/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Who knows. I mess with audio for no particular reason at this point.
If you want to go that path, just know that music is more than a guitar and percussion or an orchestra with french horns.

Cakewalk is good and free if you're looking for a DAW.
I'd also take a look at the Touhou midi collection here so you don't have to figure the melodies out by ear.
https://gamebanana.com/projects/35179

I'm using FL, but any DAW will work.

>>33557425
>>33557631
thank you!
wasn't there a huge 2hu Midi thread a few days ago?
I missed the links

>>33558102
>a huge 2hu Midi thread a few days ago?
I think I saw a MIDI thread but I don't know about a music thread?

Opinions on audacity? Is that a decent program to make 'original' arrangements with or is that more for importing songs and tweaking them?

>>33562708
As far as I know it's extremely barebones, you should look into proper DAW programs. In the end it's down to what kind of workflow you prefer but there's Ableton Live, Reaper, Cubase, Logic and whatever. If you're an autist on Linux your options are really limited tho.

>>33562708
>Is that a decent program to make 'original' arrangements with or is that more for importing songs and tweaking them?
Don't use it for production. It's good for recording due to the UI, but it lacks many things you can find elsewhere. It offers the same, but it requires more work to do it, sometimes to less effect than something modern.
Don't use it unless your at the end of whatever you're doing.

or just skip all the programs and just beatbox some arrangements

>>33562708
audacity is good for editing audio and you can incorporate the results into music, but it's not meant for creating music. it doesn't have things like basic instrumental synth sounds that music-producing DAWs have.

to the sky

last one in case OP has anymore questions

Go crazy and make Touhou noise arrangements

>>33589205
oh an otomad?

>>33564184
>If you're an autist on Linux your options are really limited tho.
I'll do my best trying with LMMS

How do you make an arrangement? What part of the original song is it meant to follow?

>>33556589
I remember a guide on Youtube that went into the elements you see in 2hu music and what gives it that certain character, but I can't find it anymore. But I don't think you must rely on guides. If you want to do it, I would say just go for it! I think a person should try his best and try to improve no matter where he is, even if he is using Mario Paint

I want to make every kind of Touhou fanwork: I want to make Touhou music arrangements, I want to play them live on the piano in public like EpreTroll, I want to draw Touhou fanart and Touhou fan comics, I want to develop Touhou fangames, and I want to write fanfiction and poetry inspired by Touhou. And I want to become fluent in Japanese so I can translate Touhou.

Touhou is going to make me into a Renaissance man, or it's going to kill me. Probably the latter.

I want to sing for Touhou arrangements, but I haven't got a good mic yet
see me in a few months

>>33602207
You could also just do one of these things, and work together with people that do the others.

>>33602533
/jp/ really should work together on some 2hu arranges, we can be the ExplodingVans circle.

If you don't have background of playing any musical instruments, I say buy a cheap digital piano or keyboards and spend some money to pay for 6 months basic piano lessons

Playing around with any DAW without being able to put any music that you have in mind through muscle memory sucks hard

>>33556589

>>33602595
>we can be the ExplodingVans circle.
underrated, but I don't know if I can say that.

>>33608184
it accurately depicts our demeanor

>>33556589
Cocks...

>>33610922
Recreating the theme of the touhou you find the sexiest with cock slap samples

>>33602595
if nothing else we should do another /jp/ sings

god... why is this so difficult...

>>33557425
Huh, so I downloaded Cakewalk, and i'm kind of lost.
Do i just open up a MIDI and move around the instruments?

>>33616389
That would be interesting. What would we sing though

>>33620670
something like that, you could probably find more indepth guides online, you just have to be persistent enough to read and understand them earnestly

>>33618469
the easiest thing to start doing is singing, but it's probably harder if you don't want to sing anything but 2hu stuff even for practice
i already sung a bit before the pandemic, but the moments I was free to just have fun singing along to songs on my computer were great learning experiences, and there's shit tons of guides on the net to help you once you "get" how to sing even if you suck at having tone.
Playing an instrument feels like more of a question of dexterity, not to mention you have to sit down with it instead of just deciding to go ham. Am considering trying a piano still tho, but first I have to get one that I can plug to my computer.

>>33618469
it's not easy. it takes practice.

