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November 15, 2002

Pump Up the Volume

By Carol S. Holzberg, Ph.D.

Four digital music programs let students practice the art of thinking in sound.

In this review of music tools, we examine several computerized music programs, beginning with introductory offerings for younger students with little or no musical training, such as Radio Disney's Music Mix Studio and Sonic Foundry's Super Duper Music Looper, and graduating to more advanced music creation, editing, and transcription software, such as PG Music's Band-in-a-Box and Cakewalk's Home Studio XL. All programs reviewed here serve as musical sketch pads, facilitating creativity by allowing students both to listen to and look at their graphically enhanced compositions or drag, drop, and rearrange sounds and elements knowing little if any music theory or notation. The more sophisticated offerings let young musicians transform their desktops into remixing studios or join an electronic orchestra. All address four of the nine voluntary national standards enumerated by the National Association for Music Education.

Super Duper Music Looper (Sonic Foundry)

Kids can sample and mix using Music Looper's nine-track timeline and varied selection of instruments.

With few commands to learn, still fewer words to read, and limited possibilities for failure, even very young children can compose music using this intuitively designed program. An upbeat tutorial introduces the graphical interface. Essentially, kids create songs from musical building blocks called loops (e.g., repetitive drum rolls and guitar strums) by stringing a series of loops end-to-end to produce a professional-sounding melody.

At startup, students view a Timeline with nine music tracks, one for each of the program's nine instrument types or loop style categories, including bass, drum, effects, orchestral, guitar, vocal, and percussion clips. To compose a song, simply rest the pointer on a track, click a loop style, choose a loop from the loop library (you can sample the loop before selecting), and then use the paintbrush to paint your selected loop onto the Timeline and into its own track. A ruler shows the length of songs in measures and beats.

Young musicians have a variety of options for creating songs and melodies. They can add more loop tracks or loops, increase or decrease song tempo (song speed measured in beats per minute), change the key (pitch) in which the melody plays, and save their musical compositions either in native Sonic Foundry format or WAV format for use in other programs (e.g., PowerPoint will play compositions saved as WAV files) or for sending as an e-mail attachment.

While not originally designed for the education market, in the hands of an imaginative teacher, this kid-friendly application can introduce music theory to very young children and give older children a chance to show off their musical talent.

Radio Disney Music Mix Studio (Disney Interactive)

Animated dancers move to sounds created with Music Mix Studio's icon-based mixing board.

Like Super Duper Music Looper, Music Mix Studio puts ready-made music creation tools at point-and-click disposal, featuring a music player that will play back your compositions complete with "skins," or visual effects that display as the music plays. Overall, however, the product is more difficult to use and more limited than Sonic Foundry's more intuitive offering.

First-time users will find the unfamiliar graphical interface of Music Mix Studio a bit bewildering. Without standard drop-down menus or "click-me-first" buttons, you'll want to start with the help button to learn how to create a project and to explore program options. Fortunately, you don't have to be a music maven to compose a song with Music Mix Studio; there's no music theory to master or notation to read. You create music on the Mixing Board in the program's Music TrackBuilder. The program offers a choice of nine music styles, ranging from Pop Dance and Rap to World Music and Techno. After selecting a style, choose your instruments from within that style, arranging prerecorded clips that you like on the Mixing Board's timeline-like tracks. Each Instrument Track has its own controls (Volume, Solo, and Mute), enabling you to hear a track without having to listen to others.

When the music sounds just right, you can switch to the Vocal Track Recorder to record vocals with the bundled microphone. Other composition work takes place in the Video Creation Screen where you click on colored floating balls to launch graphical video creation menus. Once you're ready to share your creations, return to the Load or Create a New Project screen to export your melody as a music video to the desktop, where you can play it in the Player or select it for attachment to an e-mail message. Unfortunately, Music Studio didn't identify in which format music files are saved, so you won't know what program can import the file and play it.

