Instrumental listings equipment

[leejohnson]

Hi , I have equipment questions.I want to start to put more effort into film TV listings while I continue with my songwriting goals. My home demos of songs are usually a little too pitchy vocal-wise for film tv, so when I pitch songs to artists I use nashville demos...not usable for film tv. Plus they get expensive to keep up at 10+ songs a year to try to be competetive with staff writers budgets. I'm saving up for atares auto tune, and will continue trying to improve my writing and home demo quality, but want more options for pitching songs and music. Basically I think I need to upgrade my keyboard controller and sound device...my friend that lent me his is re-couping it and its out of date anyway. I have last year's iMac and PT LE 002, a few mics, EZ drummer software etc...and want to add some equipment to my home studio, so I can create competitive tracks to pitch film tv listings. Style wise I would like to be pretty versitile, but not getting too techno sounding. I am a pretty rootsy guitar player, and can play enough keyboards to make use of MIDI controller sounds and options. Anyone have any suggestions?

[mazz]

I think you should try to stay virtual as much as you can unless you like hardware instruments. Most workstation type units tend to fall out of fashion after a while and the upgrade paths usually peter out after a while. A big buck device like the Korg Oasys has a lot of expandiblility built in, but at a price.Something like Kontakt 3 comes with a large sample library and has tons of third party library support would be a good place to start. The East West orchestra libraries in their current form won't run on an Intel Mac unless you have Kontakt anyway so that might be a good place to start. I think the new Kontakt 3 library is around 30G of samples. I'm pretty sure you can check out the included instruments at www.nativeinstruments.comYou already have EZ Drummer but the addition of Stylus RMX would put youin league with most Film/TV composers out there. Right now they're bundling all the Spectrasonics Expanders with it and it's a pretty awesome deal. Stylus by itself is really awesome but the addition of ALL the expanders for an extra 99 bucks or so is pretty cool, given that they used to be about 99 bucks each!For keyboard controllers, the M-Audio Axiom series looks nice. They have semi weighted keys which you might like for playing a wide variety of sounds and they have drum pads and some sliders, pots and transport controls built in. I've liked the feel of them when I've played them in the store. They are USB so on Mac OS they're pretty much plug and play and the drivers are pretty good for the extra features. Having all of that built in to one keyboard means more desk space available for that new Lava Lamp I know you've been wanting! Just my 2centsMazz

[leejohnson]

Hey Mazz, thanks for the info. I apreciate your help, and will look into the gear you listed. Of particular help was your forsight as to what will be upgradeable in a couple years verses hardware that will become obsolete.BestLee

[matto]

I would agree with mazz that Kontakt is a good place to start, both because it comes with a very sizeable and varied sample library, but also because a lot of third party offerings are available for it, so you can expand the library according to your needs. Stylus RMX is a great rhythm tool which perfectly complements something like EZ Drummer.This would get you started...once you familiarize yourself with these tools you'll figure out where you need more ammunition, depending on the projects you wish to tackle.