A long time back I heard about a music composition program that was free to download and use (real freeware, not just a trial period). ISTR hearing about it on an episode of Scientific American on PBS. It enabled you to compose and play music on your computer with a minimum of musical knowledge, and you could even print out the score for people to play the composition on real instruments. I can’t remember what the program was called, and googling “freeware music composition” doesn’t find anything that sounds like what I’m looking for.
Does the above program sound familiar to anyone? Does this program still exist?
–SSgtBaloo
Quite what you mean by ‘compose and play…with a minimum of musical knowledge’ needs clarification. Do you mean not able to read music notation? Not able to play an instrument?
Maybe you’re after music which will transcribe from a microphone (sung) input…or take samples and let you morph and modify them into your own creation…
As for pure music notation for free, Finale Notepad is a slimmed-down version of an industry standard notation package.
It sounds like SSgtBaloo is talking about something like the late-80s instant compositional program by Electronic Arts called “Instant Music.” You needed absolutely no musical knowledge to make it work, and it relied on you dragging colored bars across a “scroll” (somewhat analagous to a player piano reel.) Its AI would create a melody based on your input and choice of style. It was quite advanced for its time, and pretty damn impressive, IMHO.
Unfortunately, I do not know of any freeware programs right now that do this. But I believe this is what we’re looking for.
Maybe this will do the job…although I couldn’t get it to actually make a sound for me 