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[DrPetter]

robotacon: That tutorial of mine was mostly intended to give people a kick-start in using musagi and not so much in how to make good music, but I like the structure of it - the way it shows step-by-step what I did (even if what I did was crap).

My brother and I (who are both just learning this music thing and have less than a year of proper experience) have had some thoughts of making tutorials/step-by-steps of some more advanced songs at one point or another.
I think there's some value to be had by relative newbs teaching other even-more-newbs things (music or otherwise) - since veterans can easily get into some kind of place where they feel they "just know" everything and have no way or will to explain how they do things because it's all become a subconscious thing that happens automatically/magically.
Novices hopefully still remember the points where they learned different things and which parts were really useful or just a waste of time.

Also there's no reason to learn music "the right way" corresponding to years and years of theory and learning the finger dexterity required to play guitar or piano chords - if all you want to do is to make some decent music for your games.
Any shortcut is valid, if it turns out to be a bad one you'll probably find out soon enough and be able to learn from the experience regardless.

The truth is that composing a song consists of a zillion small choices (of how to expand or modify a given proto-song, which starts out as silence) that the composer makes at some level of consiousness based on anything from explicit theory to "gut feeling" (which is theory without words) - and even if the author can't explain exactly why he did one thing or another, if he can show the actual work process there's a good chance people can pick up patterns and ideas from it anyway... in a sort of limited Vulcan mind meld kind of way.

"I usually do it... you know... like THIS!"

A cut and edited screencap video with original sound plus afterhand narration (to avoid distraction while working) is probably the best tutoring possible, in combination with text theory/discussion. A video like that is a lot of work though, and I doubt anyone (including myself) would put in the effort. Plus, vocal narrating is scary

There will most likely be a few more attempts at html tutorials on my site at some point. I guess I'll post about them here when they appear.

[starkaudio]

Unfortunatelly now the bad news: the wiki dissapeared. ...[snip] a few pages were brutalized by wiki vandals (actually people trying to sell drugs and stuff). The site was called "Composer Planet" (http://composerplanet.com/). If anyone knows if the data are still anywhere, it would be a really valuable resource.

Hi folks, My names' Luke Stark and I run Composer Planet (CP). The even better news, We're back. You can read about why we went offline and such at the http://composerplanet.com main page. Being a wiki, we're community driven, so if you want to help feel free to let us know.  We still have a little damage from the spammers, but most of our work was saved.

So you want to write music eh? Great! You might want to start with Music Mechanics (http://composerplanet.com/wiki.cgi?Music_Mechanics) or maybe you're more interested in the humanities side (http://composerplanet.com/wiki.cgi?Music_Humanities).

We'll try to help you as much as posible and if you feel like you have something to share, you can always contribute it to the wiki. Feel free to drop by and we'll see you in the future! Enjoy!

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

robotacon: That tutorial of mine was mostly intended to give people a kick-start in using musagi and not so much in how to make good music, but I like the structure of it - the way it shows step-by-step what I did (even if what I did was crap).

I just went through this tutorial at lunchtime, and I've come to love Musagi! The tutorial also helped me out with some general knowledge of constructing game music (even though I'm using garageband much of the time), so I really appreciate it.

Luke Stark, Composer Planet will be my next stop! Thanks!

[Nate Kling]

Luke Stark, it seems as if your links are not working.  Also if you do a youtube search you can find some helpful videos on milkytracker.

[Terry]

I'd love to see a good tutorial on what tools are out there, and the technical side of making music on a computer. I can make up little riffs and what not on the accordion/guitar, but when it comes to actually getting them onto a computer I'm a little out of my depth

[Problem Machine]

I might be able to do a Reason tutorial if there's interest, although I don't have extensive experience with ALL of the modules...
Also, I might be able to do something about subtractive synthesis in general if that's something people are interested in.

[zamp]

I recommend using FL studio for composing. Even though that other composers usually snicker a bit when they hear that I use FL studio for my projects.
But that's not the point. I see FL studio as a really quick way to get what I hear in my mind to reality.
And non-music makers/composers really don't give a shit how the music is done, as long as it sounds good.

If you're going to make electronic music i recommend using 4/4 beat system (I don't give a crap about music terminology )
1st and 3rd beat as a kick and 2nd and 4th as something higher, a snare or something.
There's something in our monkey brains that make that sound good.

Compose compose compose...
You can't learn to make music by reading a book.

