Writing Songs with MIDI

December 11, 2003 8:49 PM

So, I've decided to start writing songs. What MIDI programs do people recommend for beginners who want to experiment with scoring multiple parts? Ease of use is more important than sound quality, but some room to grow would be nice, as well...
posted by ph00dz to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (5 answers total)

Funny you should ask. I just started last night (I have a digital piano) and my roommate had a copy of Cakewalk. I highly recommend it.

I know of someone who uses Personal Composer and I looked at a few others, but wasn't really impressed with many. The two that looked like they had potential were Sibelius and Finale, but it takes a while to get used to one, so I'm sticking with Cakewalk.
posted by jaden at 9:14 PM on December 11, 2003

I'm sure you'll find some good suggestions here and here as well.
posted by eyeballkid at 9:19 PM on December 11, 2003

You may want to start with this open source MIDI sequencer Jazz++ before breaking out the checkbook. (Windows, Linux).
It's quite good, and certainly adequate for amateur/hobbyist/beginner purposes.
posted by crunchburger at 9:22 PM on December 11, 2003

Finale has a starter version called Allegro that strips out a lot of the more hoity-toity rigamarole that makes the former harder to learn. I use it for writing music (and Notepad for playing it back on the computer), but haven't yet used the MIDI interface. It was recommended to me, though, by someone who routinely does.
posted by soyjoy at 6:57 AM on December 12, 2003

Response by poster: Yeah... cakewalk looks like it'll be the way to go. My wife is in school, so I can pick it up for the educational price... which is around $50.

Crunchburger... it looks like Jazz has been left behind, in terms of support and whatnot. (The latest stable version hasn't been updated in years.) While, generally speaking, I'm an OS type of guy, I need a decent interface more than I need ability to do different things.

Thanks for the heads up on those other threads, kid. Pretty interesting reading...
posted by ph00dz at 12:25 PM on December 12, 2003