music tools for the inept?

simonar on 2007/08/23 20:27 of second year's a charm?

does anyone have any suggestions for music creation software for someone with very little musical ability? it doesn't have to produce symphonies, but lack of sound was a big weakness for me last year that i'd like to work on.

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Comments

eugman on 2007/08/23 21:42:

windows or linux?

alex on 2007/08/23 23:52:

If you can, try to borrow a friend's mac and play around with GarageBand. You can put something together very quickly by dragging around loops and samples. Try googling for "GarageBand Windows" for a bunch of lookalike applications if you can't get to a mac.

For a bit more control, try Hydrogen (Linux only?) for drum loops. Anything more melodic than this is going to need a MIDI keyboard (and pianist!) or large library of samples to work with.

RB[0] on 2007/08/24 00:41:

I too am inept, and haven't used it extensively, but you should try musagi.
It was created by one of the contestants here(drPetter) and is really very nice, it was used to create the music for toba's entry last time through IIRC
It is really quite simple to create music with it, the only thing being you need to know when it sounds good ;)

tsmaster on 2007/08/24 05:55:

It may be overkill, and I certainly haven't mastered it yet, but you could also check out FruityLoops, er, I mean "FL Studio":
http://www.flstudio.com/

The evaluation version allows you to save out WAVs and MP3s, but not your project files. There are several versions of the program for different budgets, if you decide it's your sort of thing.

simonar on 2007/08/24 21:31:

i'm using linux... but musagi looks pretty good if i can get it working under wine. cheers.

nihilocrat on 2007/08/29 18:23:

LMMS looks like it's trying to be FL Studio for linux.
Cheesetracker and Chibitracker are also good trackers for Linux, but obviously, would require some tracking experience, because trackers are a little more... terse... than GarageBand or FruityLoops.

I would also recommend Reason and Ableton Live (both for Windows and Mac, I think), but those are commerical. They may have demos, though.

I actually can't find a non-broken link to musagi. Anyone have one?

RB[0] on 2007/08/29 19:15:

It looks like the site is down right now, but I just went there a couple days ago.

It should be up again soon, but if not, I can zip up my install and email it to you.
BTW, musagi only runs under windows, unless you can get wine to work ;)