Hello Everyone

[momsk]

hey all,

my name is momo from nyc and i am just starting to get into making music electronically. i've looked far and wide and this place seems like a great resource on the net. i've lurked around the past few days and am finding a lot of information. as far as what i would like to accomplish musically is just to create a lot texture and tonalities, basically anything that is sonically kick@$$, but i am no prude when it comes to some really thumping drum beats. some artists that i think do great stuff in regards to the former are fennesz and black dice, and if anyone's heard him, i thought isound's wasteland did some interesting stuff fusing noise and beats together.

this is my gear so far:
basic laptop (XP) running ableton live 4.0
korg microkontrol
electronic guitar (through the laptop)

i've found that ableton can do some great things with some of its audio effects, especially the four-way EQ. i get some pretty interesting sounds coming out of that, when manipulating the basic drums ableton provides and same goes for the guitar too.

however, for the guitar, i find it's really hard to tweak the sound because i have to use my hands with either the mouse or on my microkontrol. so i am looking for a midi footcontroller with expression pedals to serve the same purpose so i can free up my hands to play the guitar. i think the behringer fcb1010 looks like it might be up my alley (2 expression pedals for the Freq. and the Q). but i read some reviews that mentioned the pedals stopped working. does anyone have some experience with this and provide any advice? thanks.

also, i would really like to be able to get a better sense of what my microkontroller can do in regards to softsynths. so i might be around asking people about it later.

anyway, that's it.

[zynthetix]

Hello Quite a few other people on the board use ableton live, it seems to be pretty good/popular software these days. For your desire to get more control than the mouse provides, you can't go wrong with the behringer controllers. The foot controller is great because you can program MIDI Control #'s for the buttons/pedals (essential for softsynths), and this behringer controller is great for the same reason: http://www.behringer.com/BCR2000/index.cfm?lang=ENG
(Behringer B-CONTROL ROTARY BCR2000). they also make a version that has 8 faders and less of the knobs....not quite "hands free" for when you're playing guitar, but a lot quicker to tweak then the mouse!