Creating digital music

kedinik

I'm writing a game and I need software that can be used to compose and synthesize the accompanying music; what are my options?

I tried Sibelius, but the notes sound painfully tinny and fake. How can I digitally create better sounding music?

mooshoepork

Look into fruity loops

edit: example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR9GpHunCRI

Patrick Ripoll

Fruity Loops is the most User-Friendly music creator I've ever encountered. It's very intuitive and yet there's a LOT of room to do strange things, so you never feel limited. I've created 3 electronica albums with Fruity Loops and countless other electronic songs, everywhere from atmospheric drone noise to mash-ups to really tacky hip-hop beats. It's flexible, fast, fun, and biodegradable.

Give it a look see!

DusT_HounD

Can you still download those creative commons- licensed sample packs? They sound like a nice idea for increasing the range of stuff that can be added into a track.

kedinik

This looks good.

What level of FL should I buy, Express? The upgraded features seem too complicated for my purposes.

Seeks

You can also try Linux Multimedia Studio (LMMS). It's actually not linux-only, it just started that way.

It's basically a FL ripoff.

Edit: And if you're spending cash money and the above solutions don't work for you, you can try Reason. It's honestly the best program of this sort I've ever used. Definitely not free, though. I also haven't used a shit ton of these programs.

Patrick Ripoll

Oh yeah, the plug-in browser is arranged in directories, so adding samples to the interface is as easy as creating a folder and saving them.

Most of the preset samples are a little tinny and fake sounding (it's especially difficult to get a tom sound that isn't too round and resonant), but with a little tweaking and effects, you can pretty much get anything to sound how you want it. Check out my song "The Big Furry Monster" (you'll have to scroll the playlist down a bit to find it), which is made entirely of present samples that I altered, to see a good example of how much you can twist the sound of things.

What I especially appreciate is how intuitive it is to sequence the automation and drop samples. The only real problem I've had with it is that the bpm detector (which is important when you're trying to remix a rap song using acapella vocal tracks) never seems to work properly, but I may just be using it wrong.

EDIT:

kedinik wrote: »

This looks good.

What level of FL should I buy, Express? The upgraded features seem too complicated for my purposes.

You're gonna need the piano roll (which allows you to sequence notes as opposed to performing them) to do anything substantial (unless you're a great keyboard player), so Fruity Edition is probably your best bet.