Music software.

[synaesthesia]

Right, this has probably been done to death but we're in a bit of a fix currently.

 

We *urgently* need a replacement for Cubase 4 LE which no longer works properly in win7 - if it's 64bitness or mandatory profiles we don't know.

 

Requirements:

Must NOT be anything by Steinberg, who frankly I wouldn't trust to code me a program that outputs "Hello, world". There's not an intelligent person among them.

8 track sequencing/mixing

Midi and microphone input

VST plugin type thingy or whatever it is that makes multiple instruments work.

 

Cubase covered that alright. LMMS looks like someones thrown an "interface" at a 1990's modtracker.

We got our hopes up with Audition but typically for Adobe, it's not part of CS5.

 

Little to no budget.

 

Any help would be gratefully received.

[Guest Guest]

You'll struggle to find any cheap audio apps which don't look like LMMS. I personally like Reason Reason - Complete music making, music production and recording studio software - Propellerhead

 

No VST plugin support but tbh you don't need it as everything is built in (will save you a fortune in time and money in the long run). Comes with a few synths, samplers, drum machines, every effect you are likely to use in a school including guitar amp modelling and an auto-tune for vocals. Brilliant mixer and sequencing.

 

Only other option I can think of is Reaper which looks really good for the money ($60) REAPER | Audio Production Without Limits

Edited September 17, 2012 by Guest

[jinnantonnixx]

Mulab from mutools. I was a beta tester for its forerunner (Luna) a couple of years ago.

Furthermore, it doesn't need to be installed. It can run standalone.

There's a free version: http://www.mutools.com/info/docs/mulab/mulab-versions.html

 

 

I don't use Windows any more, so I run Qtractor on Linux, but Mulab looks nice.

Edited September 17, 2012 by jinnantonnixx

[Guest Guest]

This is one to watch out for. From some of the makers of Ableton Bitwig | Bitwig Studio

[jinnantonnixx]

This is one to watch out for. From some of the makers of Ableton Bitwig | Bitwig Studio

 

This is for Linux too, so I'm keen to see this. It's been a long time coming. I signed up for Beta months ago, but I haven't heard a peep since.

[Arthur]

We got our hopes up with Audition but typically for Adobe, it's not part of CS5. Little to no budget.

Reaper?

[synaesthesia]

Have asked all these folks for pricing as of last night.

our Head of Music is really taken with Mulab though - ticks all the boxes apart from video insertion (but what the hell is that doing in music software anyway?)

Giving the free version a go and may well end up paying for that, looks very good value for money.

[peterp]

My old school used FLStudio, but that was back in the cc3/xp days.

Here we use Cubase 6.5 which the only problem we have is that shutting the program down takes between 2 and 5 minutes.

(it's suggested to use the 32 bit version, and we also use reason, and the reason re-wire is 32 bit only)

[pinkerton]

Mixcraft looks good:

 

Mixcraft 6

[synaesthesia]

Oddly enough blocked by our filters... on our damn-near unfiltered policy.

[Duke5A]

It has been years since I last messed around with this, but it's still developed and the music program at my last district seemed to love it.

 

Free Music Notation Software | Finale NotePad

 

They're got a free version available for download and it says Win7 x64 compatible.

[jmak]

I've been using musescore successfully. Again free and does transposition etc.

[Garacesh]

Bit of a necrobump, sorry! But I figured it may be in peoples' interests who've discussed this in the past..

 

Try as I might, I cannot get MuseScore to work on W10. Not older versions, not their newest versions, not the Portable edition, network install, local install, nada.

 

So far, for alternatives, I've tried Anvil, Buzz, Crescendo, MuLab, Musink Lite, Finale NotePad, LilyPond, LilyPond + Frescobaldi and LMMS.

With the exception of Anvil, the others are either way too complex, don't work for a multitude of reasons or just don't feel like the right tool for the job.

 

So Anvil seems pretty decent, albeit with an outdated-looking GUI, and works seemingly flawlessly over the network. You can create tracks for different instruments and play them all in unison and it's fairly WYSIWYG. I might fire it across to the Performing Arts teachers and see what they think of it.

 

BUT. I'm not here to promote Anvil. I'm here to ask: Are there any other software packages I'm missing and ought to try? MuseScore was, for lack of a better word, perfect, at least it seemed that way. You put notes on a sheet and you got music. Simple. No mess, no fuss. Notes are easily adjustable, contrasting with Anvil's piano input method or janky drag-and-drop that seems to change the notes a lot? (Admittedly this might be 'right' as I don't know anything about sheet music). So yeah, any other software I should look at?