>>33627877
just pick something with an alright entryway
someone with dexterity typing could probably shift over to a keyboard pretty well

>>33629834
>someone with dexterity typing could probably shift over to a keyboard pretty well
true.
if you play the piano, that's an extra plus as well.

>>33556589
Reaper is great. It's free, even once the pop up prompt runs out of days, you can click cancel after five seconds for as long as you like without paying.

VST4Free is a website with free VST instruments. Look around and see what you find once you have reaper/another DAW.

If you want to write music, you'll need to learn scales. It's not as complicated as it sounds.

Good luck m8.

When in doubt, just hit the black keys randomly. Eb Pentatonic is very Touhou sounding!

>>33633807
hit the white keys instead

/jp/ doesn't seem to like music

What’s a touhou song with a simple structure? Want to try messing with one in this cakemix program.

Also anyone know a good resource for sound libraries?

>>33643026
I don't play music myself but I'd consider Tomboyish Girl to be pretty simple.

>>33644060
this
it doesn't have too many elements, so you can build on it or use it as a basis.

>>33644060
>>33652511
Okay cool, that’s one of my favorites anyway so it’ll be a good place to start.

>>33655794
Remember to create sheet music

rise

>>33665808
From the grave

>>33593198
Hey, how has your experience been with LMMS? I've been considering checking that out, too.

>>33670554
It's the only DAW I've really ever used so I don't have the best frame of reference, but it seems fine to me for making something ok. Finding VSTs that work on Linux is a pain so I mainly use soundfonts now, but they worked just fine when I was on Windows.

Musician here
Remember that bass is extremely important and you have more instruments than strings/grand/lead/brass available

There was an anon that made a pipe organ arrange. I hope that anon makes more.

Is possible to learn to play a piano on a normal desktop keyboard?

>>33683023
If you have Cakewalk there's an option to use keyboard for the piano roll.

>>33683586
I'll look to getting that sometime during the weekend then.

>>33676592
Thanks for sharing. Where do you find soundfonts, out of curiosity?
Also, this is might be a dumb question, but how well has using Windows VSTs through Wine worked? Glossing over a couple search results, it seems to be possible. Particularly curious about the Roland VSTs that provide some of the same samples as the SD-90 and SC-88, but their names are escaping me at the moment.

Question for the anon(s?) who recommended cakewalk

Apparently they got bought out and are now bandlab, is that what you're using or is there an 'outdated' version that's still cakewalk which is better?

Asking cause I've used plenty of programs that were flatout worse after any sort of update. I usually don't update any artistic program I use anymore. So I wouldn't be surprised if there's an older version that's better.

>>33687344
I just tend to look up random soundfont sites and use the ones from there.
I think I tried getting it working with WINE, but I wasn't able to, you might have more luck with that though.

>>33680969
>There was an anon that made a pipe organ arrange. I hope that anon makes more.
link?

>>33556589
Get a kazoo and a cheap walmart microphone.
Start your own youtube channel

>>33687814
no thats the one, download bandlab and cakewalk is the program is in there

If I want to make a 2hu otomad how would I go about turning a scream into a sound I can play like a piano?
Is there a tutorial on this?
It's probably on a DAW right but which one makes this the simplest to learn?

>>33701998
I'm not sure.
The way I see it happening is mapping out the music itself and substituting the sound for whatever else you want to use.

I'm currently learning how to play piano, and holy hell, it's hard. Coordinating hands AND hitting the right keys AND keeping the rhythm AND reading the notes on the sheet ahead so I don't stall, all of that at the same time feels like it's too much. If nothing else, I'm now respecting musicians way more, this multitasking is insane.

>>33709080
It's a learned skill, but a good teacher is crucial.
I quit years ago because we did fuck all. I don't regret it since the end result was lack luster from what I saw.
If you think the piano is hard, just wait until you get to any instrument that uses wind.

>>33709080
just keep playing, you will get better naturally over time as your hands become accustomed to it.

>>33556589
Have you considered to use a music tracker instead of a DAW? They look complicated, but fairly easy once you get the hang of it, plus they have really low system requirements. I managed to learn the basics of MilkyTracker in a few weeks.

>>33683586
Where would I be able to acquire Cakewalk as is right now?

