Ask HN: Do you create music? Let's hear it! | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you create music? Let's hear it!

89 pointskyro115 comments

I've noticed that many of the hackers I've spoken to create their own music. I myself dabble in digital music, hip hop beats and what not, and know that others in this community do as well. I thought it'd be interesting to see the musical productions of hackers here. Maybe we'll see some patterns, who knows. So if you're a musician, pro or amateur, let's hear it.

Also, please specify what software you use, if any, in creating your music, for recording/mixing/mastering/etc.

I'll start with myself - http://www.virb.com/kyro - nothing terribly impressive. I have gotten much better since, I will tell you! I use Logic Pro 8 mainly now, but have also used Reason 4. Notes are entered in using a MIDI keyboard.

View on HN

I use FL Studio myself. http://thesixtyone.com/abledanger

I've also recorded some vocals using Adobe Audition and the USB Rock Band microphone. Not too shabby.

Great stuff. That's the kind of stuff I'd love to be able to make. I just really haven't gotten a hang of things that well yet. How long have you been doing this for? Do you have any resources that helped you along the way, other than just trial and error?

I started the first part of 2008. I don't have any musical training other than playing saxophone for a year in the 6th grade.

It's all been trial and error for me. Youtube has actually been very helpful in learning FL Studio. There are a lot of great howto videos out there. I also try to imitate parts of songs I really like. A drum loop, a melody, or a particular effect.

I also think one of the biggest factors is thesixtyone.com itself. The people on there are so helpful and encouraging you can't help but make better music.

thanks. i've noticed a greater number of artists using thesixtyone to test/iterate on demos...one is even financing his entire canadian tour from tips on t61 (bankai).

i suspect basic track analytics on t61 would create a lot of value for artists -- this is why we're hiring.

http://www.thesixtyone.com/static/jobs/

I'm glad to hear about the analytics.

Funny you brought up the Bankai tour. I'm planning on driving to Vancouver myself to see it.

A little background on the tour. Bankai is an electronic artist from Australia. He puts out some awesome music. A bunch of people from the t61 group Electro Freaks live in or around the Vancouver area and they decided to put together a series of shows featuring Bankai and other t61 artists. Bankai is crowdsourcing his trip to Canada. So far he has raised $1450.

Check out his progress here: http://www.bankai.fm/vancouver/

edit : I just logged in and noticed that I can upload a song a day on top of my limit, so some of my criticism is invalid. Thanks for the change, and for the advice!

I posted some songs to thesixtyone (http://www.thesixtyone.com/#/nihilocrat/) and wasn't happy with the experience. I'm guessing it's my own fault for sucking, but I do have to fault the site for having a "winner take all" attitude towards artists.

You're in a bad situation if the public doesn't like the tracks you post when you post them. You're practically invisible if you don't get lots of votes immediately, appealing specifically to thesixtyone's community tastes. I don't mean to whine, but I don't see hardly any downtempo/triphop with lots of bumps and thus there's not much encouragement for someone producing such tracks to post on thesixtyone.

To the victors, the spoils, but it's even more humiliating when you're unnoticed and forever stuck at Level 1. thesixtyone is definitely a listener's site (duh) because it doesn't encourage you to post partial songs you are working on and practically no one gives you technical criticism, merely things like "I like it when the song gets heavier in the middle". No one seems to be iterating on their tracks but instead submit only complete ones. Please excuse me if my anecdotal observations here don't match up with any metrics you've put together, maybe I have tunnel vision because I listen almost exclusively to the "dance" and "electronica" portions of the site.

About the Level 1 ghetto, is it meant to encourage us to just start over again with completely new tracks or is that just a side effect?

Even with these reservations, I think thesixtyone is a great music site with a great community.

First of all, I just gave your tracks a listen. I think they are fantastic.

Second, t61 changed the song upload rules a few weeks ago. You can upload one new song a day regardless of your level.

I think the best way to increase your listener and heart count is to be as engaged as possible.

- Create a listener account.

