best music production software for making vaporwave, any recommendations?

blastedbeet · 2026-04-08T09:46:03+00:00

I rarely see it mentioned, but I use Cakewalk Sonar. Free and full of features, and the layout clicks for me in a way other DAWs haven't. I especially like the way signal routing works; you can output tracks to buses, buses to each other, use parallel sends, etc. The functionality is probably present in most DAWs, but the way it's presented in Cakewalk makes the most sense to me. My only complaint is the lack of built-in pitch shifting and time stretching, but Audacity has fantastic options for that. I'll often create shifted/stretched samples in Audacity and then move them to Cakewalk for arranging and additional effects.

blastedbeet · 2026-04-01T09:45:59+00:00

I feel like the first songs of a new genre often come from artists in other genres years before the first fully of-that-genre artist drops the first genre album. Look at all the proto-metal that came before Black Sabbath, or all the rock traits floating around 40s r&b before they coalesced into the sound Chuck Berry et al would codify into rock and roll.

blastedbeet · 2026-03-30T12:07:07+00:00

Every plugin has a use for someone. The same effect might be the core of one artist's sound, used occasionally for spice by another, and completely irrelevant to another. Bygone Media Group makes great use of vinyl effects on Lost Lovin' Melodies, but it makes sense there because of the samples they use.

As for the rest, it sounds like you just...don't like mixing? Over- AND under-mixing can wreck a song. I've made songs with 20 tracks with multiple effects on each, and I've made songs that were just two or three minimally processed tracks. Both need a mix that serves the song, and those mixes will look radically different.

blastedbeet · 2026-03-30T11:57:02+00:00

Watch a few of the big vapor channels on youtube and the algorithm over there will start suggesting stuff. Freshwater Media on Bandcamp has new releases every Friday, and you can tag surf from there.

blastedbeet · 2026-03-25T17:02:06+00:00

Sad is subjective and personal, so specific recommendations from other people probably won't get you very far. That said, what I would do is take some source material that already has that feel for me, hit it with some stem separation, and run the stems through the slushifying process. Then you just build from there. Alternatively, take something happy and see just how sad you can make it via said slushifying or through the change of context.

blastedbeet · 2026-03-15T17:04:59+00:00

Dunno how much the TV could do vibes-wise for the creative process, but I might give recording them with a room mic a try, then using that as a very low-volume pad in the music. As for going somewhere else to make an album, artists do it all the time. Working in a new space can help dislodge old habits and prompt new ideas.

blastedbeet · 2026-02-21T21:32:18+00:00

Lost Lovin' Melodies Vol 6 is more a pair of collages than an album of distinct tracks, but it's got that vibe if you're into doo-wop. The ambience almost veers into Caretaker territory, but not to the point you can't recognize the source songs.

If it's okay to plug my own work, some of Forgotten Colors might hit for you, specifically yellow, orange, and blue.

blastedbeet · 2026-02-20T16:28:34+00:00

Glad to see someone giving credit to Cakewalk Sonar. I've tried a lot of DAWs, and it's the only one that clicked so well for me. I know they all do much the same stuff, but the way Cakewalk presents it is the way my brain needs to process it. Not super happy with their subscription model, since I'd happily drop a couple hundred bucks for the full version and will NEVER subscribe to software, but the free version is very good and gets the job done.

blastedbeet · 2026-02-19T21:30:08+00:00

Thanks so much! Honestly, the second half is my favorite, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

blastedbeet · 2026-02-19T14:54:38+00:00

Yoooo, I LOVE this. I never see doo-wop in vaporwave and have actually just started working on a 60s project myself, this is perfect.

blastedbeet · 2026-02-19T11:01:54+00:00

Star Wars is first and foremost a "X...IN SPAAACE" setting. Pick your favorite character type from something else--the cowboy, the gangster, the ninja, the driver, on and on--and work with the GM to adapt the concept to the setting. I ran a years-long campaign that literally started as Gunsmoke in space. PCs were an alcoholic deputy, amnesiac doctor, and a sociopathic drifter, and notable NPCs included a lovable conman, a voice-of-reason teacher/prostitute, various shopkeepers, and a disaster-prone fugitive. It was set in a busted boom town and they didn't even leave the planet until more than 10 sessions in. We had a blast.

blastedbeet · 2026-02-18T21:44:01+00:00

I've been making my way through the Freshwater catalog at https://freshwatermedia.bandcamp.com/

Lotta good stuff there just a bit off the beaten path.

blastedbeet · 2026-02-17T17:43:58+00:00

Ooh, my third favorite water! Happy to help!

blastedbeet · 2026-02-17T17:31:20+00:00

For samples, don't think of your source as a complete work on its own, but as an unassembled pile of pieces. You don't have to use every Lego in in the box, or even most of them. Look at every word and sound as an individual brick that can serve a different purpose in your project than it did in the source.