Once you find a DAW you like, you can pick up some soundfonts if you want other instruments than the default piano.

Install a soundfont vst like sforzano, which is free. Then import soundfonts, for example chrono trigger or you can build your own soundfont library using touhou samples. Use that stuff as instruments and get a variety of sounds going.

>>33717622
youll need to make a bandlab account, download their Assistant which is basically a program that offers cakewalk, and download it through there.
its just extra steps but its still free

>>33701998
There are a lot of ways depending on your setup, some of them are

- If your scream source is from real life and you want to play it live via keyboard, then sample that scream using a mic and plug in that mic to your keyboard 'mic in', then assign that scream to your keyboard keys. Alternatively, if your scream source is from an audio file, plug in your phone / computer to your 'audio in' then assign that scream to your keyboard keys. How to do this step by step will be included in your keyboard manual book, afaik the keyboard which can support this are upper tier Yamaha PSR, Yamaha Tyros, and Casio MZX, I don't know about the Korg / Roland equivalents

- If your scream source is from real life and you want to assign that to your DAW you need to buy a usb soundcard (for example Presonus Studio or Focusrite Scarlett) and assign that to your DAW's piano rolls. If your scream source is from an audio file it's easier though, you only need to drag & drop that audio file to your DAW sample libriaries and drag and drop those samples again to assign them to your piano rolls

>>33709080
Keep grinding and good luck anon

>>33701998
keep in mind that you dont need to "turn a scream into something thats playable" in order to make an otomad, as that would require a midi keyboard. You could instead just drag your scream samples into the daw and pitch shift them until they match the song's melody, i'd recommend using REAPER since it's really really efficient in cutting/manipulating/managing samples.

Just make sure to set your Project BPM to the song youre covering, and using 1/32 grid lines, it'll make it easier to time your samples to the music

>>33715576
I've never had a hard time with wind instruments but piano was really difficult for me when I tried it. On a wind instrument you never play more than one note at a time, and since articulation is done with your tongue you don't need to worry about how hard your press each key. You do have to build and maintain embouchure, but that's just a matter of physically training a muscle, which isn't really all that different from building the muscle tone in your fingers required to articulate properly on a piano. Lung capacity is similar.

up

whats this cookie thing about with otomads?

>>33741259
?

>>33556632
Based brickwaller

>>33749752
>brickwaller
I get the feeling you're mocking me. I should get around to leveling it out since i forgot to.

up again

Are there any good guides for vocal training?

>>33756778
I don't personally know of any, but here's to hoping someone comes along

up

up again.

one more.

>>33733709
>Just make sure to set your Project BPM to the song youre covering, and using 1/32 grid lines
thanks for this
is there a way to find out the bpm by just using your head? or do i have to google it every time?

This is a little more specific but does anyone know if theres a group or place for newer musicians to meet and discuss with others who are also trying to get out of that beginner stage? I tried /mu/ but everyone is generally awful.

>>33789401
I don't know of any.
>I tried /mu/
/mu/ isn't very helpful for that now.

last one.

thanks for this thread

>>33787796
you'd use a tap for bpm tool for that (for example all8.com, REAPER also has a built-in one where you tap the small bpm box.) simply tap along with the song's beat, you might get it wrong if you're a beginner though. try finding a wiki page featuring your song (Remywiki for jubeat/beatmania songs etc.) learn the bpm from there and then try using a tap for bpm tool, you'll kind of understand why the song is "138 bpm." it'll be great practice and after a while you'll be counting them yourself.

When in doubt just search up "[Track Name] osu!" on google and the osu map page will probably have the correct BPM

one more.
this thread might be a bit helpful.

>>33818634
>When in doubt just search up "[Track Name] osu!" on google and the osu map page will probably have the correct BPM
Not that anon but I just tried this. Seems like they only have records for fan mixes and not the ZUN originals.

Most results for Beloved Tomboyish Girl were 140 but another was 200. I'm assuming from that the original was also 140 but this is unfortunately not a surefire method.

Tried using a few online tap tools and had no fucking clue how to identify the beat of the song, I kept getting caught on the melody and really dont know what to look for or listen to.

