Sonic Distortion

Sonic Distortion

Make Beats Online With the Right Program

1. Simplicity

The program you use to your make beats online should be simple to use. If you have an idea for a song or a beat in your head, you should be able to at least get a sketch of the song programmed quickly and easily. An intuitive interface is important for this. If you have to click many boxes and hit "ok" buttons for every change you want to make things will go slowly and tediously and you'll really lose momentum and inspiration. Most beat patterns are programmed in to a timeline where each sound goes into a certain "slot". Putting beats in those slots should be as easy as clicking a box or pushing a button. It should be just as easy to change those beats once you've programmed them. 

2. Timing control

You should be able to adjust the timing. Most programs have a grid with the timeline going left to right and the sounds being triggered listed from top to bottom. This should be customizable. Can you make the pattern longer or shorter? Can you easily adjust the tempo speed to faster or slower? 

3. sequence

Songs have different parts and you will need the ability to string different patterns to each other in sequence to for a linear structure. This is something you should be able to control through the grid. 

4. Lots of sounds

You must also make sure the program has a large bank of sounds if you want to make beats online. Certain styles of songs call for certain sounds and you will need as many different sounds as possible to use. The program should have many different drum sets with multiple types of sounds for each drum. Twenty different snare sounds is a good start. Ten or twenty different bass kicks is also a good start. You will also want a lot of accompaniment. Horns, pianos, guitars, strings, crash hits, and other sound effects are all things you should have in a decent sized sound bank. 

5. Versatile Input Control

You should be able to control these sounds easily as well. Just like clicking boxes to put a beat in a certain spot, it should be possible to do the same with instrument sounds. Better yet, there should be a way to "play" out notes in an octave with keys like a piano has. If you have an external USB keyboard controller you can just play what you want to program on it, but if you don't have a controller you should just be able to "click" the note on the keys just like on a piano. There should also be pads for "hitting", just like on a physical drum machine. Maybe you'll want to tap out a drum sequence on the pads with your mouse clicks that is just too tedious to program in to slots. That's where the pads come in. 

6. Volume and Panning

Some sounds should be louder nd some should be softer in your patterns. The bass may be distorting or the hi hats may not be too quiet. You'll want to be able to increase the sounds with a mixer of some sort. The same goes for panning left and right for stereo effect. True separation is what makes stereo sound so interesting and you need to be able to change volume and pan parts for better isolation. 

7. Save it!

If you are going to make beats online, you are also going to want to share those beats online. You should be able to export or download your songs and beats into an mp3 or (other audio file) so you  can play them with another program. You must be able to save it on your hard drive for later use in case you choose to edit or play it for others on an mp3 player. There should be no loss of sound quality when exporting and downloading either.  

8. Affordability

The program should also be affordable and available. The whole point of needing to make beats online is to bypass the expensive musical and audio equipment that does the same thing as a good program. 

9. Support

Your beat making program should have good support. If this article doesn't make much sense to you then by all means make sure the program you use has lots of instruction, support, and tutorials to get you started and answer your questions. 

http://ezinearticles.com/?id=1892859

How should I order these effects pedals?

Boss TU-2 Tuner
Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor
Boss AC-3 Acoustic Simulator
Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive
Boss MD-2 Mega Distortion
Boss CE-5 Chorus Ensemble
MXR Wylde Overdrive
MXR Dyna Comp
BBE Sonic Stomp
Line 6 DL-4 Delay
Visual Sound Visual Volume Pedal

First off, that's way too many pedals. Do you *really* need all of those pedals in your signal chain all at once? More pedals means more power supplies (or more batteries!), more noise, more signal loss, more cables, and more complexity! I quickly learned when I was gigging that simple is far more important than getting "the perfect tone".... you don't want anything going wrong, or if it does you want it easy to fix... and more pedals means more things to go wrong!

Anyways... my preference (if I had to use all of them) would be...

Tuner - Dyna Comp - Overdrive - SD-1 - MD-2 - NS-2 - AC-3 - CE-5 - Volume Pedal - DL-4 - Sonic Stomp

Okay, so my reasoning is that the tuner needs the purest signal possible to work correctly. After that, a bit of compression will help fatten the signal up a bit, if I use it. Usually you want lower gain pedals going in to higher gain pedals if you want to use one to push the next one into more crunch, or after if you want to use the cleaner pedal as a solo boost. I chose the "crunch" order, or overdrive - the rest.

The NS-2 is a glorified noise gate, and I know that if you set the threshold at high and the decay to very fast, you can add some chunk to your palm-muted power chords. Can kill your sustain if your pickups aren't too high of output, though. Might need to dial in a bit of boost from your overdrive to keep that from happening, it depends on your rig.

Acoustic simulator before chorus, in case i'd want a chorused acoustic sound. Volume pedal before delay so that when I fade in or fade out it doesn't chop off the delayed sounds all weird.

The Sonic Stomp should always be the last pedal in your signal chain, or preferably the last pedal in your fx loop. Speaking of which, putting your modulation (chorus etc) and time-based (ie delay and reverb) effects in your fx loop will give them more clarity and bring them out more, and will let you use your chorus if you use your distorted channel. It can be cool to put a slight chorus on a distorted tone.

Anyhoo, that's my take on it.

Of course, I'd preferably use the tuner, MD-2, and Chorus, and that's it. My guitar is properly shielded/grounded, so I don't have any noise issues, I have decent output pickups, so I don't need compression, and pretty much everything else isn't of any use to me.... I'll use a multifx pedal for clean effects if necessary, but otherwise its usually just my wah pedal and my Boss Metalcore. Coupled with my tube preamp, of course... I have no complaints, gets me the tones I want... a good clean, a good distorted, and a good solo tone (wah has a solo boost).

Saul