Would you guys mind telling me what music software you use to write music? I''ve been playing piano for 12 years and guitar for 3, and I''m new to music software, I would like to write music for a game I am programming obviously I would love to find software that would allow me to input a song as if I was writing sheet music. I have these really good rifsf going which I have all these grand ideas for but I tend to forget what I composed if enough time has passed Can your music software do for example have a piano riff in accompanyment with a cello riff etc? Do you your programs allow different instrumental sounds? How do you input music? Is it directly through a MIDI instrument or can you set it up like the sheet music way? Your advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

The Shareware Music Machine at www.hitsquad.com/smm has a lot of freeware programs; I''m fairly sure that they''ll have a sequencer. Sheet music really isn''t too useful when sequencing complex music because it can be ambiguous. Computer sequencing allows you to explicitly control every single parameter of a performance.

Yup, as you imagined you can sequence a piano and cello piece or whatever. However, it is important is distinguish between sequencing the data ( ie Midi Input or sheet notation ) and the actual playing of this data. The playback is performed via an external sound module - most soundcards have these built in although the quality of game-oriented cards is questionable. Your best option is probably to use Microsofts DLS system to combine both notation and samples for playback into a single source, or to get a good sound source and .mp3 it.

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Would you guys mind telling me what music software you use to write music?

Cakewalk, ModPlug Tracker, and Fruity Loops. I use ModPlug for writing songs and sequencing the parts, then I silence the guitars, export it all as a wave file to Cakewalk, and then record proper guitar parts in Cakewalk. ModPlug Tracker is a lovely piece of software but tracker programs are a bit obscure and take quite some getting used to. If you just want to play around with ''real'' instruments, then Cakewalk or any other MIDI program will be fine, providing you have a decent enough sound card.

Sometimes people forget music is an art... yeah, it helps to know as much theory as you can, but very few people will be impressed by a piece made from cutting and pasting cliched progressions.

Someone who puts emotion and creativity into their music will always sound better than someone who uses theory and other people''s work as a crutch.

Traditional folk is a perfect example. In most cases, you''re restricted to one scale, but look at the huge range of emotions and tonal qualities (another important part of music, that relies on very little theory) that come from music of any one culture- being restricted forced people overcome whatever restrictions there were with embellishments/graces, creativity, and pure emotion.

Most modded/sampled music is rather dry, only because the people behind it don''t have an understanding of one insturment, and they want to use all of them.

I haven''t heard anyone''s music, and music (like any art) is entirely in the eye (ear) of the beholder-- (and granted, if music is your occupation, it''s nice to churn out garbage for side projects and whatnot), but some people''s views are rather disturbing.



On a completely unrelated sidenote, I think it''d be neat if people posted their music here more often... this is a music forum, after all; I see more interest in technicalities than the actualy music.

quote: Original post by PoppinFresh
Sometimes people forget music is an art... yeah, it helps to know as much theory as you can, but very few people will be impressed by a piece made from cutting and pasting cliched progressions.

I started this thread because I wanted to be able to break free from the clichés. The idea was to look for inspiration from outside.

quote: Someone who puts emotion and creativity into their music will always sound better than someone who uses theory and other people''s work as a crutch.

Sure, but how do you quantify ''emotion'' and ''creativity''?
If I have a certain note at a certain time, then I have a variety of other notes to choose from, typically any of the surrounding 22 semitones (since going any further makes little difference). You have to pick one. How does emotion come into that?

If you''re saying "just pick what sounds good", then you''re just gonna be stuck with your own preconceptions. Studying chords and scales is one way to look at other people''s work and broaden your horizons, while speeding up the rate at which you find note combinations and progressions that ''work''.

quote: being restricted forced people overcome whatever restrictions there were with embellishments/graces, creativity, and pure emotion.

I don''t think you can just say to a musician "put more creativity and emotion into it". How is that supposed to translate into the compositional or performing process? It can''t, it''s a vague and abstract notion.

Music is, essentially, a mathematical endeavour. Emotions attached to music are just correlations that the human mind has ascribed to it over time.

quote: Most modded/sampled music is rather dry, only because the people behind it don''t have an understanding of one insturment, and they want to use all of them.

How are they supposed to understand that instrument better? Creativity and emotion don''t help much there. It''s gonna take a degree of study, whether formal or not.

quote: I haven''t heard anyone''s music, and music (like any art) is entirely in the eye (ear) of the beholder-- (and granted, if music is your occupation, it''s nice to churn out garbage for side projects and whatnot), but some people''s views are rather disturbing.

