Just for Fun: Quotes About Music

A little fun for your Friday, here are a few music quotes we've come across to help inspire you as you are creating music whether on an instrument or with music software.

Music Writing Software Gets MIDI Playback

Calling all musicians and aspiring composers: The newest release of Crescendo Music Notation Software (version 1.06) has a new feature that we are excited to introduce and that will help your musical compositions jump off the page. With the New MIDI Playback Feature, you can flip over to the Playback tab at any time and listen to your score to make sure all the notes are lining up the way you want, which can be a very satisfying feeling when you've been working away at putting down your musical score. You can even choose to Export MIDI to save a music file of your composition to share with others. We hope you will be as excited to take advantage of this new feature as we are, and will download or upgrade Crescendo Music Writing Software today.

Software for Musicians

Audio Software is one of our biggest categories, and sound editing is just the beginning; we have lots of tech solutions for musicians too. From music recording software to other handy musician software tools, each program is specifically designed for a particular music related task so musicians can go high tech while tuning, transcribing or even just practicing. Check out a few of our audio software favorites for musicians:

TwelveKeys Music Transcription Software is perfect for any musician trying to learn how to play a piece of recorded music, or for notating compositions. TwelveKeys provides a visual aid for musical transcription using a graphical representation of the music, allowing musicians to notate any orchestration with accuracy and ease.

Crescendo Music Notation Software is a simple way to work with musical notation. Crescendo allows musicians to compose, save and print music from their computer. The wide array of notation symbols, time and key signatures, and text on a free-form layout gives you complete control over musical arrangements.

PitchPerfect is a free guitar tuner that also works great for other string instruments. It automatically detects the note you are playing and lets you know if you are sharp, flat, or perfectly in tune. Performing will be less daunting, having this product to eliminate the need of tuning a guitar conventionally.

TempoPerfect is a free software metronome. Designed to help musicians play in time, this tempo software creates accurate beat patterns for simple or complex rhythms. TempoPerfect provides a clear and precise beat that won't wind down, making it an essential tool for all musicians.

WavePad Sound Editor is designed to be an easy to use audio editing package. Within minutes you will be able to open or record a file and edit it. It has many robust tools including audio effects to amplify, normalize, reverb, a free sound effect/music library, text-to-speech voice synthesis, and a voice changer, just to name a few. Combined with MixPad multitrack mixing software, these two audio applications are perfect for any audio project, from making soundtracks and podcasts to creating high quality demo CDs for your band.

Crescendo - Aspirations of musical domination

Last month, we released new software for musical notation. The initial release of Crescendo, version 0.92, provides a mere proof-of-concept and a solid starting point. Much more is planned for this project; the intention is to create something uniquely powerful and flexible. So how will Crescendo distinguish itself?

Freeform awesomeness

Crescendo will allow you to grab and move anything you can see; to re-arrange and re-structure anything as you see fit. Other applications may be restrictive about the formatting of what you write: once you've decided the structure of the piece, it can be a pain to change it later. Crescendo will let you adjust any aspect of your creation on-the-fly, in the most visually intuitive way possible.

How does that work and why would it be useful?

For instance (in the next version) staves can be braced together simply by drawing lines between them. There's no tedious set-up to work before you can begin your composition; i.e. if you've got bass notation on the page, you can connect it up to the corresponding treble notation with a quick drag. Different instrument parts can be swapped out by literally pulling them out of bracing and connecting them to another group. All with no dialogs pop-ups to get in your way; it's as if you could grab and push around the notation with your own hands.

Crescendo will allow you to work like you would with paper. Anything you say goes; nobody is querying you about the final structure of the piece; you just draw notation in as you go along.

A bit of style

Composing music is enjoyable; there's no need for the application to look like accounting software. Crescendo has a nice clean look and animated motion, and not just for aesthetics sake, the shading and movement also help convey structure and continuity.

What?

When changes are made, the screen won't just “blink” to the new state, you'll see elements move from their old position to their new positions, clearly showing you what's going on. When you “pick up” and move things, shadows will appear underneath so you can tell what's being moved and see its relative depth as you move it over the page. Every object that can be interacted with by the mouse will highlight as you move the cursor over it – no guesswork involved.

All the essential features

Crescendo will have:

1. Bracing (i.e. grand staff or multi-instrument notation)
   
2. Playback; hear what you see.
   
3. On-screen keyboard input, and other rapid-input methods.
   
4. More export formats.
   
5. More beaming options.
   
6. Dynamics.
   

Work on Crescendo is moving full-steam-ahead. Keep an eye out for the next release.

Learning to Play the Song Stuck in My Head with TwelveKeys Music Transcription Software

Last March I took a trip to Hawaii and came home with a ukulele and no knowledge of how to play it. It wasn’t the first time I’ve tried to teach myself an instrument. Six years ago I worked in the music department of my alma mater and had the key to the instrument room. I tried the tenor saxophone, the bass clarinet, and the oboe. Simultaneously, I was working on mastering my new banjo, and was switching between recorders and crumhorns in other ensembles. The entire time, I was reading music and was extremely reliant on having someone work out the notes for me.

The ukulele has changed the way I learn music. It’s such a small and portable instrument I want to bring it with me on all my weekend excursions, camping trips, and picnics. I envision myself taking requests and, like a jukebox, being able to instantaneously play a rendition of any song. But in order to become this on-demand type of uke player, I need to develop some skills that plain old music reading hasn’t taught me. Luckily, I have a good ear and NCH Software’s TwelveKeys music transcription program.

I’ve been singing a song in my car on the way home for weeks and have been longing to learn the accompaniment. But where to begin? How do I know what the first note is, or what key it’s in? How will I learn it efficiently if I’m running back and forth between the CD player and my chair?

Today, I downloaded TwelveKeys and a minute later had loaded the song and was seeing the notes I needed to learn wiz by. What TwelveKeys does is highlights the frequency of the song’s notes in a graph and lines them up with a keyboard, so you can see and hear where to begin. As the first note came at me, I paused the music and honed in on it, and made TwelveKeys sustain the tone until I was able to locate it on my ukulele. In another few minutes, I had the basic notes of the intro picked out and was able to play along with the song slowed down enough so I could keep up. Learning my song was so much easier than I had anticipated!

Now I’ll be able to practice by looping the sections I’m focusing on. I’ll master the picking pattern that runs throughout the song, and after that I’ll add strums and other fancy riffs to make the song my own. Next time I get fixated on a tune, I’ll load it into TwelveKeys to transcribe. And maybe one day, I’ll be able to take a few requests.

Learn more about TwelveKeys music notation software and see for yourself how easy transcribing music can be by downloading the free 14-day trial.