Buying a Windows based laptop for producing music

As everyone seems to be on the move these days it is surprising how many people have laptops rather than desktop PC’s. This is especially true if you are musician. It is ideal to be able to work on your music while traveling, music is time consuming and making the most of it is important.

With all this in mind I thought I would try and put something together for anyone starting to do any of the above. This is a fairly new experience for me as I recently acquired an old laptop. I am running a laptop with 240mg of ram, a 40gb hard drive and an intel Celeron 2.4ghz processor. This is not something I would have thought would be able to handle much when making music however I have been using it fine when running Propellerhead Reason.

I strongly recommend considering using a second hand laptop for this reason but it all depends on what your aim is. One of the main differences in using a laptop on the move is that you don’t always have a keyboard to be able to trigger your sounds with. This is not necessarily an issue as you can do it without, however I find it a lot easier with a keyboard as it gives you more freedom and creativity. What it does mean is that you may spend more time experimenting with notes in your key editor in your sequencing software which can bring a new way of working which can also be a good thing, I will cover more keybords later.

Advantages of using a laptop for music

Laptops come in useful when you need to produce music while on the move.

Being able to go to the artist rather than the artist coming to you is more common nowadays.

Although portable digital recorders are useful for recording live sounds laptops can also be used for this

As more and more DJs are using MP3 rather than vinyl they have slowly moved to DJing with their laptop. Check out the link below to see the 2009 top ten review on DJ software

http://dj-software-review.toptenreviews.com/



What should I look for when buying a brand new laptop?
Much of my previous blog regarding processor, ram, hard disc, cd/dvd drive applies here so its worth reading that first, however there are some other things that differ from this which you need to consider.

Interfaces
Installing a soundcard in an existing laptop is not that simple and as far as I am aware it is only really expensive laptops that have dedicated quality soundcards. To plug external devices into your laptop you need an interface. The types of interfaces on the market are USB, PCMCIA and firewire.

USB (universal series bus)
This is common in most laptops and you normally find 3 or 4 which is a good start. These ports can transfer data at high speeds which is important for making music as you don’t want any delay (known as latency) between external devices and your sequencing software like Cubase.

PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association)
This is commonly known as ‘express card’ or ‘PC Card’. These cards can be used for wireless, modem and other functions in laptops that may not have them natively. These cards can range from £20 to £700, check out this link to give you an idea of what you can achieve using this interface

http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/category/computer-music/audio-interfaces/pcmcia-/-laptop/

Firewire
Firewire is a brand name created by Apple Inc for IEEE 1394 interface. Its basically used for high speed data trasnfer. There is a debate between using PCMIA and Firewire. They are basically two technologies that get the same result, they give you more inputs. Depending on what you are trying to achieve I find that you tend to get more inputs at a cheaper price with Firewire. The important thing to remember is that you want low latency (delay) when buying any of these products.

Check out this link to give you an idea of a Firewire device which is really good value for money.

http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/product/35673-esi-duafire-includes-cubase-4-le-.html

Its worth mentioning that if you are recoding live, you may want to buy a laptop that is quiet so you don’t get any background noise.

Another thing to think about is the battery, newer laptops have a longer battery life but since it is likely you will be recording for a long period of time you will probably be using the power pack most of the time anyway.

Connecting to external devices such as keyboard
With these interfaces you can connect decks, cd player, mini disc, mixers and more importantly a keyboard. Check out this link for an idea of a budget midi interface. It plugs into your USB port so you can plug a number of midi leads and offers

http://www.gear4music.com/Recording-and-Computers/Edirol-UM-3EX-3in3out-USB-MIDI-Interface/6HB

Think I have covered the main points. On my next blog I will start getting into some production tips. Some of the topics I will cover over the next few blogs are below:

Sampling
MIDI
Programming
ASIO
The DJ and computers