ConnieR wrote:Hi,
I'm mostly a classical music composer, but I would like to do what I would call "cross-over" music, like music with a country feel, or rock, etc. Sort of like film scores, which combine orchestral and other styles of music, or the instrumental arrangements on some of the country singers' Christmas CD's. My question is this, is Notion suitable for that, or should I look for something different? Would it be best to do the instrumetnal parts in notion, then export it to another program to add a drum track? Part of my problem is that I don't know how to "write" non-classical music onto a score. Also, I don't play an instrument, which makes it difficult to add a Midi track in Notion.
I know this is probably a dumb question, but I'd apprecieate any help. Thanks.
NOTION is perfect for doing all genres of music, for sure! For sure! The fact of the matter is that it is all music, and what people call "Classical" and "Orchestral" music is just another flavor of what other folks call "Rock and Roll", "Melodic Death Metal", "Polka", "Ska", "Jazz", "Rhythm and Blues", and so forth and so on . . .
If Mozart were alive today, he probably would be doing
Melodic Death Metal,
Dubstep,
DISCO,
Rock and Roll, and
Pop songs or perhaps would be doing film scores . . .
From my perspective, the only significant difference in the various genres is that it tends to be a bit difficult at times to determine the basic melody, bass, and rhythm for
Classical and
Orchestral music, but this usually is a matter of there being none rather than its being there but not so obviously . . .
Consider the classic Edvard Grieg hit from the , "In the Hall of the Mountain King", which actually has a melody, bass part, and rhythm, where in the following examples "consider" maps to listening to the YouTube music videos . . .
"In the Hall of the Mountain King" (Edvard Grieg) -- YouTube music videoI think it is reasonable to suggest that nearly everyone in the Western hemisphere knows this song, in part due to the fabulous animation work done by Walt Disney and company in the animated film "Fantasia", but there is another reason that people know this song, although I doubt that more than a handful of people actually realize why, where I suggest this because I should have realized it decades ago but I only realized it when I was working on a silly song on New Years Day 2010 . . .
Specifically, "In the Hall of the Mountain King" is the same song as "Purple Haze" (The Jimi Hendrix Experience), which is obvious simply by listening to the first few measures of the songs . . .
"Purple Haze" (The Jimi Hendrix Experience) -- YouTube music videoAnd this is the my completely and totally silly version of the same song, which I did mostly to spank Angela Gossow, the lead singer for Arch Enemy, for singing a song with lyrics which included the phrase "carnivorous Jesus", which was a bit of a delayed reaction, because I like the song but was unable to make sense of the lyrics until I had listened to the song several hundred times . . .
[
NOTE: This was done when I was doing everything with real instruments, but so what . . . ]
"(I Want) Angela Gossow's Underpants (Ya-Ya-Ya)" (The Surf Whammys) -- YouTube music videoAnd this is the Arch Enemy song, which is fabulous . . .
[
NOTE: Daniel Erlandsson is my favorite drummer; the Amott brothers (Michael and Christopher) provide the "Melodic" part of the genre; Sharlee D'Angelo provides the deep bass; and Angela is just too cute for words, really . . . ]
"Ravenous" (Arch Enemy) -- YouTube music videoFabulous! Something similar happens with "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", which is the best known colloquial version of the classic French children's song, and Mozart had a bit of FUN with the song in his "Twelve Variations on 'Ah vous dirai-je, Maman'", which was followed a few centuries later with the classic Disney version of "When You Wish Upon A Star" (Leigh Harline, Ned Washington) and then a few decades later by the Beach Boys with "Surfer Girl" and the Beatles with "This Boy", all of which are the same song but done in different styles and genres with extra bits added every so often . . .
[
NOTE: There is a MIDI transcription for the Mozart piece, and it will play if your web browser has a MIDI plug-in, but if not, then you can download the .MID file and import it to NOTION where NOTION will assign it to Piano. And you can convert the MIDI stuff to music notation via one of the NOTION menu options . . . ]
Twelve Variations on "Ah vous dirai-je, Maman" (Amadeus Mozart) -- wikipediaWhile on the topic of MIDI transcriptions, there is a company in Australia that sells MIDI transcriptions of popular songs, and this is a excellent way to see how the music notation looks for various genres, since the transcriptions tend to have a full range of instruments and to be very accurate . . .
[
NOTE: Currently the prices range from approximately $10 (US) for one song to $5 (US) per song when you get eight or so songs at one time. And for reference, the "play by ear" folks after a while can listen to a song in their favored genres and get a very accurate mental mapping of the notes, chords, rhythm patterns, and so forth, since the "play by ear" folks usually teach themselves how to play an instrument by listening to a song over and over to identify each individual note, chords, and so forth, where at first it might take a month or two to make sense of a song but after a while you realize that that most popular music songs are composed using a basic set of patterns, which once you know the basic set of patterns makes it nearly trivial to learn new songs, and in particular for Rock and Roll, Rhythm and Blues, DISCO, and Pop songs the fact of the matter is that there are not so many patterns, hence by learning a few carefully selected songs, you actually are learning hundreds or perhaps thousands of songs . . . ]
Hit Trax MIDI and MP3 Backing TracksFor reference, it is vastly easier to do this stuff on the Mac, and it all works wonderfully on the Mac when you use the various digital music production applications I recommend, and I recommend them because I have done extensive testing to verify that everything works wonderfully . . .
When a song has or is likely to have some number of real instruments and singing, then you need to have a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) application like Digital Performer 8 (MOTU) or Logic Pro 9 (Apple), since real instruments and vocals are recorded via microphones, although you can run some type of real instruments directly to the external digital audio interface, which here is the sound isolation studio is a MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid, with electric guitar, electric bass, and keyboard synthesizers being examples of real instruments that you can run direct without needing to play them through an amplifier and loudspeaker and then getting the resulting sounds via a set of microphones . . .
Hence, when you want your complete system to be able to do everything, you need a DAW application like Digital Performer 8 and an external digital audio interface like the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid to get the microphones and real electric instruments digitized so that the computer can work with the resulting audio . . .
And since my background began with
Classical music as a child, primarily the types of music one sings when in a liturgical boys choir, I have a good foundation in treble clef music notation, and consequently do everything on a treble clefs, which I can do because NOTION has a feature that lets you specify the register where notes are played . . .
But once I started junior high school I switched to the "play by ear" strategy and focused on
Rock and Roll,
Rhythm and Blues, and a bit of
Jazz,
Big Band,
Western Swing, and
Country Western, where I mostly played string bass or electric bass but later switched to rhythm guitar and lead guitar, which is an excellent way to learn how to compose songs and to improvise, as well as to recognize patterns in songs, since in the more popular genres everything is based strongly on patterns . . .
This is one of my ongoing topics in this FORUM, and it provides a more detailed set of information on using NOTION as the foundation for a complete system . . .
Notion 3, DISCO Songs, and Sparkles (Notion Music FORUM)I have other topics in this FORUM, and I update the topics whenever I discover a new bit of information about the various techniques, but the high level version is that I begin songs in NOTION, where at minimum the NOTION score for a song has a Piano playing reference tuning notes and a Kick Drum playing quarter notes, which is what I use in the DAW application for tuning the real instruments and for what in the recording industry is called a "click track" . . .
~ ~ ~ continued in the next post ~ ~ ~