Turning your PC into an instrument

[Cracked Pleasures]

I would like to experiment a bit with creating some music myself, either instrumentals to create a certain mood, or either soundscapes that I could use as background while reading the poems I write.

Now I never learnt to play an instrument but nowadays there is another resort, being music composition programs. I know two musicians who compose all their music on PC, and it really sounds great, they do it with such perfectionism that you can hardly hear they did not use a real instrument.

Does anyone know a good composing program? I know Apple Macintosh deliver such things for free, but I unfortunately have Micro$oft who are too greedy to give any type of software for free. But can you get a decent composing program (that is not too hard to use for a beginner) somewhere that does work with Windows XP and is okay for a variety of sounds and musical styles?

[elko]

Do you want just a composing program, or a production program?

For just composing there are some good music score creators that allow you to write music in manuscript form and listen to it back in MIDI (quite cheap sounding digital instruments).

But if you actually want to end up with a finished sounding piece then you need something that can create, modify, mix, etc. A good sort of all-round DAW (digital audio workstation) for PC is Fruity Loops, which I think is now called FL Studio. That used to be entirely free, but now I think just the demo is free. Either way it might be worth a try to see how you find it - any music production program will probably take some getting used to.

One thing I would say is that making music with computers is easier than real instruments, but not exactly easy. Recording audio (i.e. vocals or instruments rather than synthesized sounds) can be a bit complicated depending on your sound card and what mic you have. And although you don't have to learn how to play an instrument, you do still have to learn the software, if you know what I mean. But it's worth it!

[Cracked Pleasures]

Isnt MIDI too limited to create any good soundscape?

Anyways, the program you named sounds interesting. You don't happen to have a copy that you can burn on CD (which may or may not be perfectly legal practice ) ?