Sound Track: Do-it-yourself Music

Loren Alldrin
March 2000

At some point in your career or hobby, you're probably going to find yourself in a quandary where music is concerned. The situation may unfold something like this...

You're doing a video that's turning out great, and you want some top-quality music to add that finishing touch. Hoping to show your masterpiece beyond the walls of your own living room, you know better than to lift a few favorite tunes from your CD collection. You've used every song on your sole buyout music CD several times, and none of its music has the feel or mood you're looking for.

What to do? You could track down a musician or band to record, but there's no guarantee they'll perform up-to-snuff or have any songs you'll like. You could try to secure licensing for some popular songs, but that road can be long, bumpy and expensive. You could purchase a new buyout CD or library, but you're still taking your chances on finding music that really works for your video.

If it seems that there's no real solution to the music problem, don't despair. The answer may be to let your computer create the music for you. Not just any music, though, music that is the right length for your scenes, has the right feel, is royalty-free and actually sounds good. Believe it or not, there are software packages available that can work this very magic with nothing more than a modest computer and an inexpensive sound card.

As complex as music may seem to those without musical training, it usually follows a number of set rules. Only certain notes work in a given key, certain rhythms mesh together nicely, and there are common musical structures that make sense on a larger scale.

Certain types of music creation software use these rules and patterns to generate chords, melodies and rhythms. However this type of software would cough out the same tune every time you pressed the PLAY button, so the software designers allow you to control many variables in the creation of the music.

In most cases, you can select what style of music you want from a broad range of music templates, pick the tempo, decide how long your music should be and pick the instruments used in your virtual band. The software then randomizes certain aspects of the music to keep every song from sounding the same. At least one software package will create a whole song for you in less than a second, add a solo melody on top and suggest a title for the tune.

This type of software package uses the MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) standard to communicate with your computer's sound card. The software itself doesn't create any sound. Instead, it instructs your sound card as to which notes to play on which instruments. The resulting music exits your sound card and you hear it on your speakers (or headphones).

MIDI music creation software has the benefit of infinite flexibility. With little human intervention, these packages can turn out countless thousands of unique songs in hundreds of different musical styles. You can mix and match instruments like changing fonts in a document. You can create endless variations on the same song, with different lengths and "feels" for each. Though a musically-trained ear will usually help create more appealing music, it's not a requirement.

For all of its flexibility, MIDI music creation software has a couple of drawbacks. The first lies in the fact that every note coming out of the MIDI software is computer-generated. Computers are notorious for generating music that sounds, well, computer-generated. Emotional ex-pression through music is some-thing only humans can pull off, and the lack of any human musicians in a MIDI track can leave it sounding rigid and cold. The more you know about music, the more you can "warm up" this somewhat sterile sound.

The second drawback is sound quality. Because these packages rely on the sound card to create the sounds of various instruments, the final result is only as good as the ears that designed the card. Some sound cards create instruments that are strikingly realistic and full. Others create sounds that are thin, cheap-sounding and one-dimensional. Within a few minutes of installing a music creation software package, you'll know which camp your card falls into.

Thankfully, this latter problem is relatively easy to fix. The simplest solution is to upgrade your sound card. Newer cards use sound technology vastly improved over cards of yesteryear. Cards using Yamaha, E-Mu and Ensoniq synthesizer chips usually sound very good. Many sound cards (such as the Creative Labs line) even allow you to load in new instrument samples downloaded off the Internet or acquired on disc, create your own instruments and add digital effects.

Finally, you can run the MIDI output from your sound card to an external MIDI tone module. Used by professional studios and musicians, these modules can create instruments virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. For just a few hundred dollars, you can improve the quality of your MIDI music dramatically.

Another type of music creation software doesn't rely on the MIDI system to generate music. Instead, it pieces together small snippets of digital audio (usually individual four-beat measures) to create a whole song. This allows you to control the "big picture" aspects of the song, including arrangement, length, intro and ending.

The fact that the music is actually pre-recorded is both its greatest advantage and disadvantage. On the plus side, the digital audio can contain any sound, such as virtuoso human musicians, well-recorded acoustic instruments, sound effects or vocals. The introduction of human musicianship and expression can spell the end of the stale, computer-generated feel of MIDI software.

On the downside, using pre-recorded digital audio greatly reduces your flexibility as a song designer. You can use only the audio provided, which may not offer the variety or types of songs you need. In this sense, these software packages are much like a buyout music CD where you can select smaller chunks of audio to create the arrangement you want. The result usually sounds great, within the limits of the musical styles and variations provided.

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