i know many of you are very talented and experienced in IDM. as an electronic musician, how does one approach a career in making music and playing live? is there any specific advice or equipment suggestions on how to start as an amateur? thanks.

well most people, these days use either a Mac Powerbook G4 or G5 it seems, well from what I know because they are very good with running software...this should possibly go somewhere else on this fora, but I think most people are trying to come up with more creative ideas dealing with music and/or art and sometimes it works, but sometimes it's just boring and adds on to someone elses ideas...

everyone looks for influences, most of todays stars look at aphex twin, autechre, squarepusher, LFO and others, whilst they looked at Erik Satie, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Kraftwerk, Afrika Bambaataa, Pierre Henry, Tod Dockstader, or perhaps Iannis Xenakis...


some equipment that people use today could be as follows:

Logic 5 Pro which now comes mainly on Macintosh (because they bought the rights to it), but you may be able to find some older pc versions on p2p programs...

Cubase VST

Reason by Steinberg, nice program and interface...

Fruity Loops or Acid, pretty minimal programs that you can make some neat sounds with...

Reaktor, Kontakt, or Traktor by Native Instruments


I don't make music like I use to because I am not knowledgeable in the art of synthesis, but I do have local friends, especially one that comes to mind, but stick with it and as i said, try to be creative and think of something that hasn't been tried yet, but that may be difficult these days, or you could find inspiration from Autechre perhaps and make your own mold of things...

thanks for the help and inspiration.

no problem, I try to help when I am able to.

For IDM I'd suggest some of the more outlandish synths like dcota and plex also.

Logic hits the nail on the head though, it's the most powerful and flexible program out there!!!

One day I'll own a powerbook.....

Clavia's Nord series is another great synth package, but it seems they might be a thing of the past...

Logic is very powerful and diverse, but damn, if you don't know what you're doing (with Reaktor as well), it's quite hard to even learn, much less master...

which brings to mind...I wonder what an older Hammond organ or Kurzweil would sound like if they were circuit bent in some way...

I think autechre were constantly circuit bending stuff. I believe they still don't use any software synths, it's all still hardware.

there are a lot of small companies doing different music softwares. I have not used them but they sound pretty fun.

like Renoise, a tracker:
http://www.renoise.com/

Bidule is a realtime modular creation studio aimed mainly at artists seeking a new creative environment to experiment with:
http://www.plogue.com/bidule/

a tracker? oh i hate mod plug trackers...I was trying to use one of those back in the day and it just gave me a freakin headache...I had forgotten about them until you just mentioned it

yeah, tracker got too many numbers and stuff, it does look confusing at first. but I will always feel it is confusing to use unless I actually try it out myself.