Posted by Cat Martin

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Reviewed: MAGIX Music Maker MX Premium (WIN A FREE COPY)

Whilst I don’t claim to be Timbaland, I have started to pick up a few production skills over the years when working with my own vocals. This position as a semi-beginner qualifies me perfectly to check out a new piece of production software from MAGIX, ‘Music Maker MX Premium‘. Normally I work in Ableton, which I find to be very intuitive and easy to pick up, so I am hopeful that Music Maker is even easier, as the website is quoted as saying “get started right away, even without any prior skills”.

The first thing I noticed when getting started is the hefty sample library that needs to be downloaded. A total of 5,500 samples are included in the pack and all are nicely organised in to a large ‘Soundpool’, which then separates in to various styles. The styles, which include Minimal Tech-House, Hip-Hop, Movie Score and plenty of others each boast the following samples: bass, drums, guitar, keys, mallet, pads, percussion, sequences, strings, synth, vocals and wind. This gives a burgeoning producer the opportunity to very quickly create some characteristic Hip-Hop, or to combine samples from various styles to make something original. As you would expect, working with the samples is as easy as sliding them on to the track above.

At this point my housemate heard the weird and wonderful sounds I was working with and wanted to try it out for herself. Having never made music on a pc, she was able to combine the samples to make something listenable within about 15 minutes – the website’s claims are then true. Without any prior skills, anyone can use this software!

The software comes bundled with various instruments, such as ‘Century Guitar’, ‘Electric Bass’, ‘Revolta’ and ‘Lead Synth’. I found the guitar and bass synths to be quite convincing and certainly less ‘tinny’ than some of the other ‘real instrument’ type synths I’ve heard around. As a guitar player, nothing hurts my ears more than a fake, cheese-wire sounding guitar in EDM. Of the instruments, ‘Revolta’ is the most powerful and encompasses FX, pads, ambient sounds etc. ’Lead Synth’, unsurprisingly houses all your saw lead type sounds, though is limited to just a few presets.

It is just a simple touch but the fact that the onscreen keyboard shows the corresponding laptop keys makes it easy to create melodies, especially when getting to grips with new software, or your very first DAW.

I found ‘Beatbox 2′, the program’s built in drum pattern composer, to be extremely user-friendly. The interface is very visual and reminded me of iDrum by iZotope, which I was a fan of when I was getting started making percussion a couple of years ago. I am also a fan of Atmos, which is Music Maker’s ‘Ambient Sound Creator’. This handy little tool allows you to combine samples of rain, city noise, fire, strings etc. to create ambient soundscapes, which I have found useful for intros to my tracks. As you might expect, the software also includes various effect racks, compressors and filters. The software includes a good mastering suite, which I am told is quite impressive for the price. I tested out the vocal presets and found some of them quite fun.

Whilst it is unlikely to replace your current DAW if you are already a producer, Music Maker MX Premium is certainly worth checking out if you are new to producing music and would like to see instant results. With a very competitive price tag (£89.99), this could be a great way for aspiring producers to test the waters of creating music – without shelling out hundreds of pounds for software which may ultimately baffle them and be left unused on their hard drive.

WIN A FREE COPY
Beatsmedia has got together with Magix Music Maker to offer our readers something special. If you would like to bag yourself a FREE copy of this software then please read on.

We have one premium version and two standard copies to give away. To win simply be one of the first to email us at musicmaker@beatsmedia.com and 3 winners will be chosen at random.

Good Luck!!

More information on this product can be found right here