If you're interested you can check out my tunes at http://derail.koode.org

[Matt Thorson]

There's nothing wrong with FL Studio, but nothing beats the beautiful simplicity of PXTone

Seriously, if you're looking to get started with music composition, PXTone is by far the best starting software I've seen.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

There's nothing wrong with FL Studio, but nothing beats the beautiful simplicity of PXTone

Seriously, if you're looking to get started with music composition, PXTone is by far the best starting software I've seen.

Would you recommend it over Musagi?
I was fairly impressed with Musagi, but haven't tried PXtone yet.

[increpare]

Would you recommend it over Musagi?

I find the interface to it to be a little nicer and more manageable.  However, it is a little more ostensibly limiting stylistically, in that all individual tracks must be monophonic.  But, this is something that the interface can capitalize on when it comes to note entry.  Anyway: they're both really easy to use, and quite different: there's no reason for you not to give it a go anyway and make up your own mind

(PXtone can do tuning alterations: I don't think musagi can yet: I've found the former thus to be suprisingly good for dealing with microtonal stuff).

[Kekskiller]

In addition to the which-program-discussion: I wonder why nobody here uses trackers. Psycle is wonderful example! Easy, VST support and beat-save. I'm doing all my stuff with it, really recommended! But its probably not the best way to learn composition or such, because its not the user-friendly piano roll. But if your programmer, you'll probably understand the overflow of numbers and hex values better (imho).

[deadeye]

In addition to the which-program-discussion: I wonder why nobody here uses trackers.

I would use a tracker if I could find a decent one with a piano-roll style interface rather than the confusing top-down whatever with all the numbers that don't make any damned sense to me.  The only one I've found so far is Sound Club, though I wouldn't say it's "decent."  More like "really old."

I need something like FL Studio, only that can export .mod.  FL Studio is ridiculously easy to use WHY AREN'T THERE ANY RIDICULOUSLY EASY TO USE TRACKERS

[increpare]

Trackers are pretty easy to use though.  In some sense PXtone could be just the tracker you are looking for, excepting that it only exports to its own .pxtone format  

I find them more amenable to some projects than others.  Doing stuff for my last compo entry was a real joy, doing stuff for one music challenge a while back was intensely frustrating.  I'm not sure whether I'm going to do tracker stuff for my current project or not.

[Kekskiller]

WHY AREN'T THERE ANY RIDICULOUSLY EASY TO USE TRACKERS

Oh, easy to use trackers would require colored numbers/blocks only, imho. To be honest, I give a fuck on piano rolls, because I miss the overview for ALL channels. Hm. A way, drum machines are trackers.

[increpare]

WHY AREN'T THERE ANY RIDICULOUSLY EASY TO USE TRACKERS

Oh, easy to use trackers would require colored numbers/blocks only, imho. To be honest, I give a fuck on piano rolls, because I miss the overview for ALL channels.

PXtone, for one has piano roll overlays (just select multiple tracks).

[Kekskiller]

It misses lacks VST support.

[agj]

Reading this thread I just got a great idea. Someone familiar enough with music theory could conduct a series of interviews with the most prominent music composers in these boards, focusing on their approach to making music, how they started, and all the good stuff for those interested in learning to make music (for games). I would eat them up because I love music enough that I'd like to make it, but have no training or any form of orientation to get started. They could make for pretty good features for the front page.

Come on guys, let's make this happen.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

Tried PXtone for the first time, and uh... I find it pretty weird, I must admit. I was struggling to change the instrument for a melody, for example. I couldn't find the way to change the instrument, so I imported a new one and copied the melody from one instrument to another, only for it to retain the original instrument. Very peculiar.

On the subject of music, however, I asked my girlfriend yesterday to get me a mini USB music keyboard thingy for xmas.  I enjoy messing with GarageBand sufficiently to make me think it would be a nice thing to have. ^_^

I just wish I could get the musagi instruments in GarageBand, to be honest. XD
(I tried the YMCK plugin but it freaked out on me, didn't work at all!)

[increpare]

Tried PXtone for the first time, and uh... I find it pretty weird, I must admit. I was struggling to change the instrument for a melody, for example. I couldn't find the way to change the instrument,

If you want to change the instrument, you go to the note-entry screen, and bring up the panel at the bottom: there's an 'instrument' track where you can do that.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

Is there any English language resources for PXtone? I found one tutorial (red text on blue background... urgh!) but otherwise I couldn't find any resources.  If I want to do 'chords' with multiple notes do I need to have multiple tracks?