MattHawkins Online - Film Making Forum

since I wanna make my own soundtracks, I would like to know a good ( and free if possible ) software that i can use to play ( create ) guitare beats... any suggestions are welcome....

thanks

Finale is the standard for music composition. That's what I use.

thanks epsilon, ill search for it.

how much would software like that run me?

I think it retails around $600, maybe $250 or so in stores. If you aren't going all out on music composing, then you really don't need that. Get PrintMusic, the baby brother of Finale. It pretty much is the same thing except minus the fancy cr** that nobody really uses. That is under $50 in most stores. I'm sure any local music shop will carry them. If that is still too much, you can get Notepad, which is the very basic in music notation, but runs around $20.

They are all listed here: www.codamusic.com

If you have a mac u should use Garage Band...that program rocks.

Acid! Frutiy loops! I duno!

Finale is good for composing using score-sheets and stuff. But it is NOT a program for making sounds (though it can do it, but not the best choise fro that). To get good results out of Finale (or other notation programs) You usually have to take the MIDI-files into another program for both getting the good sounds (from synths, virtual synths, sample libraries or whatever), and to tweak the music and mix/master the track(s)...

Unless You take Your score-sheets to the local orchestra/band and have them play Your music...

Cubase, Nuendo, Cubasis, Cakewalk, Logic, Protools and others are all sequencer and arranging software that can be useful to both compose, arrange and get the sounds from (and they can all be used together with Finale or other notation software). There used to be a free version of ProTools, and although limited, it is supposed to be quite powerful (never tried it myself).

And then there are the software studios; FLStudio (aka Fruity Loops), Project 5, Orion, Reason, Garageband and so on... Comes with a more complete set of sounds/virtual instruments, but might lack in the notation deprtement. They can all import and tweak MIDI files from notation software though...

Sample-loop based slice'n'dice programs like Acid, eJay Magix Music maker and all those can also be used of course, for delaing with samples and loops in a neat way...

Regards,
Rico

Yep. It also depends on how nice your midi hardware is. Finale works for me because I mainly do sheet music writing.

As JJJSWIFT said, GarageBand rocks (only $50). If you need something more... uh, better, you can use a soundtrack app called (what else?) Soundtrack. Although it will put you back $200. But it does include over 4,000 loops and effects.

Musics not really my thing.

I3lade203 wrote:Musics not really my thing.

.

No one cares you spamming commie!

Alrighty.

I personally don't have much time to do my music scoring in - so I use smartsound!

Any1 heard of/used it? - itz gr8. Not reeli my music but it's legal, it cuts to perfect lengths of track, u dnt have 2 record it, there's a huge choice of how a song'll sound and it sounds gr8 at the end of it! All this for about 3 mins per song!!

it saves me a lot of time,

just a thought...

Musics not really my thing.

Then may i ask, why are you on this part of the forum?

because he's a spammer and he always will be.

We will be using eJay 360 Xtreme for the Hollow Point soundtrack. I got a demo in a packet of cereal. You can't get more low budget than that!

If you have a mac u should use Garage Band...that program rocks.

May seem like a stupid question but... is there an way of running that on windows?

No, GarageBand can't run on Windows.

With a midi keyboard, Garage Band is great for making film soundtracks. Go to http://www.icompositions.com for some samples.

I used to use eJay; it's a great program.

I have ACID, it's pretty good but usually I don't use it for my music. I use it for things like editing audio in my movies to make someone sound like they're on the radio, etc..

I use acid Pro 4, and have amassed a libarry of free lopps off the internet and sample cd's, but i don't really have the corerct loops to make an instrumental score. But with the right loops, acid is a great program.

Personally I've always preferred Sibelius for my composition (another notation/composition program). Love it. Never really got on with Finale, although I did use a very old version.

I bought Sibelius 2, Education price, for about £250 I believe. Music Scholarship money well spent!

(I also use a Yamaha SW1000 card for my midi sounds - not the best, but much better than standard midi sound cards.)

Magic-Man wrote:

Musics not really my thing.

Then may i ask, why are you on this part of the forum?

Mabye becuase this is a FILMMAKING forum, not a MUSIC forum.

so you composers dont actully have a band play music? you just sit at the comp for a day clicking. thats pretty cool. shows where technology has brought us.

To be honest - computers can only take it so far, at least when working with orchestral type of music. If You go for movies with a bit of budget You usually involve an orchestra at one stage or another. But for low/no budget projects it is hard to pay the musicians so computers will have to do a lot of the time.
Not to say that You can't use computers in bigger productions, it just isn't as common nowdays as it used to be in the middle of the 1980s (when it was hip to use synths for almost any score)...

Regards,
Rico