>>33789401
Nothing like that comes to mind honestly, because in my opinion music making is a relatively niche activity now, there's almost no money to be made in it despite how good you are so there's almost no incentive for a group of people to learn/socialize/perform with each other unlike in the old days. Your best bet if you want to get good is to take lessons

>>33826919
ah.. so the method i used back then wasnt as effective as i thought it was

>Tried using a few online tap tools and had no fucking clue how to identify the beat of the song, I kept getting caught on the melody and really dont know what to look for or listen to.

you basically imitate a metronome with those tools. most basic way i could put it is that you count "kicks" steadily even if those kicks are not present, or more frequent than normal. i'll recommend you to practice with a specific song since you don't want to get caught on the melody

https://youtu.be/5syZTH1pfeE
wonder wobbler, bpm is written right there "186" now before you start practicing, google "metronome" set google's metronome to 186, hit play and try to tap your desk along with that. it'll give you the idea

now open up a tap for bpm tool, start listening the song, from 0:10 on start "counting the kicks" it should start high, over time it should go down to 186 (around 10-18 timing taps) and stay there. you'll be doing the same thing with every song anyway, so practice with any song you want, ideally a song that you know the bpm of.

on a side note; once you figure out how to count bpms by yourself i highly recommend using REAPER's built-in tap for bpm tool, since once you get the correct bpm of a song, the song's waveforms kind of align with the grid lines like in the attached picture.

>>33838332
This was a very nice post.

>>33556589
gay

/jp/ arrange group when

>>33838332
This is very helpful.

i downloaded Cakewalk, there's a ton of dials and knobs, man this looks so intimidating.
Is there a video that just goes over what i'll be using the most?

>>33868327
Every DAW is the same overly complicated mess of what are essentially the same knobs and dials. You must simply continue slogging through tutorials until it makes sense.

Learn an instrument like piano and study theory properly while doing so. It will take you the farthest

>>33756778
Raise your voice, The four pillars of singing, Complete vocal technique. There's a bunch of good resources out there but it's not the same as having someone point out your mistakes and correct them. If you by any means do have access to a teacher taking lessons is what you should do though. Learning on your own puts you at risk of bad habits that could've been easily corrected and inhibit your singing.

>>33874076
All those are books, right? Any way to get them the totally legal in-minecraft way?
I've been singing for a while, but while I've certainly got the feel for singing, being able to put it in perspective to what pros recommend could be nice. At least until I've got the opportunity to go to a teacher.

>>33879546
check /t/ if it's not still full of worthless porn torrents.

I think I hit the jackpot, found a huge supply of touhou sheet music

https://musescore.com/hub/video_games?text=Touhou

That site has a play button for the sheet music that highlights what is being played in real time, and all sheets I've looked at show the beat, key signature and time signature too. Very useful.

There's at least a few games that have their entire OSTs on there in a single webpage, for those you just have to scroll down to see the other songs. The player even loops where it's supposed to. Really glad to have found this.

Anons brand new to music (like me) who want to make use of the above may find this useful: https://hellomusictheory.com/learn/types-of-musical-notes/

And for >>33868327 and anyone else new to cakewalk (also like me) I found this guide to be quite helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAHn_0Vy-Zg

Not touhou related but I feel like these ocarina of time songs are perfect for absolute beginner practice because of how short/simple they are: https://musescore.com/user/22059071/scores/4772251
This is the simplest, most unimpressive thing in the world but it feels good to have done it and have figured out how to use this DAW: https://vocaroo.com/1npym6esUpmz

If you do anything, upload it to vocaroo or somewhere and share it with the anons here.

>>33886645
>music theory
I never went too far into music, but that seems to be a rabbit hole.

>>33611374
I volunteer to be the slapee

I always wondered this, but is it like cheating or something to use a MIDI of a given song as a base and just change stuff around in it?

>>33895255
If you're just making fan music who cares man, have fun and do it how you want. You're not "cheating" anyone

>>33895255
No, not really.
You aren't cheating, but you'll later find yourself limited since you'd have better luck manipulating the notes to however you want them.

>>33893083
If you go far into it then sure, but if you want to use a DAW then being able to read basic sheet music is gonna be a pretty useful skill.

