Music Making Software?

[Jaymer]

What's a good music making software?

[DaFool]

For Windows I use Anvil Studio to compose midis, Synthfont to render them, then Audacity to post-process and encode them. All of them are freeware/donationware.

For Macintosh it comes with Garage Band standard. Dang that's such a good program since it provides Apple loops / synthesized instruments that really opened up the amount of instruments I can use (like I was sorely lacking in guitars before, now I have gazillions of them).

I'm not too familiar with other programs but as far as I know they tend to be professional, not exactly cheap, or dealing heavily with VST algorithms that you feel like you're working on a math problem or that you're fiddling with an oscilloscope than actually making music. The beauty of the programs I mentioned is that they come with the loops and basic soundfonts for something to sound good off-the-shelf.

[Aenakume]

i like RoseGarden for Linux for makin MIDIs - i can play tunes right on the keyboard (then force quantize them, because i suck hard). But i haven't tried making waves from them or doing any post-processing yet (although i will probably use Audacity for the last bit, since i'm familiar with it).

[Jaymer]

I want one that's for Windows.
I remember a good one that either started with an 'M' or a 'B' and the icon was a drum...
Iunno -shrug-
Also: I want to use .wav for background music ;p

[Hime]

I don't make music myself, but a couple of my friends use Fruity Loops and get pretty awesome results. It's for Windows, so how about trying it out? ^^

[Blue123]

Fruity Loops is awesome, but complicated. It well take you a hell of a long time to learn how to use it, but it's one of the best sequencers out there. Other programs like it include Reason, and Cubase.

If you can actually write notation, try Sibelius (if you can afford it), but it's more of a notation program. Otherwise, anvil studio isn't bad either, but it only produces MIDI.

[Guest]

Rosegarden is a fairly nice open, free program (Linux only). I like the notation mode although I had to dig a bit to find it. I had a lot of trouble with direct playback though - might've just been sound configuration problems on my machine, though - and found myself having to save the MIDI file and play it externally whenever I wanted a preview.

You're looking for Windows programs, though, and the free offerings are sparse at best (I think all of the good ones have been mentioned). If you don't like those, I'd recommend Finale PrintMusic. It's $99, but for a casual composer it has pretty much all the features you could ever think to need and it can "render" the music by itself.

[Guest]

Oh yeah, and it does MP3s and WAVs through "Save As Audio File", which a lot of free programs can't do.

[Neon Lemmy Koopa]

Linux Multimedia Studio. Despite the name, it runs on Windows as well. Its like FL Studio, but easier to use. It also has a bass/beat editor so you can make your own loops and beats and put them in your song.

And it is free and open source! My personal favorite.