One man band

Hi

Forgive me if this thread is in the wrong category, really not sure where it belongs.

I'm pretty new to songwriting and have come up with some pretty good stuff. I find writing songs with notation really benefitial to my compositions and I've been using GuitarPro5 for some time. However, the downside of it is that, GuitarPro only plays Midi and therefore sounds very artifitial, it gets really hard to stimulate more ideas from such bad sound. Can anyone recommend me a good music program where I can write songs using just notation or piano roll and get realistic sound? I just bought Band in a Box and Realband and am planning to uninstall them now because they just don't do the job and are bloody hard to use! I would love something like LOGIC but sadly I'm using windows vista. Please HELP!

Any advice on songwriting would also be great too! I like writing pop,punk,and hardrock.

Thanks.

This is amazing to know that "one man bad". I never know about one man band, atleast there was two man . Thanks for share

Not exactly, the title was just a random one for the sake of filling up a title. Since I play more than 1 instruments, I plan to write songs with all parts and then getting friends to play for me when I go into studio recording. But anyway...back to my question... =D

If you found Band in a Box too hard to use, chances are Logic would not be a good choice. Logic is not generally considered to be easy. People who've been using DAWs for many years find themselves flummoxed in the face of its idiosyncratic ways of doing things. (Although Apple has, since they bought Emagic, the old publisher of Logic, made big inroads at putting an interface on it that is much more like other DAWs.)

You might get better answers in the recording forum here at HC, but this is something that does come up for songwriters.

When you say GuitarPro "only plays MIDI" I'm wondering what else it could play? MIDI is the language that we use to talk to synthesizers, it is the way that your sequencing software talks to your synthesizers (real or virtual).

The other alternative is working with loops of already recorded audio (a la Sony's ACID or the looping components in Garage Band, as well as many full DAWs like Logic, Cubase, Sonar, Live, etc). But it definitely doesn't sound like that's what you want. You'd be giving up even more control and it's much more difficult to generate complex harmonic arrangements, etc.

It's too bad you couldn't get BiaB to work for you, a lot of folks find that it can be quite helpful in roughing out a quick MIDI demo, since it's so easy to change the chords and such quickly. But it's not really oriented to those who want to write their own arrangements.

It's no doubt frustrating for accomplished keyboardists, those with very specific ideas about how they want things to sound, or those who are interested in writing the actual parts -- as it is really designed primarily to be a MIDI arrangement generator.

So, it does sound like, one way or another, you're going to end up wanting to work in a full blown DAW or -- if you have no interest in recording actual instruments -- a MIDI sequencer/scoring utility, and probably a DAW or sequencer that offers a range of included synthesizers/sound modules. And that is going to mean a fair amount of complexity, I'm afraid.

Hi thanks for your reply. I just don't quite like BandinBox's system of generating songs for you. It's like just thinking of chords to play and the program creates the rest of the song for you. I'd rather something that lets you start from scratch and make your compositions 100% your own..

In GuitarPro5, there's a feature called RSE (Realistic Sound Engine) which uses real musical instruments samples. So you can just write your music on a score in the program and that feature will play your song using real samples in the program. Trouble is, those samples sound really bad too! If I could find a program which is similar or as close as possible to that, but with better real samples, it would be ideal. I'm not looking for extraordinary sound in which people use them directly in their songs, just good enough for me to sort of imagine what a real song would sound like when I actually go into a studio to record it with real instruments. (Hope I made sense...)

Perhaps I used the wrong terms. I'm pretty sure you know what I meant when I used the term "artificial sound". Just like the old Sibelius, how everything sounds like a toy box.

Reaper plus shortcircuit plus soundfonts or samples.

Nah, I get it. And, you're right, BiaB is not the right tool for that job at all.

What you want, is, indeed, a DAW of some kind (you can try Reaper for free and the non-commercial license is very reasonable, there is also the free, opensource Ardour DAW) and some good samples. As me_again suggests, there are a bunch of free Soundfont formatted samples out there, as well as a free Soundfont sample player, SFZ (also pay versions of it). You can find free Soundfont sounds at www.Hammersound.net and other free [and not free] virtual isntruments and sample players and more at www.KVRaudio.com.

You might have to do some tinkering to get just the sounds set up the way you like, but you'll be in control of your own destiny.

For pop, punk or hard rock ... no. You can have one or the other. You might be able to pass in electronica or soundtrack style classical, but for your genres of choice the performance is absolutely crucial to a finished sounding product.

