Tech: Music software for non-musicians

Subject: Music software for non-musicians
From: Ed Pellow
Date: 23 Mar 00 - 06:54 PM

Hi,

I work at a community adult education centre, and have been asked to teach a one-off 2 hour session on 'Music on the PC.'

The level of computer literacy (and musical knowledge) amonst the students is fairly limited and doing an introduction to Cubase or Logic Audio would be inappropriate.

My best guess so far is to use a sample based package such as 'Mixman DJ' to allow the students to create a tune of their own within the two hours.

If anyone has experience of this, better ideas etc, please reply!

Ed

Subject: RE: Music software for non-musicians
From: Joe Offer
Date: 23 Mar 00 - 07:08 PM

Hi, Ed - take a look at Noteworthy Composer (click). It's shareware, so you can use it for free until you want to pay the $40 fee to unlock some of the nicer features. It's very easy to use.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Music software for non-musicians
From: Ed Pellow
Date: 23 Mar 00 - 07:52 PM

Joe,

I know about Noteworthy. You may have misunderstood my query. I'm after software that allows non musicians to produce 'instant' music and thus feel good about themselves.

Thanks for replying.

Ed

Subject: RE: Music software for non-musicians
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Mar 00 - 08:04 PM

Ed, I brought home a prog similar to the one you mentioned and left it lying around. My 13 year old had nabbed it for himself and created some great stuff in no time flat and now half his class mates want a copy. Sounds like a great idea to me. Regards, John

Subject: RE: Music software for non-musicians
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Mar 00 - 08:12 PM

I'd think the best way to make music, for someone who doesn't play an instrument, might be for them to sing a tune into a microphone, and you shopw them how to get the notes into the computer, and use a midi keyboard to see what it sounds like with different instruments playing it. And you could play around with changing the particular notes and seeing what difference that made.

My impression is that a lot of music programs on PCs seem to look at music the opposite way round from me - they talk about setting up a basic rythym first and I reckon that's the last thing that gets settled. But maybe that's just me.

Teaching "Music on the PC" could mean all kinds of things - you might be trying to teach musical theory of some kind (which I've never got my head round), or it could be more about the way people can use the computer techology to get the music that's within them (whether they play an instrument or not)into the computer, and making it sound like something they are proud of, and how to send it to their cousins in Australia on the Internet.

Subject: RE: Music software for non-musicians
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 24 Mar 00 - 12:08 AM

Ed, I have not used the higher end packages you have mentioned but if they are anything like Cakewalk, I think that it would be quite easy to have people placing notes on a staff and producing something within 2 hours.

Using Cakewalk as an exaple don't bother about the rest of the program, just give a simple set of instructions on how to create a new file and view a staff and it is only a matter of clicking where you want the note to go. The notes even play as they are dragged so the user can hear what s/he is doing and as long as the snap setting are right, the notes can only go in the right places on the staff.

Overall, I have found that Cakewalk is a lot easier to handle for basic input than any of the basic programs I have tried and I would guess the same would hold true of Cubase.

Jon