(no subject)

[deckardcanine]

The much warmer weather today induced me to go outside. This included a long run, made longer by me getting lost for a bit. But before I was up for that level of exercise, I decided to walk to a given destination for a given purpose. Didn't take long for me to think, "How about buying Finale?" That's the music software program my folks have that I want, because Play Music is cheap and restricted to piano sounds.

The most logical place in walking distance to look was Best Buy. Between my questions to personnel and my independent search, it appears they had exactly one copy of one piece of music software: Music Creator 4. I could see that it was designed for far more than I planned to do, but I figured, "Hey, multiple instrument sounds and a staff to work with are enough to justify the $40."

Now I remember why I almost never buy on a whim.

Upon inserting the CD, I watched the instructional videos. My heart sank with each one. Just because I allegedly don't need recording experience doesn't mean I won't find the interface complicated and some of the terms completely unfamiliar. Nevertheless, I thought I might make use of about 5% of the options.

That's when I got another reminder: why I stopped preferring computer games to console games. Specifically, you have to keep track of a lot of requirements for any complex software. The minimum listed on the package didn't look too hard, but despite the claim that any Windows-compatible audio interface will do, MC4 doesn't like what I have. It seriously wants Wave RT. No wonder the price seemed a bargain: they expect me to buy other things to go with it. Peripherals other than a qwerty and mouse would be good.

I've now put MC4 on eBay. Using eBay to sell is another first for me. Let's hope I didn't screw up there, too.

Comments

[carlfoxmarten]

Ouch, too bad the price didn't reflect how much it would actually cost to effectively use it...

If you're interested, I can have a look for open-source software similar to Finale.

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'd like that.

[carlfoxmarten]

What features are you most interested in?

Most software I've found so far have support for loops, and most also have support for MIDI input.

So far I've only reviewed one program, called LMMS (Linux MultiMedia Studio, though it's also available for Windows):
http://lmms.sourceforge.net/

More coming as I find them...

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

I just want to be able to compose on a staff and have it play the sounds of various instruments.

[carlfoxmarten]

I've found another piece of software that might be of use to you:

Denemo appears to be a text-editor style music composer with support for audio playback, saving to a very wide range of audio formats, including MIDI and ABC, printing (both as hardcopy and PDF), and lyrics.
(it worked out of the box for me, though I tested it on Linux not Windows)

One word of warning, though, the documentation seems to indicate that it works well with LilyPond for printing, so I can't tell if it uses it at all for displaying the score.
(both are free software, so it doesn't matter a whole lot about an additional piece of software)

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

Alas, this is no better for me than Play Music. Thanks anyway.