You can certainly make demos to document your ideas. Most DAWs will have a piano roll and some built in VST instruments to render your midi into audio. I know there are options if you want to write in musical notation but I haven't used any of them.

I downloaded the free trial for Reaper. I can't seem to do nuts with it. Moreover, even when importing midi tracks into it, there's no sound coming out. Would you perhaps know any other programs I could try out?

Yea man, that'll be awesome! but I wish I knew programs which could do that...

I will warn you that some of the tools I am about to discuss are pretty expensive.

For some reason, high end tools for song craft are very expensive. As a side note, I have never been able to figure out why software companies that make software for artists charge so much money since most of us are poor.

Also, we have made a substantial investment in our studio, and we are, in the end, very happy with our purchases. We have learned that spending some money on a project studio can be a good investment. Anything we can do in our studio, we don't have to get nickel and dimmed to death by another place to do for us.

Any software I mention you try first before you buy. If you get a trial license, find someone locally who has it already and try it on their system. Make sure you like it.

We compose and score all of our music in Finale. We arrange all of the various parts for all the instruments in one multi-stave score. This is helpful because we can use midi controllers to input what we want, and then score around that ensuring we keep vertical and horizontal harmony.

We then decide what staves or parts will be played by what band members, and what staves and parts will be synths. The staves that will be played by humans are printed out separately so that each person can use it as a reference when we are recording their part.

The staves that will be synths are imported directly into our Digital Audio Workstation from Finale as a midi file. Those midi tracks are then manilpulated and tweeked with our VST instruments and rack mounted synths until we are really happy with how everything sounds. We start adding in the recorded tracks one by one.. and before you know it a recorded song is born.

We use Steinberg's Cubase 5 as our Digital Audio workstation because I really really like the new score arrangement features for midi tracks that they have included in the new version. It really makes tweaking midi from our standpoint much easier to have it malleable as a score in the DAW!

Now this method is, of course, not for everyone. We tend to be music snobs.. and we over-compose everything.

Finale is around 210 USD

Cubase 5 is around 500 USD

Yea bro, I agree with you. If I had the money to spend I would definitely get an Apple and then Logic Pro. However, I'm still a starting songwriter and would only need a basic, good sounding software to stimulate ideas. Nothing too fancy with recording features etc...

I could probably consider Finale, though I'm not too happy with the missing "NOTATION or PIANO ROLLS".

I found 3 other programs which I might consider too.

REASON (Windows version)

SONY ACIDPRO and

ADOBE AUDITION

Any comments on those?

Thanks again!

I've only used Reason. It seems like a pretty good fit for what you want to do: has a usable piano roll with a point and click interface and comes bundled with a wide variety of instruments. I haven't seen a staff/notation interface - but if you get something like Finale you can import the midi files. One drawback of Reason (in general) is that Reason only processes midi, however Propellerheads have a new product (Record) which can add audio recording capability to your setup - no idea how it would integrate with Guitar Pro files/players.

What did pete townshend use for his demos? Cause all of his demos are pretty in depth, and I have been told that he notated them using a computer program... If this has no relevance, go ahead and ingore it.

p.s. I second the new propellerheads stuff. I used it briefly on a friends computer and it clicked with me right away. And some of that stuff baffles me, so I think it must be easy to use. And versatile.

He might do that now - but he started on reel to reel tape.

http://www.thewho.net/petetownshend/sln.htm

I find Pete's demos fascinating. I own both the Scoop albums (on vinyl) and the Quadrophenia demos on youtube are amazing.

If your program supports VST, EZ Drummer is a good and not too terribly expensive drum program. It comes with a bunch of preloaded drum patterns and you can find other midi patterns from EZ Drummer and places like Groove Monkee.

How do you get to Carnagie Hall? Practice... The best instrument to play is the keys because of midi, however, the bass guitar is not that hard? Guitar is a little bit hard to learn if you're not a guitar player from childhood (as am I). I know many who colaborate with others, you do stuff on theirs? They do stuff on yours? That's probably the best way for you to go. As for me, I must do everything on my stuff, but I'm blessed with many years of experimentation on multiple instruments and singing since I was a child. Good luck.

Most programs I know can also import midi files, but trouble is, what's the point if it's gonna sound exactly the same. Sorry, could you explain what you meant by Reason can only process midi?

If Reason could do it all, and sound great/realistic, I'll get it! But which version though?