Sorry if this sounds really basic but say I produced my electro-pop music. How do I play it live? How to use drum machine on it? I'm thinking of a music project where I live sample the beats or music while I sing on it. How to learn the basics of it. What program to use and everything. What laptop or desktop specs should I eye? Sorry I just learned a few basics on producing and I really wanna step up more and push through this idea that I have. Also, what are the cheapest brand and model I can score? Thank you very much.
Check out youtube for videos of Ableton Live and Maschine. Both are popular platforms for live music sampling. Ableton is the more popular one (I think Chvrches is the only popular act that uses Maschine as a main sampler), though my impression was that it has a steeper learning curve (you have to know both the Ableton DAW and the hardware itself to use it capably) than the Maschine.
If you choose Ableton, there's a crapload of controllers for it with different capabilities and build qualities. It also has its "official" controller the Ableton Push, but I do not know how much that costs. With Maschine, you only really have two choices, the Mikro with only one knob and less buttons, and the regular sized Maschine with ten knobs and two larger screens. The software comes with the hardware, unlike Ableton.
You'd also probably want to have a keyboard to control your soft synths and samples with.
As for the computer, anything decent will do, really. A model up to three years ago should be fine. Make it a laptop coz it's kinda hard to gig with a desktop unless it's a Mac Mini or something (which is a great computer btw).
How to play it live. Well I've never even thought about that yet, but basically you'll have to have your song finished. You'll then set up patterns and parameters such that it will be easy for you to trigger, start, stop, mute, transpose, or apply effects to those patterns. In Maschine for example, the DAW is set up such that each sound/effect (one pad/trigger) is nested into a group (the 16 pad matrix) that can play a sequence. Each sound/effect, group, or sequence can be triggered by the pads. Improvisation or looping is achieved by a record and playback button, and sounds, groups or sequences can be muted.
It's almost like DJing with a [gooey brown stuff] of buttons!
For the cheap side of it all, as Ableton and Maschine are expensive endeavors (Maschine Mikro clocks in at 18K, for Ableton,
that's just a controller), there's always the bring a lot of standalone drum machines and synths and a looper and a mixer
option and do it all live. You can also buy those Korg Nano stuff to trigger your drum samples and synths, but you're in for
some workflow issues as they're really mobile input options, not really performance controllers.