- Join a group. The Electro Freaks would appreciate what you are offering http://www.thesixtyone.com/group/Electro+Freaks/

- Add constructive comments on lots of songs.

I am a hacker and an amateur musician myself. Two years back when I realised that there is no service where you can upload audio and receive community help from the same platform (the only option then was to share your mp3 link on a php BB music forum and the experience sucked), I started http://www.muziboo.com - a social platform for sharing and discussing music. This is a place where other musicians can collaborate with your or offer technical help. Even though, my musical aspirations have taken a back seat because coding for Muziboo itself takes a lot of time, I have a learnt a lot through the community. The best part is the kind of collaborations that happen across georgraphies and genres. Am sure you will appreciate it.

Would love to get your feedback on the site. Please use the contact form (link in footer).

PS: I love t61 as a listener .. esp the fact that music keeps playing no matter what you do .. great interaction design there!

Gotta say, thesixtyone.com is my new favourite site! And that's speaking both as a listener and an artist. I've bought 3 albums in the past week from t61 artists.

I'm going to get everyone I can hooked on it! :)

Thanks++ for the 61 link! Great stuff (and your's was pretty good too).

Trafficlight, this is some really good stuff you got going. Keep it up! Especially Topography of the Sun

I like the production value, but I think it's past time we put 'Amen Brother' out to pasture. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

I disagree. I believe its discovery and wide use turns it into a respectable genre. Its use shouldn't be looked down upon any more than the use of the blues progression.

I also use FL Studio. http://vezquex.com/#music

Neat thread, I'm keen to see what comes out of it.

I've since moved away, but I was in a band called Dynamo Go back in New Zealand. We released an album for free in April this year:

http://www.dynamo-go.com/

Drums were tracked in a pro studio using protools, then the rest of the album was recorded using Ardour and UbuntuStudio with LADSPA plugins. The final master was done by somebody else using some other software.

We had done a couple of EPs and had been pretty unimpressed by the immense financial risks we had to take in order to get a distributor on board - having gone down that path previously and having had to work exceptionally hard just to recoup our investment, we released the full album for free, based on the fact that it involved zero upfront investment and lots more people would hear it. It worked out pretty well. It still gets half a dozen downloads a week, last time I checked my webserver stats.

I grew up in the demoscene, but got too old to keep hanging in it. I'm part of a bunch of semi-retired demo sceners and put out tunes and releases every once in a grand while.

http://fulcrum.antisoc.net/

I did the music for this demo http://fulcrum.antisoc.net/filemanager/active?fid=102

And a few other songs...they run a gamut of styles http://fulcrum.antisoc.net/filemanager/active?fid=97 http://fulcrum.antisoc.net/filemanager/active?fid=93 http://fulcrum.antisoc.net/filemanager/active?fid=84 http://fulcrum.antisoc.net/filemanager/active?fid=76 http://fulcrum.antisoc.net/filemanager/active?fid=61 http://fulcrum.antisoc.net/filemanager/active?fid=72 http://fulcrum.antisoc.net/filemanager/active?fid=69

http://www.thesixtyone.com/patrickryan/ http://www.ilike.com/artist/Patrick+Ryan+Music

Hardware - Presonus Firepod, Sterling Audio ST55 condenser mic, MXL 604 small condenser mic, ART MPA Gold Preamp

Software - Logic Express (for larger projects), Garageband (Simple and Easy)

+1 for Presonus Firepod. It's precisely what I use. Your stuff sounds good. http://www.tshaddox.com/?cat=10 if you're interested.

http://myspace.com/motion

two of us, both in chicago. npr says we "reinvent phil spectors wall of sound as a 50 foot tall electric fence." software-wise, we use ableton live for loop control.

will be headlining our label showacse @ midpoint music fest (cincinnati, oh) on sept. 27, then pop montreal (montreal, quebec, canada) on oct. 3, if anyone wants to swing in and geek out!

Awesome. I've tried getting into Live before, but the interface was a bit too different for my tastes. Everyone I speak to says great things about it though, and how it handles sampling/audio really well. I should give it another go.

