Music Editing Software...

Stridder44

Universal Traveler
What would some Music editing software be? I have songs I want to kind of mess around with and whatnot. :D
 
What do you mean by music editing software?
There is ProTools and Logic that do recording, mixing, etc.
There is Reason that is a software synthesizer and sequencer (and more).

-JARinteractive
 
That questions is so wide open, it's nearly impossible to answer. Especially not knowing what your skill level is or isn't in terms of music and technology. For example, do you know the difference between a MIDI file and 44.1 KHz AIFF? Not trying to be a jerk, just trying to see where you're at.

Are you interested in scoring custom music, or just playing with loop-based pre-built stuff? Do you want to just use a digital keyboard or do you want to record some acoustic stuff like guitars, drums and a singer?

I would hesitate to answer until I knew these things.
 
Try SoundStudio. There's a demo (beta) around... Lemme grab the link... Ah, here it is. :)

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/4811

It's okay for some basic tweaking and/or recording. Sound is like graphics. ;-)

There's vector (MIDI) and bitmap (AIFF, WAV, MP3 etc.) files. SoundStudio is a little 'bitmap' editor.
 
Sound Studio, as well as Cacaphony, are good programs for recording through a microphone, and doing some basic editing (volume, flanger, etc.). If you want to do more than just play into a microphone, like mix, um, mixes, look for an editing suite like ProTools, Logic Audio, Cubase, or MOTU Digital Performer. Again, Reason is cool for mixing loops and sound effects. And the program I use most of all is called Melody Assistant; for only $15, you get a fully-featured score editor that lets you do all sorts of cool stuff.
 
"There is ProTools and Logic that do recording, mixing, etc."

This is more of what Im talking about, hehe, sorry to be so vauge :p
 
Logic and Pro tools are excellent, but are extremely expensive and take a long time to learn. I have watched many of my friends teach themselves logic in the last 4 years (most are successful producers/artists now) and it takes lots of time and angst.
Cubase is supposed to be easier, and designed for people coming out of guitar/rock backgrounds, and these days they can both use the same plugins, so the choice is yours.

Logic Audio 6 Platinum would be the best, (though you HAVE to buy an emagic midi interface if you want to use any midi devices with it- otherwise you get awful latency), so i hope you got some money saved up.

Otherwise, I use sound studio for archiving my vinyl and is perfectly good for that.

ora
 
Ori wrote - "Logic Audio 6 Platinum would be the best, (though you HAVE to buy an emagic midi interface if you want to use any midi devices with it- otherwise you get awful latency)"

I don't think that's true. I've used Logic for years now with all kinds of midi interfaces. No problems whatsoever...

Current setup: Logic 6, Edirol UM-880 (8x8 interface) and M-audio FW-410 audio interface.
 
skoggis said:
Ora wrote - "Logic Audio 6 Platinum would be the best, (though you HAVE to buy an emagic midi interface if you want to use any midi devices with it- otherwise you get awful latency)"

I don't think that's true. I've used Logic for years now with all kinds of midi interfaces. No problems whatsoever...

Current setup: Logic 6, Edirol UM-880 (8x8 interface) and M-audio FW-410 audio interface.

Not sure, not a logic user myself, but have around 6 close friends all using it for making dance music professionally and have spent many hours hanging out with them in the studio.
All of them had awful latency problems with midi keyboards and synths until they bought the emagic interface with its synch-lock or whatever they call it. Maybe is fixed in logic 6- i think they are on earlier versions (4 and 5 i believe, and they use a mix of mt4 and amt8s ).
In any case, i've seen it myself on both mac and pc systems- you press the key on the midi keyboard and there is maybe a quarter second delay before anything happens. Am glad to here is not so general as i thought.
 
Nothing too fancy is needed. I mean like a proggy to, for example, extend a song by cutting and pasting segments of it together. I used to do this alot with Sonic Foundery on my Windows machine, back in the day of course :p
 
Well, you can accomplish this very easily with Sound Studio and Cacaphony (almost the same program, really). All you do is select part of the waveform, copy, click where you want it, and paste. It takes a bit of playing to get the insertion mark right where you want it, but you'll get the hang of it with experimentation.
 
Digidesign are working on an OSX version of Pro Tools Free, which is free of course, and gives you 8 tracks of audio, 24 (i think) tracks of MIDI and some RTAS plugins.
 
If you play guitar, you should check out Amplitude. It's basically a virtual amp with all sorts of effects you can add, and from what I *cough* hear, it sounds excellent.
 
So what about a loop sequencer, i have an etensive library of riffs and drum loops and what have you. I used to use dance EJ on windows, is there anything like this on mac ?
 
Try Reason. They have a 20-minute demo to let you try it out. I'm sure you'll love it.
 
How's about for editing midi files? I have some midis I'd like to spruce up a bit (i.e. change track insruments to piano for the most part). Thought I had it when I figured out how to import midis into GarageBand (via GB Midi Import) but there no way to export a midi from GarageBand far as I can tell.
 
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