DIY: Synth

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To be up front, music is not my forte (pun intended). And synth, aka synthesizer, is a complex topic with a number of different approaches. The approach I'm taking today is using your computer to synthesize digital music, not necessarily for performing it. To see some of the options for music synthesis, take a look at Wikipedia's Comparison of audio synthesis environments.

My original idea was to find a way to generate music for use as background in videos and games.  I may have bitten off more than I can chew. But I did finally find what I was looking for--Wikipedia calls it a software Digital Audio Workstation.

The reason for producing music locally, that is on my computer, is the difficulty in knowing what can be used legally from the music sites found online, such as SoundCloud, Jamendo, and ccMixter. There are more such sites listed at Hongkiat. While these sites offer music with specified fair use rights, sometimes it's unclear whether a specific piece is open for use or not. For more info on fair use, here's a link to the FAQ at Creative Commons.

Using the right term--software DAW--for the task at hand, I found this article, "The 19 best DAW software apps in the world today." If you have a Mac, Apple's GarageBand would fill the bill; Apple says it's built into every Mac. Mutools' MuLab looks good. The others are well worth checking out as well.

I downloaded and installed a demo of Renoise, which is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux and in 32- and 64-bit versions. The full version is EUR 65, USD 89.

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screenshot of Renoise desktop, Renoise

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The application  is impressive, to say the least, and well-documented. There are a number of sample songs and tutorials. And it appears that I'll be able to open and play with files generated in other file formats. Think mixing. Exploring this app will take some time.

Also found today was Tonematrix, an Audiotool online.

Which brings us back to the original question--what to do about using pre-recorded music from music sites online? The results are still out, but now I have more options.

-- Marge