Congrats on the shows!

thanks!

live makes loop construction and synchronized playback as easy as clicking a mouse. its just plain amazing. everything from there on is icing on the icing on the cake.

I got so fed up with the entire composition/synthesis/recording software genre -- for reasons I'll soon document elsewhere -- that I've written a new music authoring platform specifically for hackers. And it's Different. I've mentioned it here before, but I'll be releasing the alpha Real Soon Now (like, in days you could count on your fingers). Stay tuned.

Mind posting a link of where we can check in on the status? I'm curious what your criticisms of current software are.

There isn't a project page I can point you at yet, but I'll submit it here soon. Feel free to email me if you think you missed the post.

Sort of electro-pop rock, and my love for 80s synth pop mixed together:

http://tindeck.com/listen/cqcc http://tindeck.com/listen/vqjv

I'm looking for a vocalist to collaborate with, if anyone out there is interested.

hello madchester!

Jazzy, funky, socially conscious hip hop

http://www.myspace.com/themetaboogie

This is fantastic.

Nice and funky!

I don't like jazz, funk, or hip hop, yet I really liked your music. Good job.

My modest, slowly-expanding collection of classical piano recordings: http://blog.purepistos.net/index.php/piano/ Obviously, being classical music, I didn't compose any of it.

All recordings played on a Yamaha P-120; piped directly from piano line out to onboard line in on an old P4. Recorded with Audacity on Gentoo Linux, in which minor touchups (normalization, etc.) are done. Final export is MP3 format, and these are published on my blog.

Next pieces due for recording and publishing will be Beethoven's Sonata Pathetique, first and third movements (the second is already published). I take requests, so if anyone had anything they'd like to hear, let me know.

    /dev/hda > /dev/audio

I ♥ Unix.

I just scared the hell out of my neighbors. :)

I go back and forth between writing electronic music and performing intensely improvisational rock music. I've got a lot of my personal music on my main site at http://www.philchristensenmusic.com -- for this kind of stuff, I use ProTools as my main interface, running Ableton Live and Reason as ReWire slaves, as well as using a large number of Native Instruments plugins, particularly Guitar Rig and Absynth.

With my band seaflux, we've been spending a lot more time on social network promotion, and so although we've got a lot of linked content on our main site at http://seaflux.com , much of our material is available on our profiles on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/seaflux/27070655285), ReverbNation (http://www.reverbnation.com/seaflux), and of course of tons of videos on YouTube (http://youtube.com/seafluxmusic). Due to the improvisational nature of this band, our best recordings so far are live shows, which end up getting recorded just with a stereo mic setup.

Any other Acid Pro users? Here's my equipment/software list:

Acid Pro ZynAddSubFX Loads of VST plugins Lexicon PCM81 BSS BLU-160 (this is an installed sound processor that I cajole into doing bizarre and unintended things) Some AKG mics Wurlitzer epiano Ensoniq SQ-80 MicroKORG A couple other keyboards

Here are some old tracks from when I used to use myspace: http://myspace.com/n2a

I'm a CS student, a hobby programmer/very-amateur quasi-hacker, and a musician. I'm the lead singer and guitarist of a band called Martyr Your Muses. We are really just getting started, and our myspace page is still pretty ugly, but you can listen to some of the music at http://www.myspace.com/martyryourmuses

Oh, and for writing the music, I utilize Cubase (I think I am using LE right now) for sequencing, I will use one of the few synths I have as a midi controller, and Kontakt or Reason for samples. These things get me by for writing.

Wow, that is really, really good. Excellent vocals and interesting tunes.

Thank you very much! We work really hard at it. I grew up listing to punk and it's variants. So there is a lot of influence from that area, but I love the sounds I find in different types of music, from ragtime to swing to blues, classic rock, indie, cabaret, folk, Celtic, and so on.

I use Cubase SX3 and the occasional Reason on Windows. I focus more on melodies and progressions than the actual "radio-readiness" of my productions. Nevertheless, someone might like the stuff.

