Get a big rock sound for less than 500 pounds!
You don’t need to have walls of amplifiers and a spacious LA studio to conjure hair-raising rock’n’roll. In fact, it’s one of the easiest genres to go large on, for less
It’s a preconception held by many that to make decent rock music you need quite a lot of physical space – and the ability to make a lot of noise. In actual fact, you can be churning out the next Smoke on the Water every day for very little outlay. As computer musicians, we’re more prone to looking for sample libraries, playable software instruments and ways of making our sounds go further than most traditionally rockoriented folks, and while some might squirm at the thought of keyboard-based riff-writing, it’s the end results that speak the loudest.
We’re trying to keep costs down in this feature, but that doesn’t mean we’re embarking on a particularly freeware-heavy approach. But, we’ve elected to recommend a free DAW for the purposes of making rock, namely Apple’s everubiquitous GarageBand. Evolving from its rudimentary beginnings, this Apple-only DAW is for all intents and purposes a lite version of Logic, containing its older sibling’s Pedalboard options, and amp sims. It also sports Logic’s ever-useful Drummer to lay down instant beats for your project. For PC or Android users, why not try the equally free – and equally superb – Cakewalk by Bandlab.
Though Drummer might be good enough for a demo, for a full-blown rock track we’d recommend you switch up to Goran Grooves Handy Drums Rock Standard. This range of extremely well recorded drum kits was reviewed by us recently, blowing us away both with its sound quality, and its price. While we’ve chosen a few more guitar-oriented products in our gearpicks, you’re also going to need a robust microphone to handle the rigours of howling vocals, as well as all-purpose recording duties. The AT2020 should do just the trick. So, for those about to rock, heed our advice and let this be the nucleus of a studio where the next Master of Puppets is captured.