Music and Sound

Sound

I have been looking for good tools to create and edit soundtracks for my projects. Thanks to a friend, I have a MIDI keyboard and a Roland D110 synth module. It has that great synth sound! I haven’t found a good MIDI editor/sequencer yet, but there are a few multi-track recording programs that are worth noting.

(Roland D-110 Manual)

Sound Creation

A friend pointed me to a great tool called SynthEdit that allows you to create your own synthesized sounds. It takes MIDI input. I highly recommend but be warned, you will spend too much time with this! A good online resource by the author of several great YouTube tutorials on SynthEdit is here: http://www.xoxos.net/ Later we found a similar tool, but with a much better interface and features: SynthMaker.

Here is a good book, “How To Make A Noise – A comprehensive guide to synthesizer programming” located here: http://www.noisesculpture.com/index.html

Sound Recording / Editing Tools

For Mac user: go with GarageBand

For Linux: Rosegarden

For PC:

Cubase Studio 4
Ableton Live LE
Cakewalk Music Creator
MAGIX Music Maker

KVRaudio.com keeps a data base and reviews of all the apps.

MIDI Software Synthesizers / Sequencing / Editing Tools

The KORE player from Native Instruments is a free MIDI software based synthesizer. It comes with several synthesized and sampled instruments. You can purchase additional sounds through their website. These sounds are simply amazing.

The Best Digital Audio Workstation software?

There is a great article on Beginner Guitar HQ that will help you find the best Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software – check it out here.