Free Sample
The Complete Handbook of Music Composition Software
A practical reference for professionals and serious hobbyists: what music composition software does, how to choose it, set it up, maintain it, and build a business around it
by Alumigogo Books
Chapter 1: Understanding Music Composition Software
Music composition software is any application that lets you create, arrange, notate, or produce music using a computer. That definition sounds broad because the category genuinely is broad. A film composer sketching a orchestral cue on a plane uses different software than a church music minister preparing a Sunday score, which in turn differs from an electronic music producer building a track from loops. However, all of these tools share a common technical foundation. Understanding that foundation is the difference between using the software well and merely getting by.
At the heart of almost every music composition application is MIDI - the Musical Instrument Digital Interface. MIDI is not an audio format; it is a communication protocol that describes musical events. When you press a key on a MIDI keyboard, the keyboard sends a short message that says, in essence, "note 60 (middle C) just turned on, with a velocity of 100." When you release the key, it sends another message that says "note 60 turned off." The software captures these messages as time-stamped data. This data is not sound. It is a set of instructions that any virtual instrument can interpret. This is why you can record a melody once and then instantly re-route it from a piano sound to a string section or a synthesizer patch without re-recording anything. The composition exists independently of the sounds that eventually perform it.
This separation - between the data and the sound - is the