[Boredguy]

Bit of a necrobump, sorry! But I figured it may be in peoples' interests who've discussed this in the past..

 

Try as I might, I cannot get MuseScore to work on W10. Not older versions, not their newest versions, not the Portable edition, network install, local install, nada.

 

Just downloaded 2.1 from the web and it's running ok on W10 Anniversary edition

[Garacesh]

Just downloaded 2.1 from the web and it's running ok on W10 Anniversary edition

 

You'd expect there to be no issues, but I've found posts [1, 2, 3, 4] that are having the same issue as me.

 

Apparently the issue is MuseScore won't run if Windows Firewall is disabled during the install which I've yet to investigate, but firewall is off on our client machines because we use third-party.

[mavhc]

Seems like it's to do with font installation, can you install the fonts via other means?

 

https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/tree/master/fonts

[Garacesh]

Seems like it's to do with font installation, can you install the fonts via other means?

 

https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/tree/master/fonts

 

Unlikely. Running the msi to install locally, manually, as a fully-privileged admin user, still doesn't launch.

You see the process open momentarily in the task manager, but then it silently ends.

[gomalley]

Have you tried packaging it into App-V - seems the best way to run stuff that doesn't like Windows 10 within an old style shell - but no difference to the users

[mavhc]

Weirdly the gdb enabled version someone linked to works fine. Also I have the firewall enabled, although probably not allowed to make exceptions. Without the fonts installed it loads but displays wrong.

[3s-gtech]

Hmmm. Just installed 2.1 onto my Windows 10 1703 VM and it runs fine (firewall off).

[mavhc]

Don't enable Admin templates/System/Mitigation/Untrusted Font Blocking

[Guest obsidianpillar]

FL Studio, Ableton, Reason, Reaper to name but a few.

[Garacesh]

FL Studio, Ableton, Reason, Reaper to name but a few.

 

AFAIK, FruityLoops and Reaper cost dosh. We ain't got dosh.

Dunno anything about Ableton or Reason though.

 

And I mean, yeah, I get it. Music software is reasonably specialist. Especially the good stuff. I don't expect to get the best of the best, and personally speaking, I have no issue paying. We just don't have a lot of money to be spending. We've just had a round of redundancies.

[Guest obsidianpillar]

AFAIK, FruityLoops and Reaper cost dosh. We ain't got dosh.

Dunno anything about Ableton or Reason though.

 

And I mean, yeah, I get it. Music software is reasonably specialist. Especially the good stuff. I don't expect to get the best of the best, and personally speaking, I have no issue paying. We just don't have a lot of money to be spending. We've just had a round of redundancies.

 

Hi, Yup - I understand your perspective. FL does offer a lot, although I haven't dealt with Reaper particuarly much.

 

Ableton you're not going to get for cheap, and is a learning curve in many respects compared to FL. FL used to be referred to as "Basic" but is now a proper DAW. Have you looked at the "Fruity" edition of FL as a basic model? It's quite cost effective in terms of single-user license however buying in bulk I'm not sure. I've deployed it once but getting ASIO4All deployed was the issue if I remember rightly. I'm more Musically "qualified" than I am with IT - so if you at any stage need any further pointers feel free to get in contact.

 

I always recommend FL Fruity Edition for Basic Music Production (i.e starting) on Windows. Ableton can be intimidating for some novice users if they don't know what they're doing. FL also comes with some plugins for Free which may be more convincing.

 

Keep us all updated with your decision/deployment?

 

Tom

[Garacesh]

Ableton you're not going to get for cheap, and is a learning curve in many respects compared to FL. FL used to be referred to as "Basic" but is now a proper DAW. Have you looked at the "Fruity" edition of FL as a basic model? It's quite cost effective in terms of single-user license however buying in bulk I'm not sure.

If we can't get a site license or a considerable bulk-license, it's basically no good to us. Whilst, admittedly, software like that is only going to get used fully by GCSE Music students, they're still going to need to learn that software years 7 through 9 so that if they do take it, they're already familiar. FL Fruity is quoted at $42069 for 1000 users. And like I say, music software is fairly specialist and usually (justifiably, imho) comes with a price tag. And whilst I'm not saying it's impossible to find some cash, anything beyond a few hundred is going to ruffle a lot of feathers whilst the dust is still settling from these redundancies.

 

I'm going to keep working on MuseScore, hopefully I can get that working again, but since it's FAOS I might as well give them Anvil too. If nothing else, at least I might be able to figure it out for anyone else having a similar problem in future.