Making Music on a Budget: Workstation

Musicians and composers on a tight budget face an uphill battle to produce marketable tracks. Here's how I approach the problem, starting with recording and sequencing.

In my opinion, for an aspiring music composer or producer, the workstation is the single biggest piece of the puzzle. When I say workstation, I mean the virtual workstation that is now the mainstay of computers, and increasingly of tablets and even smartphones. You use the workstation to sequence electronic or sampled parts, and also to record real time digital audio of live performances, such as vocals. The sequenced parts and real time performances go on digital tracks. Any decent workstation should then give you tools to mix the tracks in your production to get the balance of sound you want, plus the ability to add digital effects like reverb to make your mix sound better. When your mix is ready, the workstation should allow you to output it to multiple sound formats, such as wav or mp3.

Price points of workstations vary wildly with some running hundreds of dollars and others absolutely free. There's also a wide variety of features available. Some of the higher end workstations include gobs of effects and advanced editing capabilities, while some of the free ones have almost no effects at all. I didn't even try the high end software since I knew I wasn't going to buy their stuff. I had no desire to potentially fall in love with something, only to have to buy a lower-priced package and end up with buyer's remorse. I did try some of the free packages, but they either lacked features I felt I needed, such as effects, or I had difficulty working with them. In the end I was fortunate to find a workstation that had the features I wanted at a reasonable cost.

My current workstation choice is Acoustica Mixcraft. Now on Version 6, Mixcraft has a surprising amount of capability for just 75 bucks ($74.95 to be exact). That's a fraction of some similar tools out there. Mixcraft comes with a set of serviceable, if not world-beating, effects. I can control and automate individual tracks, which is great for things like fades in or out. It also comes with a set of software synths and sampled instruments that allowed me to get going immediately, which was very nice. Some of the saxophone samples are actually quite good for coming from a low end workstation.

When I want more instruments, I have lots of options, because Mixcraft can support DX, VST, and Firewire plug-in formats for maximum flexibility. Even after using it for over a year, I still occasionally stumble on a capability I didn't know Mixcraft had. Everything I currently do, I mix down to standard wav files, but Mixcraft gives me the capability to mix to higher quality wav formats, as well as mp3 and others. One thing it does not support is Dolby 5.1, but that's not a problem for me at this stage. Plus the neat little utility bundled in that lets you use your computer keyboard as a piano keyboard means I can put ideas down literally anywhere I have my laptop.

All in all, if you're looking to start composing and producing music on a shoestring, you can do a lot worse than Mixcraft 6. In subsequent articles I'll talk about other aspects of my studio, including effects, mastering, and more.