The Siamerican

For those contemporary Beethoven’s and all the wannabes likewise, technology continues to make life easier. There was a time when a composer either needed to be particularly talented or at least resourceful enough to afford access to the expensive space and equipment needed to materialize his/her musical ideas.

Times have changed. Thanks to the emergence of mobile hardware & digital software, an entire music studio capable of creating and producing top quality sounds has shrunk to fit inside desktop and notebook computers.

While hardcore conservatives might still insist professional sound requires large mixing boards and thousand dollar microphones, heaps of musicians defy the old world, minimizing all the excess tools, pumping out impressive tracks on little to no budget.

Depending on what kind of music you intend to make, (i.e. sampling, looping, raw composition, etc.), there are hundreds if not thousands of options that will suit your needs.

The Siamerican personally recommends Sony Acid music software for smooth multi-track, multi channel live and step composition. Other popular software include Reason ,   Cubase, and Fruity Loop– popular among the DJs and Samplers.

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Since his accident and lost ability to play guitar, the Siamerican has had to fall back on raw MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) power as a protocal to create music.

Traditionally, one would need a digital keyboard with MIDI or USB port to connect and sync with their PC or laptop.Or if you’re real old school, any keyboard plugged in with an audio jack or microphone to record only live takes would do.

Even without this extra investment of an actual piano keyboard, it is still possible to compose digital MIDI music, as most computers with sound cards from the last decade should have MIDI voices built in the form of a virtual keyboard, accessed in a MIDI editor.

Music programs such as Acid Pro provide a built in MIDI editor allowing one to ‘point and click’ compose. Just as a pianist needs to use more than one finger, trying to do anything too complex live with this method will prove troublesome, thus the other option is to draw and drag notes into the desired tempo and key–requiring much concentration and a whole lot of trial & error to get the right sounds and riffs.

Luckily, there is one more option that makes life a whole lot easier. Using your QWERTY keyboard (the thing you type with) to play/control the virtual MIDI keyboard. This option is not available in most built-in MIDI editors, indicating one to download a seperate QWERTY friendly MIDI controller.

There are several options out there, just google it. In this blog, Bome Mouse Keyboard is a worthy one reccommended, particularly if you are planning to use it with Sony Acid.

With Bome, any two octaves can be played from the standard QWERTY keyboard at a time, with the option to change octaves up or down with the hit of a button. Full chords can be played live, or configured and triggered from just one key.

While not the same as playing a real piano keyboard, it certainly is the next best thing, allowing one the ease of marterializing music just about anywhere, anytime. Check it out!

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