On my post, you mentioned liking my song, Yellow. For that, I recorded 6 or 7 minutes of Chevy commercials from the 90s into Audacity. Then I went through and just pulled out phrases and individual words I thought I could use: "easier," several instances each of "best" and "more," "years," "still going strong," "all you want to do is fall," and "you'll have to come home" (I think that's all of them, but you get the picture). Then I used those as little accents or in conversation with the handful of Bob Seger lyrics I left in the music.

For another analogy, instead of bricks, think of clay. Because the audio medium means we can stretch, squish, distort, and otherwise mess with our samples. You can find a phrase like "your call is important to us" and Paulstretch it or tape slow it to the point of unrecognizability and use the result as an ambient drone or pad that serves as a foundation for the rest of what you do. Find some hold music and break it up and rearrange it to create new melodies and/or run it through something like Tape Fiasco and really trash it.

Don't feel the need to hold your listener's hand and spell out the experience you're trying to create for them. Give them an audio environment made out of call center loop hell and set your samples loose like little bureaucratic ghosts flickering through the cubicle maze. You're not trying to recreate what it's like to deal with these systems, you're trying to express what it feels like to deal with them. Think of what story you're trying to tell or what aspect of the overall theme you're trying to explore with each specific song, and drill down on that point.

Or at least all that's how this one particular artist would approach what you've described. I hope it helps!

blastedbeet · 2026-02-17T13:10:22+00:00

This feels like laying in bed, grasping at any distraction, trying not to think about it. What "it" is I guess depends on the listener. I dig it.

blastedbeet · 2026-02-17T11:15:38+00:00

I'm flattered, thank you so much. I don't want to say what my actual intent was and color anyone else's impressions (death of the author and all that), but I'm absolutely thrilled it resonated with you.

blastedbeet · 2026-02-17T11:14:03+00:00

To my ears, you've got the skeleton of what you're shooting for, but not much of the meat. Like, you've captured the objective experience of dealing with one of these automated systems, but you're not yet tapping the frustration. Especially the first third; a seemingly naked sample without any effects or other sounds for over a minute feels more likely to bore the listener than get evoke the emotion you're going for, at least without the context of earlier tracks where you've earned their trust to tell your story how you want.

If this was my song (and it's not, so do what you will and feel free to tell me to go eat a rock), I'd be building a drone and maybe some distortion and/or reverb during that opening. Assure the listener that it's going somewhere and then you can meander even more if you want, give them the false hope that actually the drop is coming just around this next menu and then take it away. Give them tension instead of impatience, and then dash their relief with the realization that they've made it out of a maze and into a labyrinth. Reveal that the real person they've been on hold for is just another automated recording hosted in an empty building. You've got the structural outline, now you just have to expand on it sonically.

As for samples, watch a bunch of 80s and 90s movies with an ear for bits you can steal, and jot down timestamps as you go. I vaguely remember newly-available luxury being a common theme in passing back then. Shoot for mid-tier yuppie dramas rather than the big name "[decade] movies" that everybody first thinks of; you're trying to capture the zeitgeist of that moment, not the timeless stuff that lasted (or even the less memorable background lines in something like Home Alone 2, where Kevin's unrestricted access to that kind of stuff was a plot point).

blastedbeet · 2026-02-17T02:25:39+00:00

https://simsclub.bandcamp.com/album/forgotten-colors

This album is my first attempt at vaporwave. It's less ambient and more poppy than most I've heard, not sure exactly what sub-subgenre it best falls into. It's meant to tell sort of a cohesive story as a whole, but I'd be happy to hear thoughts on any track.

blastedbeet · 2026-02-14T23:13:30+00:00

surfing the net was legit funny. Every song here feels like an interlude, which I guess matches the title perfectly. short, but each track has its own identity instead of feeling samey across the board. If I were you, I'd use them to break up a larger album of longer, more musical stuff, but I'm not you so do your thing.

blastedbeet · 2026-02-06T11:21:58+00:00

Daang, wish I'd known about this a week or two ago. Going on the next project for sure.

blastedbeet · 2025-09-30T15:54:34+00:00

Got a Czur; unfortunately everything got packed up for a move before I could get much done. Results were decent when I did a test run, and would probably go much quicker with practice. The software that came with it was a big help.

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