While offering opportunities for creative fun, Disney Interactive's graphical music mixer is somewhat confusing. Using icons rather than text to identify instruments and musical genres makes it a challenge to remember what those icons signify and which instruments you've actually selected. Additionally, the program offers limited options to mix multiple tracks, alter pitch and tempo, or manipulate beats and measures.

Band-in-a-Box Megapak (PG Music, Inc.)

Band-in-a-Box lets students compose digitally while sampling from a rich music library.

Band-in-a Box is the next best thing to playing with live musicians. The program draws from an extensive library of 24 musical genres, from jazz and rock to classical and bluegrass, including hundreds of styles that imitate musical greats such as Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and Herbie Hancock. Simply use your computer's keyboard to type in standard chord symbols (like C, Am7, or Cm) or play in one chord at a time from a MIDI controller connected to the computer. Choose a style you like, then let the program generate a professional-quality arrangement of piano, bass, drums, guitar, and strings for you, complete with introduction, chords, melody, solo improvisation, and even a title. Music can then be printed as a chord chart or in standard notation, and then output to a variety of formats. While you don't have to know how to read music to sketch your musical ideas, familiarity with music theory and notation enables you to make better use of the program's auto-accompaniment features.

Support for MIDI input allows you to connect a MIDI keyboard, guitar, or wind controller for real-time recording while you play. Band-in-a-Box automatically recognizes any chord you play on the MIDI instrument and inserts that notation on a chord sheet.

Like Cakewalk's Home Studio XL, Band-in-a-Box is best reserved for computerized music composition, music learning, and practice rather than casual play. However, its versatile tools allow for "what-if" experimentation because you can direct it to make musical choices for you. You can also use it to produce individual instrument parts, generate a solo around a specific melody using the Soloist module, or compose a new song from scratch in the key of your choice using the Melodist module.

With its many features and options, the program is not an easy one to learn. Pull-down menus, numerous toolbars, and a dizzying array of buttons and icons make for a cluttered interface. Selecting a button often brings up a dialog box with more program options, many of which may confuse the musically challenged. To get started, work through the printed QuickStart tutorial, and for more in-depth assistance, consult the online tutorials.

Home Studio XL 2002 (Cakewalk)

Home Studio XL turns a PC into a multi-track recording studio: Create sounds, compose original melodies with rich harmonies, and record audio with a microphone (sold separately) or an electric guitar connected to the line input jack on the computer's sound card. You can also use it to open and manipulate music files downloaded from the Internet or an audio CD, an imported MP3 music file, or a connected MIDI device.

Once all sounds are imported, you can create your final mix, complete with special effects. This powerful music sequencer has a professional set of digital audio tools to help you fine-tune your melodies, harmonies, and rhythmic fragments while working with real-time playback. The program also records compositions without a selected part, and then plays the piece as you practice along with your own instrument.

New users will appreciate the program's eight tutorials that introduce program fundamentals. As with Super Duper Music Looper and Music Mix Studio, you work with sounds and music clips displayed on timeline-based tracks, mixing and remixing the elements to play as you hear them in your head. Home Studio's Track view displays digital audio tracks in graphical waveforms and MIDI data as bars that you can manipulate through drag-and-drop and other techniques. Unlike Disney's Music Mix Studio, music mixing projects can have an unlimited number of tracks, and you can move clips from one track to another or copy effects between tracks.

Additional features, including a range of specialized project views, enhance the impressive music making options available with Home Studio XL. A sophisticated Console View lets you mix sounds from different tracks, adjust track sound levels, and apply real-time effects. A Transpose command changes the key of a song that's not in a key matching your vocal capabilities. Zoom in on a particular area for detailed editing, change a composition's tempo (speeding up or slowing your project as necessary), and monitor an audio signal as it comes in through your audio hardware. A Staff View uses standard music notation to display the notes from a MIDI instrument performance, enabling you to add, delete, or modify the notes, add guitar chords, create percussion parts, and print music from one or more MIDI tracks. Home Studio XL is not an easy program to learn, but it's a great one for making music.

CAROL S. HOLZBERG, PH.D. is an anthropologist, educational technology specialist, and computer journalist who also works as technology coordinator at three western Massachusetts schools.

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