Plus it's not like a real instrument where you have to have the meanings memorized and need to be able to play as you read. I can't do that at all, but having references to check 'what note is this' or 'what does this symbol mean' is handy. I would advocate doing it this way instead of trying to grind out memorization about all this stuff, that would be too much work for too little fun and would delay actual music making for a long time.

If you have this image, the one in my last post, and that link for what basic notes mean, then you should be able to use the majority of touhou sheetmusic on that musescore site for whatever DAW you're using.

>>33895255
It's just a faster way of transcribing notes, who cares? The result is what people hear.

The reason I'm leaning into plugging the notes one by one is because I tried to import a MIDI but the DAW didn't have all the same instrument samples, so it substituted them with its own library, and it became more confusing to tell what was supposed to be what than if I'd just plugged the notes in for each instrument myself. Plus the MIDI seemed to have more instruments than the official song, so it was already kind of a remix and I couldn't tell in the DAW what was new and what was just subtle in the original.

If that's a non-issue for your songs/DAW though, then go for it.

Plugging in the notes yourself is gonna give you a better understanding of the song, but how much that matters depends on how far you want to go.

>>33895649
Oh, and this image.

Best of luck anon, starting next week I'm going to teach myself a new day after years of working with a really old, super outdated version of cubase that I just could never get to work on windows 10 when I made the switch. So we're going to be rookies together!

I want to make vocaloid stuff eventually.

>>33897653
Good luck to you as well anon.

>>33897653
i recently tried to use my old version of cubase from 2009 on win10 and had to upgrade
the new interface is very different

Intravenous and intertwined

again

I am exhausted, I can barely hold myself awake let alone play right now, but I did put myself through the basics of plug in compatibility and setting up a recording with my current set up et voila! https://vocaroo.com/1kwYbwlGuOP7

Don't give up touhou anon, I'll be very mad if you do.

>>33917634
this sounds really good!

>>33917634
Inspirational post

>>33917634
Nicely done dude
I had a guitar at one point but I forgot what all happened to it.
Godspeed.

https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm38486520

>>33920854
Sheet music for Stage 3

up since it's the weekend.

again

practice makes perfect.

cringe

up we go...

the original Reisen song was a lot slower than i thought

I'm not gonna turn this into my music shitposting thread, especially since until I put vocaloids on them it hardly counts as "otaku culture" anyway but I finally developed this little folksy, kinda cheesy riff I've had in my head and I wanted to share it with 2hu non since I know getting into music making on your own can be very discouraging.

See you round anon! Hope you share some of you stuff here someday!
https://voca.ro/16ewebUFI7ns

Does somebody have a MIDI of Touhou 18's Fortunate Kitten song?!

>>33962183
Is there a midi?
>>33961615
Nice dude. The OC thread is almost at bump limit so there might be another one. Posting here is fine until then I guess.

>>33963225
i found it but its very basic
https://mega.nz/file/CRxiybjJ#Zy7rYtjATrY5sGsMJIVccEdhLDu1RsNBH1Tpuknorvc

>>33676780
In case anybody missed this post.
I know I did.

up we go.

>>33961615
That was very pleasant to listen to, anon.

how to git gud

>>33971461
The first step is being able to read sheet music, followed by being able to tell where the keys are.

>>33971461
See >>33886645

jaypee creativity

How do anons feel about posting nontouhou works? Getting used to using a DAW thanks to this thread but havent done anything touhou related yet.

I figure it might help motivate people to keep going, but I can also see why anons wouldnt want a bunch of remixes of non /jp/ stuff.

Well, I guess Nintendo IS Japanese, but it’s more /v/ than /jp/.

>>33992179
If it's video games I figure it qualifies.

>>33556589
>>33595354
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i3Otdvu9ao
Is this the vid you were talking about?

>>33897653
>>33917634
>>33961615
keep it up anons!
>>33789401
well, could always make one

>>33998025
>Key Changes in Touhou Music
Not him, but I've noticed it. I guess I'll watch that later.
Playing PCB and going to LoLK feels so different it's a bit unsettling.

>>33999750
>well, could always make one
I would absolutely be on board with this. A group of learning amateurs all specializing in /jp/ stuff would be really nice.

>>33886645
Finally did the rest of these zelda jingles. Some were crap but I like how these three turned out.

