And JamDeck tries to do what Ignite does, but is much more cumbersome and much less powerful about it, and costs $39.
So what does Ignite do? Ignite lets you create both audio and MIDI clips, and arrange them into a song. It has a wide selection of internal instruments, and several basic effects with a lot of presets. (It does not use VSTs.) It also works in a number of time signatures, so you can, for instance, do that 7/4 or 9/8 piece you've been considering. And it exports to .WAV, .MP3, and .MID, kicks your song into a folder with separate audio tracks so you can work on it some more in a DAW, or uploads direct to SoundCloud.
If you've bought an M-Audio keyboard in the past year or so, you likely have a copy, but you can also download it for free (not quite 1 GB). It's available for both Windows and Mac, and there is a playlist of instructional videos which will get you up and going in about an hour.
Any other new music toys, or new music, we need to know about?
I've found a few interesting attempts at this lately. Stagelight is inexpensive (only $9.99) and surprisingly powerful -- basically a micro-DAW. Its workflow as a sketchpad is good but could be better. Same thing with Studio One Free, another micro-DAW, although it doesn't let you use VSTs -- you have to get one of the pay versions for that. And JamDeck tries to do what Ignite does, but is much more cumbersome and much less powerful about it, and costs $39.
So what does Ignite do? Ignite lets you create both audio and MIDI clips, and arrange them into a song. It has a wide selection of internal instruments, and several basic effects with a lot of presets. (It does not use VSTs.) It also works in a number of time signatures, so you can, for instance, do that 7/4 or 9/8 piece you've been considering. And it exports to .WAV, .MP3, and .MID, kicks your song into a folder with separate audio tracks so you can work on it some more in a DAW, or uploads direct to SoundCloud.
If you've bought an M-Audio keyboard in the past year or so, you likely have a copy, but you can also download it for free (not quite 1 GB). It's available for both Windows and Mac, and there is a playlist of instructional videos which will get you up and going in about an hour.
Any other new music toys, or new music, we need to know about?
