Making music

[Shawnathan]

Does anyone know of any program I can download to make music?

[shbaz]

What do you mean? Like a free MIDI composer, drum loops, or a recording program?

There's a lot of stuff out there, usually kind of steep to learn.

[Peter Thomas]

There are one or two 'trial' programs out there on the net. I can't name 'em off hand because I haven't used them in so long, but I probably wouldn't bother with them unless you are 100% determined not to spend a dollar. I imagine google could throw them at you.

But, I assure you, they will frustrate the hell out of you. They never do what you want, and they're just plain HARD to use.

If you're after a REAL investment, go for sibelius. That's what I use, but you have to be really serious about music to go that far (I've spent probably $1600 on it so far). Cheaper programs (about $15, maybe?) are things like Music Works Personal, which do everything you want, but are harder to learn.

Well, I can see that 2 out of 3 paragraphs have been dedicated to anything BUT answering your question, so I'll shut up.

Good luck with your searching....


Edit: Other sibelius-ish programs like Cubase and Finale 2000 are also good. But I don't promote them because I'm a die-hard for Sibelius.

[loominous]

I d watch out for notationprograms like sibelius, finale etc unless you re very comfortable with musicnotation and happen to be writing for a real ensemble.

Just a heads up.

[InCreator]

When talking about module music (which sound a little bit better than MIDI), I'd suggest you Sound Club. It's totally free and small (about 3 MB).

It supports its own format, .sn2 and also S3M. MOD-tracks can be loaded too, but not saved.

Basically, It's a thing between proffesional tracker and program for children, something like in drawing programs would be "something between MS-Paint and Adobe Photoshop".

It's damn easy to use, you don't have to mess with letter and numbers, like in pro trackers, just draw some lines, assign instruments to them and voila!

Program comes with an instrument bank of about 500 different samples, but you can always make new ones or rip them from other songs *ahem*.

And it should work on even 486.

I personally use SoundClub for composing a song, then save it in S3M format and RE-save in MODPlug Tracker, to add reverb, chorus and other effects.
Really easy, yet sounds good, too.

Start by browsing http://www.bluemoon.ee, SoundClub for windows and another one for DOS should be located somewhere in "history" page. (Don't accidentally download DOS version, Win95 version is much better in some ways)

[Chicky]

Hey shawnathan  (n im called nathan too ) lol.

for midi's (main adventure game music file type) ive started using midimaker you can download it for free at http://www.necrocosm.com/mm.html . its reasonabley eaisy to use but i have yet made anything worth putting in a game.

Im working on it

l8rs
-a chicken

[m0ds]

Download MS QBasic, and put this in;

PLAY "L30ABCDEFG"

then hit F5.

You're making music!

[Eero]

Yeah, when your computer has PC-speaker...

[Alynn]

I've been using anvilstudio for about 2 years now. I like it.
If you cant figure out the url, you need to be shot.

[Peter Thomas]

I don't think you need be 'wary' of programs like Sibelius/Finale, as loominus suggests, although they DO cost a lot of money, so skip em unless you're serious. In terms of notation, however, I think Sibelius is the easiest programs to use in the world! Seriously! Anyone with even a basic understanding of c major scale can whip up cool stuff. And, because it's for midi purposes, you don't actually have to worry about what the notes look like on the page: just what they sound like.

SoundClub, as Increator said, is another very cool little prog, and worth the 5 minute download

[Shawnathan]

Thanks alot, I really apreciate it, I'm trying to make some  music for my first game, with out ripping it from other games.  thanks a millon