Saria Song Bass: https://vocaroo.com/1gndHznsGdTl
Song of Time on Sitar (warning, loud): https://vocaroo.com/1ndMWv3Oa3rX
Zelda's Lullaby Piano: https://vocaroo.com/1aWQza3nMaLQ

Again, all very simple and honestly unimpressive, but these were very good learning exercises. Besides becoming familiar with the basics of the DAW, I learned a little about how to make MIDI instruments sound less fake.

1: Duplicate one instrument exactly, but set the two to equally opposite sides on the pan. So, if one is set to 'pan +25' to come out on the right speaker, have a second exact set of notes on the exact same instrument set to -25 to come out on the left speaker an equal amount. Sounds way better than having one channel play out through both speakers.

2: Just choosing the right kind of MIDI instrument for the notes. This is maybe bigger than point 1, having the wrong kind of piano for one set of notes not only sounds bad, but sounds like a fake synthesized instrument instead of like a real one. With a different song, the piano MIDI that sounded faker before may now sound like the more authentic one.

Both are probably obvious, especially the second, but I'm new at this so fuck it. With enough sound engineering maybe point 2 is irrelevant or maybe there's better ways to handle point 1, but for now these are the DAW lessons I'm taking from this. Had some music theory epiphanies too but wont bother going into those here.

Also, make sure to watch the volume levels when using cakewalk. This DAW seems to have an autocap to prevent too-loud notes from blowing out your speakers when you test a song, but that doesn't get applied to the song during rendering which means playback on the mastered version may sound like bbbkkzzbkzkbzkbz when in the DAW it sounded fine.

Enough practice, next time will be a touhou cover.

up

>>34009330
Bass always sounds weird to me-- still nice though man.
Also, thanks for the volume warning.

>>33595354
I think you mean this video, this is a very practical approach to transcribe ZUN's music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV01NZzeeGg

Also don't forget pic related which sums up like every Touhou music theory ever up to Ten Desires

>>34017764
Where are you finding these?

>>34017764
I dont have the slightest clue what anything in that image means.

>>34023230
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/1649996?tags=touhou+chart

>>34023780
Just keep learning while having fun anon, Touhou progression from my experience is actually basic jazz progression but without all those fancy ninth/eleventh/thirteen/extended chords. The reasons behind not using those fancy chords are actually very practical :
1. He liked strings so much and doesn't want to make his songs too convoluted (fancy chords using strings often sounds too thick or too thin and unfocused)
2. He used to compose for retro 8bit game music which has limited polyphony, essentially means that you can't use a lot of notes simultaneously
3. He wants to make it simpler and more easy listening for the players
4. Another big reason is probably because he's too drunk while composing so he doesn't want to think that much lol

If my experience is something to goes by, you can start to transcribe and understand the reasoning behind ZUN's composition after a year or two of basic piano/guitar and theory lessons combined with a year of jazz lessons

I always liked this kind of things, shame that I'm too much of a wagie and don't have a lot of space for piano now, anyway I'm sure this post will bore a lot of you but I hope that some will found this interesting enough

>>33602207
Touhou actually uses the same kinds of weird modes (scales starting on a different note) and counterpoint that Renaissance music does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGi9ODzjtCo

what are the drums that ZUN uses?

>>34025670
>Touhou progression from my experience is actually basic jazz progression but without all those fancy ninth/eleventh/thirteen/extended chords
Maybe that's why it feels nice to listen to most times.

>>33556589

>>34034692
I'm not quite sure.
I don't remember that being brought up.

Aim

The weekend is here once more...

