Free Music Software
By Andy Harris (Guest Post)
This
month we look over a number of wonderful free tools for creating and enjoying
music. Quite a bit of excellent free software is available.
Audio Mixing With Audacity
The most
straightforward class of audio tools involves recording and manipulating
sounds. Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net) is a
marvelous tool for this job. Use it with a microphone to record music or
speech, import audio in wav, mp3, or ogg formats, and manipulate the sound
waves directly. Once you have recorded or imported a sound, you can tweak it in
hundreds of ways: add digital effects play it backwards, cut out parts you
don’t need, and much more.
Audacity
is a multi-track editor, which means you can record several different audio
samples and place them in layers for interaction. For example, my father was
once responsible for creating the sound effects for a community performance of Henry V. He and I spent a wonderful
afternoon gathering battle sounds for the Agincourt scene, building a marvelous
multi-layer sound effect with horses and swords. (They always cast Dad as a
king who dies in the first scene so he can run the sound effects for the rest of
the play.)
I also
frequently use Audacity in my daughter’s dance ministry, to shorten songs for
performance purposes or to pre-fade a song at the spot she needs. Audacity is perfect for mixing sounds, editing audio files, and
converting files to other formats. I use it for virtually all the sound effects
in my game development.
Tracking With SunVox
If you
really want to create digital music in a powerful way, you might want to look
into SunVox (www.warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox). It is a fascinating example of what musicians call a “tracker.” Essentially,
it allows you to create audio samples by specifying a specific wave or
importing a sound file. Each sample can be used as the foundation of an instrument
that can be used to play any note on the scale. You can then put together a
measure’s worth of notes to make patterns, and you can combine patterns to make
complete songs.
The
process can be confusing at first, but if you look at examples and view some of
the many excellent videos on YouTube, you’ll find yourself making incredible
music soon. This tool allows you to create any electronic sound you wish, as
well as import any other sounds, add drum tracks, and make complex and
incredible music. There can be a steep learning curve, but once you understand
the interface, you’ll find it to be absolutely incredible. Versions of SunVox
are available for nearly every platform. The Computer versions (Windows, Linux,
and Mac) are entirely free, but the mobile versions (IOS and Android) cost
about $5.00 each. Use a free version first to find out if you like it. If you
decide to purchase a mobile version, you’ll find that the flexible interface
works very well as a mobile music studio, especially on a tablet with a bit
more screen real estate.
Midi Editing With Aria Maestosa
The MIDI
audio format is under-appreciated by technical folks. While MIDI files
generally sound pretty bad on computers, that’s because it isn’t really a file
format at all. MIDI is really a language for describing music. MIDI sounds
pretty bad on most computers because most computers have very limited sound
cards. When played back on more sophisticated instruments, MIDI can sound
really wonderful.
MIDI does
not record music. Instead, it is a form of musical notation. MIDI tools are
really interesting because they allow you to look at the actual musical
notation of a piece at a very detailed level. For example, I loaded up a MIDI
recording of the Second Movement of Beethoven’s second symphony into a MIDI
editor. I was able to see the entire score as I listened, and I could even look
at the score for each individual instrument. (I was a bassoon player, so I
absolutely love the woodwind trio toward the middle of this piece.)
You can
also modify music, changing instruments around (What would Beethoven’s 7th have
sounded like with bagpipes playing the viola part?) by modifying volumes,
muting and isolating various instruments. I truly wish I could have had access
to this kind of music analysis tool when I was a serious classical musician.
You can find a MIDI file of nearly any classical piece you can imagine with a
quick Google search. Try www.musedata.org as a starting place for some high-quality,
open-source classical music. Of course, you can also compose music with a
high-end MIDI editor, whether you use a mouse, the computer keyboard, or
(preferably) plug in a high-end musical instrument into the computer.
I’m a big
fan of Aria Maestosa (ariamaestosa.sourceforge.net/index.html). It is available free for all main operating systems. It has
the ability to view and edit MIDI files in a number of ways, including the raw
computer notation, as well as sheet music, piano roll, and guitar tab views. It
can be a very interesting way to study music, especially if you’re comfortable
reading musical notation.
Music Animation Machine
While on
the classical bent, this is not exactly software (www.youtube.com/user/smalin), but one of the most impressive YouTube channels I have ever
seen. If you can look past all the pop trash on YouTube, every once in a while
you can find something really grand.
Stephen
Malinowski is a musician and computer programmer (it’s remarkable how often
those two skills coincide). He has written a number of programs that allow him
to visualize classical music. On YouTube, he has produced a huge number of
videos that show these remarkable visualizations. They are not only beautiful
but also are instructive. If you look at an orchestral piece, for example, you
will see a line representing each instrument in the orchestra. Malinowski has
also released the software for producing these videos for free, so you can
experiment with your own music (stephenmalinowski.com).
These
tools should give you a lot of fun composing music on your computer. Don’t
forget to use your headphones!
Blessings!
Andy Harris is a homeschool dad, father of four
great kids, and husband to the greatest homeschool teacher ever. He has taught all
ages of students, from kindergarten to university level. Andy is the author of a
number of well-known books, including HTML/XHTML/CSS: All in One for Dummies,
Game Programming—The L Line, PHP6/MySQL Programming for the
Absolute Beginner, and Beginning
Flash
Game Programming for Dummies. For more
information about his books, to
see where he is speaking next, or to just say
hi, please stop by his website:
Copyright 2012, used with permission. All rights reserved by
author. Originally appeared in the November 2012 issue of The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, the family education magazine. Read
the magazine free at www.TOSMagazine.com or read it on the
go and download the free apps at www.TOSApps.com to read the
magazine on your mobile devices.
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