In the real world, you can''t sit around for 5 years until you get "hit by inspiration". I personally have written quite a few songs that other people have gone "wow" to when they heard them. But that wasn''t down to my inspiration or my emotion: it was a cold, calculating choice of the notes to use for a given effect. It all sounds the same to the end listener. Maybe that disgusts someone who likes to think of it as "art", but I don''t care - my aim is not to preserve some purist''s opinion of what music should be, but to write music that entertains enough people that I can live off it.

quote: On a completely unrelated sidenote, I think it''d be neat if people posted their music here more often... this is a music forum, after all; I see more interest in technicalities than the actualy music.

Well, it''s a music and sound forum. Most of my current works are unfinished, but maybe I''ll post something when I''m done. Then you can criticize its sampled nature

I guess people will always disagree on what we don''t understand. We could argue all day... so I will .

quote: Sure, but how do you quantify ''emotion'' and ''creativity''?

You''re looking at this in entirely the wrong way. You can''t quantify emotion or creativity, the same way you can''t ''quantify'' music.

Sure we could put it on staff paper, even capture it on tape- but we still can''t begin to understand it. No one understands how music, or any art form, provokes emotion (and I, being ''some purist'', like to think it will stay this way forever-- how much closer have we come to understanding music in the past 200 years?).

quote: How are they supposed to understand that instrument better? Creativity and emotion don''t help much there. It''s gonna take a degree of study, whether formal or not.

I agree, you misread me. Generally you find great music on a simpler level- a guitarist, flute player, whatever. It takes someone who''s got talent and experience to write something great for an orchestra (which is what too many people attempt- and usually content themselves with entirely unoriginal results.)

quote: In the real world, you can''t sit around for 5 years until you get "hit by inspiration".

Obviously not.

quote: But that wasn''t down to my inspiration or my emotion: it was a cold, calculating choice of the notes to use for a given effect.

You''re trying to drag music out of art and into science. Music is an art, you know, I hope we can agree on at least that.

Anyone can apply what they''ve learned. Not just anyone can write great music- and all great music goes beyond math, science and theory. Great music can be simple- someone with no knowledge of music can make great music, if they can feel it.

quote: If you''re saying "just pick what sounds good", then you''re just gonna be stuck with your own preconceptions.

Again, I believe your thinking about it the wrong way. If you can really play an instrument, you don''t ''choose'' the notes, you ''feel'' them. It''s hard to explain, because there is no mathematical or scientific explanation.

A computer can''t be used to compose real music.. if you''ve got a keyboard hooked up to it you''re getting there, but you really need something analogue to write from your heart, and you need to ''feel'' to write from your heart. This is why "cold, calculating" machines, cannot write music.


Just about everyone likes money more than music though, and I acknowledge the fact that ripping other people''s stuff, and writing ''done-it-before'' compositions based on accepted progressions, can be very helpful. Just like pushing papers, selling cars, it''s a living. It''s just not right to generalize great music with this ''forced'' music.

Let''s just say I pretty much disagree with everything in your post I know the certain sounds in music that I like, and I can name them. They''re very quantifiable: it just takes knowledge of the systems involved. And we can appreciate how music affects emotion largely through psychology, although many people don''t like to think about that. I don''t think music is ''art'' and not ''science'': everything that exists is ''science'', and ''art'' is a state of perception. Yes, someone with no musical knowledge can make good music if they feel it: but they''re not going to have some innate ability to know where to put their fingers on the keyboard or fretboard or whatever. Their lack of musical knowledge is going to frustrate their ability to translate what''s in their head to what the instrument plays.

Leading on from that, people get to see how their ''feelings'' translate to tangible concepts such as key changes, cadences, progressions and so on. To deny that is like trying to claim something is a ''black art'' when clearly it is not. Look at J.S. Bach''s "The Well-Tempered Clavier Book I"... 24 "Preludes and Fugues", 2 for each semitone, 1 in a major key, 1 in a minor key. Very calculated, very deliberate. Yet he is considered one of the all-time greats. He was well aware of how music moves in predictable patterns, and used them to his advantage. He didn''t do everything based on emotion, he wrote what he knew would sound good given his musical knowledge.

As a last point... if you always stick with playing whatever feels like the natural next note/chord/cadence, then you''re going to be forever stuck in a predictable rut, with much of your music sounding the same. Exploring other avenues, no matter how dry or calculated it might seem when you quantify them, can open your eyes (ears?) to some new ways of approaching the ''problem''.

Saying that Back didn't pour himself into his music is just wrong. It's not the Backstreet Boys we're talking about. Sure, he could be structured, but what he wrote was revolutionary (not evolutionary of other stuff) at the time.

Alright, I can see no one's changing anyone else's mind here... there's no room for romantics like myself in a computer music forum... lol.

Hey, I'm a guitarist... I won't even get into the whole shredder thing. I don't have time to argue and all:
Hendrix/ Neil Young..is to..Yngwie Mee whatever his name is.
Is there any comparison?
Doh.

Edited by - PoppinFresh on August 27, 2001 10:54:04 AM