>>33556589
Hey anon I'm just dumping a bunch of info I wish I knew when I was starting out years ago.
Reaper is the absolute worst starting point because it's so unfriendly even to experienced DAW users. Start with Studio One because it's as easy as FL Studio to handle, but uses way less CPU and has more features.
When you're starting your music making journey you're gonna want to focus more on songwriting than audio production for the sake of fun and preserving your sanity, so you need instruments that sound sexy right out of the gate when you start playing around with them.
I learned the hard way that it's more about what you use as a foundation than it is post-processing which makes music sound good.
Grab Kick2 for electronic kick sounds.
Serum, NI Massive and Nexus for electronic synthesizers.
Djinnbass for virtual bass guitar.
Spitfire for orchestral instruments.
NI Noire for piano.
GGD for modern, clean and punchy live acoustic drum sounds.
Heavyocity for huge cinematic drums and pretty much anything "soundtrack" or "film" sounding.
Strezov for male, female and child choirs.
Prominy V-Metal for virtual guitars.
Neural DSP for virtual guitar amplifiers and cabinets.
Neural Parallax to process Djinnbass.
A subscription to Splice to use any and all electronic loops you'll ever need.
For chiptune I actually have no idea, but I do know there is a lot of both good and even free stuff for that.
For mixing and mastering you'll want a combo of Waves and Izotope stuff plus the Weiss collection from Softube. If you can only choose one, then choose Izotope because it's very easy for beginners.
Learn gain staging before learning anything else.
There! You're ready to go and make the best Touhou arrangements in the world! Good luck anon!

>>34059625
Excellent and useful post, thankyou.

Do you have an opinion on Cakewalk?

>>34034692
https://chrisoft.org/blog/post/2019-04-25.html

Cakewalk comes with TTS-1, which is almost the same thing as the hardware ZUN uses. It will be missing a couple of SC-88 patches, but you can find them in Roland Sound Canvas VA and SRX series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BalIlzd73Vg

Drum sounds for EoSD are Room Set, Power Set (Lunar Dial), and Electric Set (Tomboyish Girl).

PCB onward uses Steinberg LM-4 Mark II which is abandonware. You can find rips by googling "touhou gator kit".

>>34059625
Not them. Currently don't have access to a bass guitar. Would you recommend djinnbass over just playing my regular guitar through an octave pedal?

>>34059625
>Start with Studio One because it's as easy as FL Studio to handle, but uses way less CPU and has more features.
In general or relative to FL?
Also, thank you. Thank you for the recommendations as well.

>>34060004
I've never used Cakewalk myself so I couldn't tell you sorry to say.
>>34073187
It's always better to use a virtual bass instrument over a downpitched guitar. Djinnbass is mainly for heavy bass tones, but if you want smoother bass tones you should check out MODO BASS as it has every bass guitar sound you could want outside of the one Djinnbass provides. Not sure if you know the Vocaloid producer Utsu-P but his low-end which is both clean and huge at the same time comes from MODO BASS.
>>34076732
Both relative to FL and in general. Studio One just beats out a ton of DAWs for both effective resource management and utility. It's as light on CPU as Reaper, has a piano roll that's better than FL Studio's due to a fantastic humanization function and easy note division, easy gain staging, allows you to change time signatures and tempos easier than any other DAW mid-project, and the routing is also the best I've ever used out of any other DAW in my life. It even has tons of tutorials online if you need them. The only two weaknesses it has are that it's a 64bit host, which means you will need to buy jBridge in order to run 32bit plugins through it, and it doesn't have the Pro Tools' "Heat" plugin, but neither does any other DAW that isn't Pro Tools. You can make up for not having Heat by using third party saturator plugins, like the Waves NLS channels, Steven Slate Virtual Mix Rack console emulators, or even tape emulation the best of which are HoRNet Tape and Analog Channel from McDSP. While I'm on the subject I may as well also tell you that if you're wondering why your music doesn't sound "warm" or "punchy" or "full" enough, it's because you don't have Heat or a good third party saturator plugin; It has nothing to do with EQ or compression or even your mastering.

>>34076732
>>34059625
Fantastic posts.

Regarding Studio One, should the basic free version give me everything essential or should I be sailing the high seas for the Pro version?

>>34077849
I'll give it a try then. Thanks.
>The only two weaknesses it has are that it's a 64bit host, which means you will need to buy jBridge in order to run 32bit plugins through it,
I was going to say it'll be a problem later and to focus on the music until I saw
>While I'm on the subject I may as well also tell you that if you're wondering why your music doesn't sound "warm" or "punchy" or "full" enough, it's because you don't have Heat or a good third party saturator plugin; It has nothing to do with EQ or compression or even your mastering.
Thanks for the explanation too.

>>34089480
I haven't used the free version but I've taken a look at its limitations just now. Go for Artist since the free version has a limit on inputs and busses which makes it impossible to create high quality productions. Also unrelated to your question but I forgot to mention a third party equalizer, so grab FabFilter Pro-Q 3. It's the one everyone uses.

