by ulrichburke » Sun Nov 22, 2020 6:26 pm
I'll try to answer all of you in turn....
Dear Elf.
Re. 'getting up to date'. I keep seeing ads. for things that do everything for you - MIDI packs, packs of loops you just drop in on timelines, packs that work out chord progressions for you..... I like thinking of my own tunes, not just using bits that someone else has thought up. I mean, that's like doing a collage, cutting bits of pictures out of magazines, sticking them all on a page and calling it your own artwork. OK you've designed it but the bits aren't yours, so is it really your own? And if you think of a tune, how else do you write it if not with notes (OK, Piano roll, but that's just as old as notes is, they were using piano rolls in bars in Klondike days!) I know Cubase has notation but it's awful. QSE lets you hear the notes AS you're putting them in AND it lets you see all the instruments at once, so you can put in notes for any instrument you want simultaneously. Cubase only lets you see one instrument at once so you're constantly changing between MIDI input lines which is just a real pain, mucks your train of thought up. Don't forget I can't play a keyboard, only got one hand really. The other one's slightly paralysed and doesn't really co-ordinate that well.
Dear James.
I just find Macs really overpriced for what you get, sorry. Every time I see one I think of all the PC power I could be getting for the same money. OK they've got Logic and a few other BEEG programs but once you're tied into the Mac universe you really become a cash cow, you're paying through the nose for EVERYTHING. I've got a PPC mac floating around somewhere - it's sorta the same age as my PC but it can't even handle the Internet any more - takes 4 minutes to open an E_mail, forget YouTube vids, it dies at the thought of them, you're on first name terms with spinning beachballs, you can't even play simple games on it that well anymore. And it cost LOADS more than my PC when I bought it. So why it's called a POWER PC Mac I've no idea! (It was on the same wired connection my PC used when my PC was being repaired for awhile, never been so glad to get my PC back again!)
Dear Elf.
It's just, like I said above, I can't physically play a keyboard that well cos my left hand doesn't work that well anymore (got Cerebral Palsy, it was never brilliant but it's gotten worse recently, my left hand!) So I liked QSE because you just slid a note about and dropped it on the stave when it was in the right place, then went onto the next one. But they never updated it to 64 bits for some reason, so I thought I'd try Rewiring it to Cubase or biting the bullet and using Cubase, which does have notation, which I actually understand.
I've had a look at Reaper. Again it's all piano roll really, the notation bit seems to be an afterthought more than anything else. There seems to be a 64-bit version of Reaper, no idea what the native notation in that's like but I'll give it a go if you think it's worth it. What I liked about QSE in itself was its simplicity and tiny memory footprint. I mean I was using Sonar for awhile but I simply couldn't get a big enough computer for it, it munched memory, processors and anything else it could find as between-meal snacks! So reluctantly Sonar had to go. QSE was running 32-bit stuff totally happily, then the world went 64-bit, QSE didn't, so I just thought if I Rewired it to Cubase, which I also had but had given up on, I'd be able to shove the 64-bit plugins in Cubase, Rewire it to QSE, write the music in QSE and do the mixing in Cubase as I went along.
This last sentence is NOT meant in any sarky way - I've got Asperger's, never sure how things sound. Anyway. If there's any 'up-to-date' ness I'm missing, which does not involve playing a keyboard or (hopefully!) using piano roll or loops on timelines, please tell me. I just wanted to do what Bach, Mozart and everyone else do a thousand times better than I ever will - think of a tune, put it on manuscript as blobs on sticks and hae the blobs played back by the appropriate sounds. Why is modern software all seemingly geared to making sure people never spend 10 minutes learning to read music.
That's all it takes. 10 minutes. I can teach anyone to read music in precisely 10 minutes, I have done that many times. I don't understand why people make such a big deal out of it.
So to end this to all of you - if you can think of an alternative, basically right-hand-only, up-to-date way of writing music on a computer that's not loop packs or pre-written MIDI chord progressions, tell me and I'll try it. Piano roll just bugs me because you're teasing out these little dashes with tiny mouse-drags. Why not just choose a 2-beat note or whatever and drop it on a stave line? You want to change note lengths? Select the notes and change all their lengths at once. That's how QSE does it.
Anyway, I'll sign off now but if anyone suggests anything I will try it. Just wanted to try out writing music on my 64-bit sounds was all and thought as QSE and Cubase were in the same environment, I could link them together and use the best of both worlds.
If that can't work, tell me what to try instead and I will. Just remember, left hand slightly paralysed!
Yours respectfully
Chris.
