Easy Song Making Using Today's Technology

[Forrest Lawrence]

The art of music composition has come a long long way. What was once
thought accessible only to those with extremely gifted talents or to
those who have chosen an music academic path, today's technology has
opened new opportunities for creative exploration. Through the use of
digital audio sampling and a process called music sequencing today's
budding song writers have a pallet of thousands of voices and rhythmic
combinations to work with. Often called "digital audio workstations"
today's sequencers come in many forms and features. Most software
sequencers present music in a "player piano roll" type format rather
than actual music notation. Sequencers also come in the form of
hardware devices as well as being incorporated into many higher end
electronic keyboards.
Using a music sequencer is pretty straight forward. First, select a
sound you wish to work with and assign it to a unique channel number.
Once your sound has been selected you can punch your voice into the
piano roll grid and then play the sound to hear where it will fall
into the time line of your music. This process is repeated for each
sound you wish to work with. The sequencer will play all the channels
you have created at the same time, allowing you to hear how they blend
with one another in the time line. This process makes it easy to
create songs on the file and is like having a orchestra, band, vocal
section or just about any combination of musical elements working on
your behalf.
Once you have the song or beats made up the way you like it, simply
save your finished work, like you would a word document and export the
work to mp3 format for listening on music players or other audio
devices. 

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