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Hi Guys,

I'm travelling to Berlin for NYE on a coach from Birmingham. It's going to take 24 hours and I'm looking to sort something out to pass this time as easily as possible!

I have an old netbook that I'd like to possibly set up as a sort of "portable studio". I was just wondering if anyone has any suggestions for how to go about doing this - I was thinking an older version of Ableton (5 maybe?), a few basic plugins and a shit tonne of samples, but I just thought I'd see if anyone here has tried anything similar before and what they used/how they got on with it.

I've also debated installing an old version of Reaktor and having a play with that, as I haven't ever used anything like that before and having hours to tinker seems like a great way to familiarise myself. However, the lack of an internet connection on my travels (meaning I wont be able to access help/tutorials) makes me a bit hesitant about trying this method.

Anyone got anything to say on this sort of thing? I realise a netbook is far from an ideal studio machine, but it's cheap, portable and has relatively decent battery life - it's really my only option for on-the-go production (my main laptop has roughly an hour's battery lifespan).
Thanks in advance guys, any general advice or software recommendations for low powered machines would be massively appreciated.

Maybe very old software will work on that but new ones won't.

Some might say that if you were able to get up to snuff with Linux in short order - and you were able to wipe the current OS and boot it as a Linux box and use something like Rosegarden - then you might be able to do some more advanced functions (synthesis primarily), but with the caveat that you're doing it in Linux and have to know your way around.

But yeah, as-is you're likely not going to get very far w/ Ableton or Reaktor before they start choking hard (if you're able to get them running at all, that is.)

If you're insistent on going this route you can do a MIDI based approach where you're coming up with beats & melodies, maybe even using soundfonts or something to expand the range of possible sounds... but when it comes to processor-heavy shit like synths, sampling, FX - you're probably going to be mostly out of luck. Try Reaper at any rate: it's a small install and doesn't require oodles of CPU right out of the box. Also check out Mulab. There are some VST's that are low-CPU too, such as Sylenth or Dune.

Alternately, you could look into a mod tracker style program, but that's another steep learning curve to try and bite off on short notice. If you were to go that route check out Sunvox. Shit's crazy powerful for someone inclined to figure out how to use it.

Reaper or FL Studio will be the best option imho, or any tracker software like Renoise, I used to make beats using a netbook running Modplug/OpenMpt and cool edit pro.
Netbooks can work provided you don't go crazy with effects.