303abuser Thanks mate - Great advice and much appreciated. I have DJ’ed pretty badly for years on and off. I have Zero musical training but I think I have a reasonable ear. I will be looking at making harder progressive/melodic type stuff. Possibly some deeper breaks stuff. Think Dundov/Gregor Thresher/Baumel/Sanclemente have all been massive influences but then so have Nine Inch Nails and stuff like Dusty kid and Hybrid - looking forward to seeing how it all pans out 
ArchimedesQ anytime 
303abuser A friend who is also just starting, recommended this - thoughts?
https://www.arturia.com/products/hybrid-synths/minilab-mkii/overview
ArchimedesQ looks like a good starting point to me. it’ll give you the features you need to start at a reasonable price, will give you a feel for which things you need/don’t. if you ultimately don’t get on with it, you should be able to sell it pretty easily too.
i’ve been messing around with sandman pro a bit today. if you need a delay (from basic to wild), you will not beat this, especially as it’s FREE ($14.99, but you can use the $20 discount code i posted above).
https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/products/unfiltered_audio_sandman_pro.html
https://www.ableton.com/en/shop/live/
Can someone tell me if there is any difference in these 2 - except the price! Is it worth getting the cheaper one or am I missing something?
Top link says upgrade options available.
Bottom link includes upgrade, to next version, in price.
Dont know anything about Ableton to know what that upgrade impact might be, either financially or technically.
Others will know better….
Do you boys spend much time getting your drums in key?
i tune anything that isn’t white noise. usually i have my kick on the root, toms on the root or 5th. snares, if they have some low end weight, i’ll tune them to the root or 5th, use my ears a little more on those sometimes and just go with what i think sounds best. with hats, i really just worry about note length, velocity, groove, etc. as there isn’t usually a defined musical note there.
Just signed up to Sonic Academy which has some great tutorials on Ableton, and for me on how to use those fecking Arturia instruments I bought a few months back. The Arturia stuff is delivered with a fair bit of wit from King Unique, which helps when slogging through the videos.
Henry let me know how that goes. i’m amazed at how little i know about ableton after using it for 5 years. i like watching youtube tutorials, but often it’s 20 minutes to pick up one little thing i didn’t know before, so it’s not the most efficient way to learn. features like instrument and drum racks are so deep and there’s no way you’re coming up with all of it on your own. maybe i should read the manual lol.
RTFM - a decent name for a track!
haha i might use that.
Henry …funnily enough I bought the Ableton Mixing & Mastering course for £10.99 in the NYD sale from Udemy.
Teacher is great… unfortunately the track he’s mixing is a banging auld trance number, not sure how my head will be after 6 hours of it. The extra £30 for Fred Everything’s mixing deep house ioMusic Academy thing is sounding like a decent investment at the moment.
Unbroken1 6 hours of listening to any mix is too much, full on trance just amps that up about a thousand times lol. when i’m mixing a track, i do it in 20-30 minutes stretches to give my ears a break and reset my perception of the track. then check it again the next day for the same reason, then have a second set of ears check it while mastering.