Here is my most recent short instrumental piece: http://www.tshaddox.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/the-point... . Here are two full-blown songs with lyrics, they are both light-hearted and sort of geeky: http://www.tshaddox.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/falling-f... and http://www.tshaddox.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/science.m... . All of my compositions are be found here (along with the ability to stream the MP3's): http://www.tshaddox.com/?cat=10

Last thing I put out though haven't tested on the dance floor yet: http://soundcloud.com/nickolay/nickolay-funky-zippa-ruby-sky...

I use Reason 4 exclusively. Never had the time to figure out any other piece of sotware. Now that ReCord works flawlessly with Reason, I won't need to.

Yes! I'm actually working on transitioning in the next year to a technomad/touring lifestyle so I can focus on music more.

I'm at http://thesixtyone.com/johnnybroadway or http://www.johnnybroadway.com/

To also mention what I use:

- GarageBand for recording through a Tascam US-122 (keep looking at higher end ones, but keep putting the purchase off... :) - Guitars mostly direct input w/ GB's built-in amps. My stage amp is a Fender Blues Jr. + jamman looper and a few other pedals... - Vocals through an Apex 460 condenser mic - Drums mostly electronic or sampled, with a V-drum lite for playing

I've also got a bunch of random stuff I can break out as needed, shakers, tambourine, ukelele, banjo, harmonica, etc. I also got a little nanokey keyboard recently and wanna get the nanokontrol next since I bought Ableton suite recently to play with more electronic sounds.

Mostly given up these days tho still messing around with Logic 9 and strumming guitar - heres an old demo track (apologies for the vocals :) http://mindshaft.net/mindshaft-old/electricblue.mp3

I too have noticed a rather obvious connection between hacking and music. Perhaps it has something to do with the parts of the brain that both require (I'm no neuroscientist though).

As for me, playing music was a big part of my life growing up but I simply couldn't muster the discipline to keep practicing. My love for music is still strong though and my ultimate goal is to help those more disciplined than I succeed. And here's the shameless plug...

My project is currently a very minimum viable product (hopefully) to replace record companies. If you're interested, check out http://beatnex.com

I made a little bit while I was in high school (last year) We had a music tech lab. I used garage band to start but quickly changed to Logic Pro. It's mostly loops and some of my own guitar playing. http://www.reverbnation.com/charliemccowan The song "Serious Injuries May Occur" was made using loops in combination with the sound files of the popular game Portal. I made lyrics by editing and combining lines from the game. A warning, it is a little on the dark side following the nature of the game.

http://www.myspace.com/giraffeincognito

I use mainly pro tools and reason to power my drums. Most instruments other than drum samples and synth I record myself.

Here's a couple... first one I composed, and played with numerous others (I'm on electric piano here):

http://www.atmospherecontrolmusic.com/free/bsol_a-merry-hear...

This one was improvised with another keyboard player:

http://www.atmospherecontrolmusic.com/free/flow_part-one.mp3

I mostly use Tracktion for recording software, though this first track was recorded in multiple takes at several studios, and the latter was initially recorded on ProTools.

I'm actually a composer who got interested in coding as a way to realize my music. Using Pure Data and Max/MSP, along with a bit of SuperCollider.

http://www.gregsurges.com

I used to make music with Reason, originally purely for the music itself but later on for video games. You can listen to it here (http://nil.cjb.net/music/), some of the later tracks are actually present in video game competition entries. Occasionally I tried Ableton Live but the interface really bothered me and I could never get anything of the same quality out of it. I lost motivation/time to create more music at about the time I was trying to transition from randomly banging stuff out into imagining a song and then actually trying to make it. The random process was easy but ultimately frustrating, as it yielded something good only about 1 session out of 5.

I have zero music education, and I can't play an actual physical instrument. When I was a kid, I hated most music and complained that rock/rap/etc all sounded the same. I only really enjoyed classical music or music from videogames, both of which were entirely instrumental. I can't understand lyrics in songs 80% of the time. I am tone deaf (probably not medically) and had to learn scales because I couldn't tell that what I was making was horribly out of key until other people told me.

