In my earlier blog I spoke about some of the features of FL 9 and the vst's that I use within that DAW. I primarily use FL 9 for arranging midi tracks for virtual instruments other than the guitar. To record guitars and Vocals I use Cubase 5. Before I share a few of my thoughts on Cubase 5 I want to mention that FL 9 itself can be used as a vst within Cubase 5. What I mean is that Cubase 5 can host FL 9. I can ill afford to even attempt explaining all the capabilities of Cubase 5 here. This is just a small summary. Since I am a lead guitarist I prefer doing all the guitar parts in my songs live. I feed the raw guitar signal to Cubase through my external audio interface and process the guitar signal using either Guitar rig 4 or Amplitube x-gear, both of which are incredible guitar signal processing applications. I will talk about them in another blog. I would like to include a very interesting point about Cubase 5 before I continue. Even though I use either Guitar rig 4 or Amplitube x-gear for my guitar signal processing, Cubase has its own built in guitar effects and they are more than just handy. One of my favorite applications in Cubase 5 is the Variaudio. It is a phenomenal vocal editing application within Cubase 5 which has pitch correction, pitch quantizing, etc with an amazing ease of use. Variaudio, just like Guitar rig 4 and Amplitube x-gear needs a dedicated blog for its prowess to be displayed. Finally, mastering a track on Cubase 5 is easy and of very high quality. Any questions on these are more than welcome and I would be more than happy to get the answers.

It’s been a while since I logged on to my SoundClick account. Well, it is nice to be back. This is my view on the music production software’s that I have used over the years and why I like them. I use 2 DAW's (Digital Audio Workstations) namely, Cubase 5 and FL 9. FL 9: I use FL 9 to arrange and lay out my original compositions, covers, etc. I arrange the following parts using FL 9: Drums, Bass guitar, Strings, Synthesizers, Piano, sound effects, etc. Drums: Even though I am a lead guitarist and have been so for many years, my first interest as far as music goes, was drumming. My mother however insisted on my learning how to play the guitar. Well, enough of the history lesson. Coming back to what I use to program drums. For over three years I used single samples for each kit piece of the drums. In effect I ended up using about 25 tracks just for the drum kit (some kit pieces had more than one sample- example: kick and snare). However, I now use AddictiveDrums and Cakewalk studio instruments drums in tandem to arrange drums and I cannot begin to tell you how incredible they are. Especially AddictiveDrums, because it has an amazing range of drum kits including many that I set up myself. The thing that I like most about AddictiveDrums is the fact that I can control edit each kit piece on the set with respect to affects, levels, panning, EQ settings and even the kit piece itself. AddictiveDrums comes with a huge collection of real drum kit samples. Another interesting fact is that I have the choice of using the in built effects on AddictiveDrums or rout its output channels to the channels of the DAW I use to run AddictiveDrums with, and use the effects on the DAW (in this case, FL 9) to edit the drums. Everything from the main kit pieces of the drums, to the master channel of AddictiveDrums can be edited using the hot DAW. Hence, I have editing domain of AddictiveDrums with its miked kit pieces, overhead channel, room channel, master channel and the DAW's effect if I choose to use them. I look at it as an unlimited mix and match possibility, The Cakewalk Studio instruments drum kit is not as impressive as the AddictiveDrums’ but it is useful because I can use it as either a second drum kit or even make a larger drum kit with AddictiveDrums. The level and effective use of the 2 together solely depends on the creativity of the user, but gives room for interesting applications for anyone who likes drum programming. Both AddictiveDrums and Studio instruments drum kit come with drum loops covering different styles and each can be dragged and dropped into the host DAW. Bass: I use the Cakewalk studio instruments bass guitar to arrange my bass tracks. It has built in effects and options which can be used to create custom bass guitars and just like with AddictiveDrums can be edited using the effects on the host DAW. The sampling is very realistic and it also comes with preset loops including many styles which can be dragged and dropped into the host DAW. All in all it is not the best bass guitar vst but is a very useful and realistic. Piano, synthesizer, etc: FL 9 comes with a lot of very useful synthesizers and their use is solely dependent on the user requirement and their effectiveness depends on the level of creativity and knowledge of music and the synthesizer itself. Strings: To arrange strings parts in my productions I use the Cakewalk Studio instruments Strings vst. It is a very realistic strings vst and includes one Double bass, one cello and one violin with presets of sound and loops which can be once again dragged and dropped into the host DAW. The controls of each of the 3 instruments that can be edited separately are volume and pan, while the chorus, reverberation attack and overall volume are applied to all 3 working in tandem. All in all it is a very handy vst to have. Cubase 5: To record live instru