"Blender" equivalent for music creation?

[eddie]

Hey!

I'm curious: is there any equivalent to blender, for the music world?

I've never done music authoring, and I have no idea of how difficult/easy it is, but I wouldn't mind trying my hand at it, nonetheless.

Ideally I'd like to make orchestral-type music (which in my untrained mind sounds difficult without resources), and I'm wondering if there's any packages out there that can aid me in doing so.

Anyone know of any?

[DracheHexe]

There are a lot of digital music packages out there. It's been so long since I sold my synth I haven't use any kind of production package for a long time so I don't know what's currently the best out there.

Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_music

[geon]

My brother use Reason from Propellerhead Software (http://www.propellerheads.se/). I am not a musician myself, but it seems neat.

[roel]

The drawback of Reason is that it isn't really Blender equivalent regarding its price.

[SamuraiCrow]

Skale Tracker (http://www.skale.org) works on Windows and Linux for Intel. Open ModPlug Tracker (http://sourceforge.net/projects/modplug/) is another good one that supports more file formats than Skale. Unfortunately it is Windows only.

[marc_opolo]

Try Renoise (http://www.renoise.com), it´s a software tracker with MIDI and VST support. Very complete.

[SamuraiCrow]

Try Renoise, it´s a software tracker with MIDI and VST support. Very complete.

So do Skale Tracker and Open ModPlug Tracker and, unlike Renoise, Skale and Open MPT are free.

[eddie]

Hmm, lots of good options here!

Now I only have to learn how to use'm. :)

Anyone know of any good tutorials with these things? I've never touched this stuff before. :D

[Wernaeh]

Hi there :)

If you have got some spare instruments lying around, and a decent sound card, it often is a better idea to record parts of your song from a "real instrument", rather than to track them.

For example, Audacity is a freeware recording tool you might want to have a look at.

Even if you want to go the tracking route, I still suggest you get a half-decent master keyboard (~200 €). Getting some basic playing skills isn't too difficult even for a complete newbie. But playing the tunes simply beats manually placing notes in a tracker - it's much more comfortable, and much faster, and that keeps up motivation :)

Cheers,
- Wernaeh

[SamuraiCrow]

The full download of Skale Tracker comes with several tutorials based on the Fast Tracker 2 format. (Skale's GUI is based on FT2.)

[eddie]

Cool! I'll check out Skale. :) Thanks everyone!

[Phaetos]

You may also give Beat (http://beast.gtk.org/beast.1.html) a try...

It features complete software-build sequencer and sound processors and
is available for lots of platforms.

Its GPLed, too.

Greetings
Stefan

[SigKILL]

If you want something free and somewhat more modern than a tracker, you've got DirectMusic Producer, if DirectX is your platform.

-Si

[DracheHexe]

Another thought would be to pick up a copy of Computer Music, a UK based magazine that has it's own free tracking/creation package included on every CD with each issue. It also has software demos, usually about 200 or so royalty free music samples as well as tutorials for using music software.

I don't know how easy their music studio software is to use compared to others out there but it might be worth checking out.