I get really annoyed if the stuff I make isn't mixed/mastered to sound vaguely professional, and get quite a bit of enjoyment adding and tweaking effects on synthesizers. When I listen to music, I can't help imagining how they created the sounds they did (usually when synthesizers are involved).

I think this is one of the best posts on HN ever. Somebody should accumulate the top ten of these and make a Hacker News album!

I'm a Sonar user but I'm still trying to figure the dang software out. I bought the full Cakewalk suite, I am an amateur keyboardist, and I can improvise melodies and such, it's just the software that is so complicated it destroys my ability to be creative.

But I'll get it one day. I've setup my rack behind my development desk, so whenever I need a break from coding I'm playing with the system. It's just a matter of time.

I'm a hack musician...played all instruments except the drums. Garageband...

Sorry about the weak lyrics...placeholder.

http://www.moorefilms.com/heyman.htm

great thread and some great music! Ive just had my first digital release on british leftfield drum and bass label Scientific Wax under the name Social Engineer :) http://soundcloud.com/social-engineer http://www.scientificwax.com/

I'm in a death metal band. We're actually recording a new album right now; I'm off to the studio in half an hour. But our previous album is available free here: http://music.flamingtusk.com

I guess it's not a very hackery style of music to play. But when it comes to our web stuff we're very cutting edge.

I just posted the first chiptune I've composed in many years here (LSDJ on an original grey Gameboy): http://8bitcollective.com/music/algernon/Snuffles/

And this is a rough mix of an old punk rock tune I wrote years ago but recorded for the first time earlier this year (live guitar and vocals, live tracked electronic drums, and synthesized bass, recorded in REAPER): http://obsceneart.com/examples/better.mp3

I've been trying to figure out how to mix punk rock and chiptunes, but haven't actually made a solid attempt at it yet (though a C64 is playing bass on that second track; the later versions have live bass playing, and I liked it better, but they're inaccessible at the moment, on a machine that isn't exactly working).

http://dptv.co.uk/weasleboy-tearmeup.mp3

Old school tape recorder

I'm a n00b at it. I'm classically trained, most of what I listen to is Renaissance or Baroque, but I try to write in relatively modern style, mostly for a solo tenor vocalist with piano accompaniment. However, I've yet to compose anything that I like enough to publish. I use Rosegarden and a Yamaha PSR-S500.

We've been keeping quiet for the last few months while we brought in our new singer, but are about to start performing again... Moment of Inertia (http://www.moirocks.net)

We record in a studio which uses Logic Pro.

Piano & pencil.

I make music in Ableton Live. I sing, play an electric guitar, a microKORG, a child's glockenspiel and assorted things (plastic bottles, lamps, doors, cassette tapes etc.)

http://maryrosecookmusic.com

I mess around on the piano, started using Logic Express a bit which is awesome.

Here's a song with no lyrics (I haven't quite mastered the writing lyrics bit yet)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8kEoN0tJZ0

I've no new stuff to post but here's some old stuff:

http://www.jamesbritt.com/chinese-forehead/

There are some links on there to some mp3s. I keep meaning to stick more stuff up on archive.org.

I've been a musician for about 12 years. Lost focus recently; too busy concentrating on programming projects, and much of the work is remarkably similar.

Mostly I've used Cubase for sequencing and audio (although I've used Pro Tools, Sonar, and Logic too). Kontakt and the now-defunct Gigasampler for sampling. I mostly use samples, but a few synth engines are great, like the Albino series and some sample-based hybrids like Atmosphere. Waves collection for most DSP. I could go on and on here.

After all that, there's nothing recent to show off. Time to haul out some of the old equipment.

Little netlabel I run/ran: http://www.hiddenmusic.co.uk/. I'm Covert. (Oh, software: Reason mostly, sample editing in Audacity.)

Great stuff! You get Reason to sound really good, if you didn't say that I would have never guessed you were using it. Props

Thank you!

