modern day software & compositional workflow

Ever since the birth of MIDI in the early 80′s creating music has taken a wild turn in the digital age.  Suddenly the need of writing music by pen and paper turned into the need of learning computer software.  Today, when it seems like there are too many programs to work with, music composers find themselves in a never-ending quest searching for what works best for their creative work flow.

Screen shot incorporating Nodal with Numerology

Music Notation Software

Music notation software such as the popular Finale and Sibelius have tremendous tools for creating professional scores, parts and leadsheets.  There are also a number of open-source notation alternatives rapidly emerging.  Composers today generally find themselves using their penmanship less, and their technical skills more, since the computer can generate perfect edges and complete profound editing capabilities.  Yet since each application has many unique processes, some of the simplest of tasks are the most confounding that often come as stumbling blocks and major sources of frustration for composers who, like so many of us, choose to do our own copy work.  This is especially challenging when one starts a composition directly in notation software.  Often composers do not realize that the driving force behind all notation software engines is a simple MIDI sequencer, albeit hidden from the user interface.

Notation Software Alternatives

One of the biggest advantages of working with notation software is the ability to playback and instantly hear your work.  If you already know what the music sounds like, it might be a good chance to look to other avenues to better convey your written material on paper.  Software such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop helps many modern composers ultimately gain unique drawing and text writing abilities generally not possible in notation programs.  Photoshop is great for images, and Illustrator is great for drawing and working text.  Many have experimented with Illustrator for the right chord notation when notation software simply wasn’t able to go the extra mile.  Moreover, all notation software comes with a bundle of specialty music fonts that can called up in any application that uses fonts providing you know where the characters lie on the keyboard.  In essence, it is possible to start typing your composition away in Microsoft Word, although I wouldn’t recommend it.  Utilities such as PopChar can greatly aid in helping you find the desired font character, and where it’s mapped to on the keyboard.

Sequencing & Programming

Sometimes building compositions from raw, MIDI information is a powerful way of developing material.  In a sequencer, a composer can record in MIDI notes and rhythms, and then tweak his performance as desired.  Alternatively, clicking in MIDI notes directly on the piano roll is commonly used for those lacking functional piano chops.  It may be a  slower form of data entry, but it also comes with its advantages.  Working in this environment offers flexibility beyond conventional notation techniques.  It is easy to radically experiment with form, pitch and duration and still hear a playback.  Then, after happy with your work, export the sequence as a MIDI file and import it into your notation software of choice.  After a few hours of copyist work, out prints a chart worthy of reading.

MIDI, Audio and DAWs

DAW‘s are becoming more and more powerful by the month.  Entire compositions can live within a single session of DP, Logic, Pro Tools, Cubase – you name it.  They even have built-in notation viewing although it is pretty limited.  Say your composition exists as MIDI in Logic, notated in Sibelius and then recorded into Pro Tools.  The writing process doesn’t have to stop there!  Advances in digital audio are making things just as easy to manipulate audio as it is MIDI, while still retaining excellent audio quality.  It is worthy to note that every genre of music is using the fullest of what today’s technology has to offer.  In this approach, the composer is slowly (or perhaps rapidly) becoming their own audio engineer and programmer, and vice versa.

Max/MSP and PD

Software like Max/MSP and open source cousin Pure Data (PD) are another way of delving into composition from square one.  Anything is possible providing users are able to build it in a real-time, graphical programming environment.  If a DAW’s flexibility is not enough for your composition, I guarantee that Max or PD is!  A somewhat unknown fact is that Ableton Live was originally conceived from a Max Patch.  Synthesis, signal processing, audio to MIDI, mathematical calculations, video implementation, controllerism, along with a thousand other possibilities are at your disposal.

There are many more work-flow choices out there…

bing crosby remixed

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I gave an assignment to a group of aspiring sound designers not too long ago.  The task was to take two completely different tracks of music and find a way to make them work together and sound somewhat uniform using only editing, transposition and time compression/expansion.  They all had an afternoon to complete it.  Here’s my ‘remixed’ example.  Even caught some of the ii-V harmony in the second half!

Thanks to choreographer Cherice Barton for asking me to attempt this in the first place!  It was a fun experiment.  Makes me think what other wild juxtapositions are out there waiting for discovery.