Computer Aided Music Composition

By J Arnold

A Guide to Composing Without a Musical Instrument

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This site is not about how to use the computer to write music but how to use inexpensive tools to help you to write good music.

Examples

Safe Again         Lounging Around         One Night She Came to Stay         Baby It's Your Birthday       What Can I Do?   (All copyright Jim Arnold)

Apple  & Evening (both written by Ilya Schepikhin, programmer of 'The Palette')  

The Palette

'The Palette' is now Freeware!

I sometimes use an old version of Cakewalk to pencil in the notes in the piano roll. As you can imagine this is tedious (but still easier than writing direct to the score) and I have found a much better way. The program used is called 'The Palette' and you can get it here. In my opinion this free tool will save you more time that any other program and it will also teach how to write music.

You can export your efforts to MIDI and you can submit them to Ilya  Schepikhin, the author of the program for publication on his website.

Ilya would like you to use the program in the way that he intended to get 'theoretically correct' music. However it can do much more:

You can open several instances and write the same riff (motive) in different keys to change from major to minor etc.

You can save a version of the music and then manipulate this to give a new harmony (sequence up/down) or variation using the tools in the program.

Quick Guide

ptt files made with 'The Palette'                                                        28jan1.ptt         28jan2.ptt         28jan3.ptt          28jan4.ptt  

Midi files exported by 'The Palette'                                                  28jan1.mid        28jan2.mid       28jan3.mid       28jan4.mid

The whole piece in Cakewalk with rhythm added                             28jan_all.mid  the pad plays the original chords and Rhythm 'n Chords is used for the guitar part.

The whole piece with drums added                                                 28jan_all_rhythm_and_drums_2.mid             

The rendered and mastered piece                                                    mix-00_Mastered.mp3

Make Your Own Loops

'The Palette' is ideal for making loops which can then be stitched together in a program such as Acid or Fruity Loops. Sometimes only one motive (riff) is used and the timbre of the synth is changed to add variety. The example below is reminiscent of Gustav Holst's 'Mars' from his Planet suite and also sounds a bit like the music for the BBC's  'Doctor Who' program.

This midi file was made by just pencilling in a few chords and notes: wars1.mid  then transform was used to obtain war2.mid some adjustments needed to be made to get the right octaves and the right key.

The whole thing was then put into a loop based VSTi host to get Robot Wars.

Ok not the greatest piece of music ever written but it demonstrates the method.

Easy Harmony

'The Palette' can be used to produce harmonies. First produce a tune that pleases you and save the ptt and the mid file. Now rename the ptt and go through the whole tune and use either sequence up or sequence down to produce a new version. Save the new midi and open up cakewalk (or your favourite midi editor). Now import the two midis and copy the melody from the second tune to a new channel of the first, if you are lucky you have a pleasing harmony, if not you need to alter a few notes until they sound right.

Here is an example:                                                                 1apr1.ptt    1apr1.mid

                                                                                              1apr1a.ptt    1apr1a.mid

here 1apr1a.mid is just 1 apr1.mid moved down by one sequence (load the ptt files in 'The Palette') to compare. Now 1apr1.mid and 1apr1a.mid are loaded into Cakewalk  and the melody of   1apr1a.mid is pasted into 1apr1.mid giving a file saved as 1apr_all.mid.                                           1apr_all.mid

Finally the bass is made more interesting:                                1apr_b.mid

How do you know which notes to use in the bass? My method is to always start on the root note of the chord and then stay in the scale of the chord and to go up and down again in pitch (ascending or descending wave). I then try to make the first note in the next bar as close as possible to the previous note (but not the same).  Incidentally, you can use 'The Palette' to produce a melody which you then move down a few octaves to use as a bass line.

Here's one made by 'The Palette':                                          bass.ptt    bass.mid

after transposing down the melody becomes the bass in          TP_bass.mid  which is quite busy.

In this example I have used these 3 files as a basis:                  3apr1.ptt    3apr2.ptt    3aprbass.ptt see if you can work out how 3april.mid was made. 

Here is the mp3.

Drawmusic Chordsong

This is a wonderful piano based program available from http://www.drawmusic.com/ all you have to do is specify the chords and write in the melody and the program does the rest! Alternatively you can take complete control and write the bass, chords, other parts and even drums. It is available for a very reasonable $39.00 U.S.

'Chordsong' does not follow 'voice leading' rules as does 'The Palette' but it must be the quickest way yet to write popular music.

Myriad Melody Assistant & Harmony Assistant

These are very good programs that can be used for writing music. There is no 'automation' like in 'The Palette' or 'Chordsong' so you have to do more work. However, the printed score can be perfect. Also the program can be used to render midi to wave format. The biggest features are however , 'Virtual Singer'  and 'Real Singer'. In  'Virtual Singer' the program will sing your lyrics in several different voices. In 'Real Singer'  you record phonemes using your own voice and then use the recorded information to 'sing' in perfect pitch. The basic form of 'Melody Assistant' is a bargain at only 20 Euros (US $25).

For more information go to: http://www.myriad-online.com/en/index.htm

Other Programs

You can use Cakewalk to stitch the small midi files, produced by 'The Palette', together to obtain a complete piece of music. You can leave this as it is, or manually, or automatically change the rhythm by chopping up the chords or changing them to arpeggios. You can change the one note per bar bass to something more complicated. Rhythm 'n Chords by Musiclab (I don't think it is still officially available), can be used in my old Cakewalk version 9. Soundtrek's Jammer (here) can also be used and can automatically generate the drum part. Chordpulse here can be used to generate rhythms.

Now you have a piece of music you need to render it. Synthfont is free and available here. Reason is an easy to use program that produces first class results. There are many other ways of rendering and it can cost a small fortune for something like Eastwest's Symphonic Orchestra. Once you have rendered the music you now need to master it so that it sounds the same on any playback equipment. This you can do manually using an audio editor or automatically using HarBal (here) or Auto Audio Mastering System from Sined Supplies Inc. (here).

17 November 2011