Actually, I reckon Redpoint – friends of mine – do an even better job of wringing un-Reason sounds out of Reason. They're even more in debt to Boards of Canada than I am, though. Of my stuff, "Symbolic" was written while I was listening to a hell of a lot of Ulrich Schnauss and quite a bit of 70s/80s Wire; there was going to be a cover of Wire's "Map Ref" on there for a while which really hammered that home...

I mess about with Reason 4 and a MIDI keyboard, but I'm pretty bad at it and have nothing worth sharing ;-)

My little brother is pretty good at it though and has just started studying sound engineering.

Me too. I built a x0xb0x (http://www.ladyada.net/make/x0xb0x/ - it's a pretty impressive project, Ladyada does great stuff) a few years ago and play around with it occasionally, but I've realized I'm much better at enjoying other people's music than creating my own.

the 303 has quite possibly the worst interface in the history of the galaxy (imnsho)

I wasn't sure if it was 303 or the x0xb0x, but I agree (they're slightly different, I think. I haven't used a real 303)

Regardless, I'd love a x0xb0x :-P One day, one day...

I wrote this tongue-in-cheek number one night when I was frustrated and didn't feel like coding:

http://files.dangrover.com/siliconvalleylament-sofar.mp4

I just thought it would be funny to write a song about Silicon Valley in a cheesy broadwayish/Sondheimish style. Might finish it if I get around to it.

The song was improvised on keyboard and recorded, then I used a speech synthesizer for the vocals, as I hate the sound of my own voice.

German pop music. Formerly major label.

http://www.rivodrei.de/

The first album was recorded and mixed in Logic. The second album was recorded with Logic but the engineer who is currently mixing it switched to ProTools. The music itself is all handmade by us, the musicians.

I quit a well paid job in IT to do this full-time a few years back when we got signed. I guess the experience was much like being an entrepreneur.

http://soundcloud.com/chunky-g/tracks

Most of the stuff is from over a decade ago.

Interestingly(?) I wrote all the software I made the music with:

http://www.sonicspot.com/aliendiskosystems/aliendiskosystems...

http://www.sonicspot.com/xrazor/xrazor.html

I mostly just mess around with Korg DS-10 for the Nintendo DS. I'm very much an amateur so it takes me a long time to create anything listenable with it...

ds-10 rules!

Electronica, compared to Brian Eno and Joe Satriani; I'm on Last.FM (http://www.last.fm/music/Hacker+Blinks) and AmieStreet (http://amiestreet.com/music/hacker-blinks/)

Oh, and tools: earlier stuff was with Reason, later stuff with Logic; mostly just playing around on a little Oxygen synth.

http://www.aarongreenspan.com/speakers

Cakewalk Express on a ten-year-old SoundBlaster Live! MP3 5.1+.

This is my band: http://www.themintchicks.com/

We're pretty successful in my home country of New Zealand. We've won awards and had a gold record. We're now based in Portland, OR and getting a little bit happening there.

We use Pro-tools mostly, with some Logic for it's bank of sounds and I made the video on that homepage with Toonboom, Photoshop and Motion.

I'm a casual musician that lately also makes music creation software for the iPhone http://www.hopefullyuseful.com/

My brother (Co-Creator of Simple Songwriter) is a more serious musician that uses Cubase and Ableton Live from memory. http://www.thetransients.net

I'm tinkering with a melody myself, but it's not much yet. You can see what I have so far with this lilypond source:

\header { title="Untitled" meter="Slow and dreamfully" } \relative c'' { \clef treble \time 4/4 \key f \major bes,8. f'16 r8 c'8-> ~ c2 d,8. a'16 r8 e'8->( ~ e4 c4) bes,8. f'16 r8 c'8-> ~ c2 g,8. d'16 r8 a'8->( ~ a4 f4) }

yes I create electronic music http://soundcloud.com/codekat http://www.thesixtyone.com/codekat/ and this is my experimental ambient project http://rizomasessions.com

I recorded and produced an EP of original songs by my brother. They're mostly acoustic guitar and voice, although we throw in harmonies, electric guitar and bass, light percussion, and an accordian(!) as well.

