I would like to compose music for multiple instruments - but I don’t have room for an electronic keyboard - and, more importantly, can’t afford a keyboard.
Does anyone know of orchestral software that only requires a computer, no keyboard? That is, software that can actually replicate the sounds of orchestral instruments?
Garageband is a great starting point if you’re on Mac, and the full pro version - Logic X - is even better ($200)
If you just want to work from a score, try MuseScore (free) or Finale or Sibelius.
If you’re just looking for notation software, Finale and Sibelius are the two industry standards (I’ve always been a Finale guy, but a lot of my friends swear by Sibelius). Both of them can be operated entirely by point and click and have fairly decent sampling of all the orchestral sounds for playback.
ETA: You know, or what he said.
If anything a keyboard on its own is far more limiting than a PC or Mac running one of the many music composition/recording programs. You can do a lot with the afore mentioned Garage Band and even more with Logic or Cubase or any of the various other full featured suites. The only issue with not using a keyboard at all is that it can be hard, or at least I find it hard, to inject some feel into a composition if it is done directly to a score or midi arrangement rather than being recorded “live”. A cheap MIDI keyboard may be within your budget and make the process easier and more fun. Something with only an octave or two will be compact enough to fit into a cluttered desk but give you a little edge in being able to express yourself musically. You can use software instruments for the sounds themselves, the keyboard is just that, a keyboard with no onboard sounds or speakers etc. A reasonable MIDI keyboard can be had for less than $100.
I’m very fond of Mozart Virtuoso. It’s a “music processor,” and you can stab notes in using your keyboard (qwerty) or a mouse. (I do not know if it supports a musical keyboard, but I’ll bet it would.) It’s pretty well full-featured, as music processors go.
Thanks, but I’m trying to compose music that will be put on YouTube. It has to *sound *orchestral quality, just like hearing the 88 instruments live.
Garage band, logic, Cubase etc is the answer then.
A good music software program, that’s a good middle ground between really inexpensive software that’s not very good, and good but really expensive software, is a program called Notion. It’s only $100 (or was when I got it,) and can do many things. A bonus is that the sound set that came with it (the instrument sounds) I find are really good, better than the sounds that came with Sibelius when I bought it.
With Sibelius, if I understand, you have to buy a better sound set if you don’t like the sounds that come with it, and I don’t really want to shell out for that at this point, having gone nearly broke just buying Sibelius. Don’t get me wrong - I do like Sibelius, and it’s immensely useful to produce good-looking sheet music, but the sounds leave something to be desired.
I’m a Finale guy myself.
If you aren’t convinced by the sounds included with the program you can import sample libraries and use them instead.
(Caveat–These libraries can run into serious dollars)
Here’s one I prepared earlier. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B_s9EAIHiMOZam5HenRtLU9STmc (Beethoven’s 5th Symphony-1st Movement as arranged by Herbert Karrajan)
Enjoy
Mitch