MIDI or similar composers?

[FouCapitan]

I'm looking to start a project some time in the near future, and one thing I lack for it is a medium to compose music with.

Does anyone know of any tools (preferably free) that could suffice?

Looking to compose music of quality similar to MIDI or SPC formats.

[Ramsus]

Look up audio trackers. They're pretty low-level. First you construct instruments from your own sound samples, although many include samples and some can use your MIDI sequencing subsystem for additional instruments. Then you place notes, with stops to end sustained notes when there's no new note following them, onto a top-down timeline of beats which are grouped into pages called patterns. Each pattern can be repeated multiple times, too.

If you don't have a MIDI keyboard and can't play piano-like instruments, a tracker gives you the ability to construct music on a simple, technical level using just your computer keyboard and a bit of patience. Also, since they've been around for a while, there's a lot of free ones.

Just don't let yourself be scared off by the horrendous user interfaces, and you'll be fine.

[Luminaire85]

I recently tried out LMMS, the Linux MultiMedia Studio - despite its name, it's also available for Windows - and was rather impressed. It's catching up in functionality to proprietary software like FL Studio, and it's free. In software like this you place notes on a grid that is analogous to a piano roll on old-time pianos. No MIDI keyboard required here either; you can do it all with a mouse and, as Ramsus said, patience.

There are a number of freely-available soundfonts that will give you MIDI-like (or better) quality patches. Google is your friend here; you will probably want collections that correspond to the General MIDI (GM) standard. In particular you will probably want to download GM soundfonts of a few different sizes so that your RAM isn't overwhelmed.

[Ramsus]

Now that's impressive. I think I just found myself a new toy.

Another option if you're familiar with reading guitar tabs is tuxguitar.

[Shee]

I just downloaded tuxguitar, I'll have to do some tinkering.  I used to work with Tabit, which was a MIDI guitar tab program.  Then I moved on to Reason, which.....well I can dream but let's be honest those jams aren't gonna make it into CT.

[Lord J Esq]

I use the free version of Noteworthy Composer, and do midi-to-mp3 translations for free on Hamienet. Eventually I'll have my own deluxe composer's studio; I already have the hardware, but my new machine isn't operational yet. For the past several years, Noteworthy has worked just fine with me. And I've learned a thing or two about scoring music.

[TriforceofEternity]

Amazing I am not the only one that knows about midi here.       A good soundfont is called Unision.

[teaflower]

Hmm... I'll really have to look into making my own MIDIs. I've just realized that VOCALOID can import from MIDI, but the tracks are always messy. Someone keeps deciding that putting the chords for the track on the same track is fun. Bullshit.

So... yeah, look into MIDI makers. Yeah.

[Belaith]

Now that's impressive. I think I just found myself a new toy.

Another option if you're familiar with reading guitar tabs is tuxguitar.

I'd prefer Guitar Pro 5. That's the program I use to make all my MIDIs. It gives you full flexibility with how many channels you want to use and what instruments. The tab numbers range from one to thirty and you're given the option to set the tuning. The drum tabs aren't that hard to tinker with, either. Eh, give it a try. My suggestion is torrenting the full version with the serial key and all three RSEs (Realistic Sound Engine).

[Ramsus]

Actually, RoseGarden is pretty popular on Linux, but getting a good realtime Linux setup that uses jackd can be hard if you don't know how to build a custom Gentoo system and have some time to kill. I just finally got mine set up with everything working perfectly and no extra nonsense like pulseaudio, esd, or arts. Now I can write custom jackd applications and filters and experiment with sound from a programming viewpoint.

[Luminaire85]

I was able to get a working and usable Rosegarden setup via Planet CCRMA, which is for Fedora/CentOS. Even easier would be Ubuntu Studio, but when I tried it I had some issues with the real-time kernel.

My preliminary experience with Rosegarden is that the theory of combining the features of scorewriters, sequencers, and digital audio workstations is sound, but Rosegarden's implementation of this is somewhat lacking. I would be interested to hear others' feedback.

Scorewriting is a feature I would like to have in my music composition pipeline, as I would like to compose works to be performed as well as sampled. To that end I've been leaning towards Lilypond, and have been keeping an eye on MuseScore and the relatively-young Canorus.

[Ramsus]

Actually, now that I've had a chance to more thoroughly explore the world of Linux pro-audio with a realtime Gentoo setup, I have to say I'm pretty impressed by the sheer power and flexibility of everything you can do with jack and all of the software and plugins out there. Now I see why there's no substantial all-in-one solution for Linux audio -- it's because it's so easy with jack to move, mix, and split audio from application to application and create all sorts of inter-connected audio pipelines, that you don't want to use just one application.

[FouCapitan]

Thanks for all of the help, though I have to agree with Ramsus, the UI for these editors is a little overwhelming at first, especially since I've never worked with anything along these lines before.

Hopefully after a while of experimenting around (And possibly finding some tutorials) I can start laying down some tracks.