If anyone is looking for software or whatever else, https://audioz.download/ has pretty much every audio production related thing you could want. Just don't be dumb and click on the usenet links.
I'd also recommend running any exes sandboxed or in a VM first just to be safe. Although, I haven't run into any issues with the stuff I've downloaded.

>>34109985
wait what's wrong with usenet

>>34109985
Interesting site.

>>34109985
>I'd also recommend running any exes sandboxed or in a VM first just to be safe
That will catch some malware, but a lot of malware these days operates more like a sleeper agent, and activates later on when your guard is down. If you look up released reports on crypto-ransomware, it usually enters the environment weeks/months before it actually activates.
These days it's viable to just keep it in a VM if you want to avoid casual malware attacks, using a locked-down SAMBA/NFS share to share content between the host and the VM. There's still a risk of the malware embedding itself into the files on that share of course.
And while the audio shouldn't be a big issue, you can mitigate the potential latency/quality issues of VMs with network audio:
https://github.com/duncanthrax/scream

>>34111256
He's just telling you to be smart about what you click on.
Check the bottom when you hover over a link to check where it leads.

>>34109985
super useful, really nice find

I feel like an entire guide can be made EoT

>>34140344
Do it.

>>34059625
Reaper is fine and arguably more beginner friendly than other daws (other than FL maybe?) because it combines aux/bus/audio tracks into 1 so you don't need to worry routing etc stuff that much although if you're a beginner you probably don't wanna mess with those either way. The only thing I hate about it is that it's a bit unstable with large projects (for me) but I ctrl+s every 30sec habitually and so should anybody working with DAWs but otherwise it does everything I need it to do and anything it can't do you can usually program an action for it.

Also if I was a complete beginner I'd start off with learning how to balance a mix, both in terms of EQ and dynamics. Getting your instruments to sit in their correct places and playing at correct volume levels is about 90% of a good sounding mix (along with EQing, which is about half of that 90%). A general strategy I recommend is to start off with your drums at -10dB in the mix and then one by one add the rest of the mix until it sounds "right" and generally this order is bass->rhythmguitar->leadguitar->synths->panned instruments (I produce metal mostly so it might vary per genre) and how you'll know it sounds "right" is either by experience or by using a lot of references... A lot... Get used to always having a reference track of the type of sound you're going for and comparing your track to it. There is also literally no shame in using presets and I would even advice against mixing stuff like drums from scratch unless you know what you're doing.

I can't manage to make my digital piano sound well. I bought a small box thing to record it, and it sounds pretty close to what it sounds over headphones, but it's nowhere near close to a good piano sound.
Does anyone know what I need to edit the sound properly?

>>34144602
if you can use it as a midi controller then you can plug it into a DAW and use a good sounding piano plugin like NI The Giant but I dunno if digital pianos work like that, and if the built in sound is crap then not much can be done with plugins outside of some EQ and compression

>>34144602
Why would you buy an audio interface for a digital piano you don't like the sound of? Are you recording mono by any chance? Moreover how cheap is this piano, because most digital pianos sound okay.

>>34144602
There should be settings to toggle things on the keyboard itself, unless you mean one of those featureless electric ones with only volume switches, etc.

>>34145415
It's a Yamaha P45 and it does sound very okay but it's nothing like the amazing clean piano sound you have in most songs
>>34145188
I will try this, I think I read about someone doing that to get theirs to sound nice too

>>34151179
You should use VST anon, entry level piano sounds bad no matter how good you played it. I'm loooking forward to your recording anon, always nice to see a fellow musician

>>34151179
You can pirate Pianoteq and use your digital piano as a midi controller with it, it sounds pretty decent. You can even use it as a VST in something like FL studio. You just need to plug it into your computer and it should work out of the box.
Also, I think Cakewalk has a free VST that has the same piano samples that are on ZUN's sound module.

>>34156680
I used a trial version of Pianoteq just now and it was really cool, I have no idea where to find pirated things though, the random websight I came across only offered me a 500kb pianoteq-download-installer.exe

>>34157326
like the other anon said audioz.download. it has a reputation being safe.