You can find it at www.lukewilliamsmusic.com

We used Pro Tools and 3 mics (sm57, sm58 and a condensor which I've forgotten the name of) to do the whole thing.

I play a politician (Eugene Grant) trying to get elected. He has a rock band and sings about the joys of campaigning and politics.

Our "music video" -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehsQhMbvqdA

I use Pro Tools with an MBox

http://www.eugenegrant.us

Haven't written anything meaningful in a while, but you can find some of my material on Soundcloud

http://soundcloud.com/dnm/sets/all-music-1

Recently switched to Ableton Live after many years of Cubase. Make extensive use of Reaktor, Kontakt, and the Kore2 software these days.

I must say that I am impressed with the amount of constructive criticism and feedback here.

Normally commenters on the interwebs tend to be flaming, annoying and very derogatory, but it seems that in this thread (not sure if it's HN specific) people actually listen to other people's music and give good feedback. Impressed!

http://nelobanda.com i'm part of Nelo at ang Tala, a pop/rock band in the Philippines. I compose the songs and play vocals and guitars. We're planning on recording a new album all DIY using a USB condenser mic with built in mixer from Samson (GM1U).

I used to spend a lot of time mucking around in FL Studio. All decidedly amateur, but if anyone's interested there are a few songs at http://drop.io/joshs_music

You might like to try "I'll be back later", it features some, uh, catchy.. vocals from a friend.

I do solo (mostly)electronic music under the handle robad pills, just put out a (free) new album at http://www.sickmode.org/ called "let's get cynical"

There's also 56 other releases there, maybe more hacker in spirit than technical prowess though ;)

http://www.youtube.com/guitarsoloservice

Garageband.

Well done!

http://www.purevolume.com/drugshit - straight edge/hardcore band I play drums in. Recorded in one take by our friend. Lately I've been recording more life stuff with a zoom h2 and I am really happy with that.

Here are some trax I wrote for a recent laptop battle; in under three minutes they must get you grooving and/or destroy your future ability to hear bass.

http://davepeck.org/battles-of-yore/

Fruity Loops.

I'm a casual musician: when the fancy comes, I write acoustic guitar thingies and play them in the street.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBUq2QHXiyE

Check out my site twiturm.com. Its sorta like a twitpic for musicians.

this is some of my music on it as well. http://twiturm.com/profile/blackcortez

I play Old-Time banjo: http://aaronblohowiak.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/cold_fr...

I use FL Studio. I'm a total amateur. A lot of it is pretty bad, but it's fun to write. http://johnfn.newgrounds.com/audio/

http://www.myspace.com/10jackdiamond

Using cubase, a midi keyboard and VST's. It's mainly down-tempo with electronic and hip hop.

My friend's band: http://www.myspace.com/pulse22 Check it out if you like Pink Floyd, psychadelic, melodic music

http://www.last.fm/music/Juli%C3%A1n+Porta/Detr%C3%A1s+de+la...

FL, Audacity and that's it.

Funny. As I'm reading HN, I'm also watching Ghost Rider on TV and practicing flute during the commercials.

Trust me, you don't want to hear anything I'll be playing for quite a while :-)

http://myspace.com/yaybuffet Weird sample manipulation / ableton live / reaktor / occasional vocoder

This was a band I was in a few years ago: http://www.myspace.com/sometimesitrains

We recorded with Cubase.

I write music for hobby video games using Garageband: http://www.steveasleep.com/music

http://monorail42.googlepages.com/ made with python ;p

http://hea.dphon.es reaktor / kontakt

I DJ once a week at a club/lounge. Does that count? :)

I use LMMS a little bit. Not much.

Anyone with commercial success?

Not yet ;)

Well, I got to drink for free when I played ... :)

James, just imagine if you believed in God ;)

all my stuff's stuck on tape for the time being

http://music.seanmccolgan.com couple of mashups from back in the day. Nothing special just playing around in Ableton.

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