Generating music from scratch?

[Ghostfishe]

Greetings,
I recently downloaded Audacity because it was highly recommended to me for the purpose of generating music from scratch entirely on the computer, without having to record music played real time. But over the course of trying to familiarize myself with the controls, and then looking at the online resources I can find, I can't find anything that states that Audacity is even capable of doing this. Is it just that I am somehow overlooking the information I need, or is Audacity actually not capable of this kind of stuff?

[Gale Andrews]

There is a Nyquist Audio Selection Sequencer 2 which you can add to the "Plug-Ins" folder inside the Audacity installation folder, and that's about it that I know of. On Windows computers the Audacity installation folder is usually under "Program Files". Restart Audacity and the sequencer will be available in the Effect menu underneath the divider.

Otherwise you really need a MIDI program like these or possibly an audio editor that supports VST instrument plug-ins (Audacity doesn't). Or of course a program that fully supports MIDI composing/recording and VST instruments.



Gale

[Ghostfishe]

Oh that's great! Thanks Gale, I'll definitely look into the Sequencer plugin! Glad to see Audacity may work for my projects after all.

[steve]

Audacity is also a great tool to use in conjunction with other programs. Unique sounds may be generated in Audacity in a multitude of ways and then either placed in the appropriate positions in new tracks, or exported as WAV files and imported into other programs such as dedicated audio sequencers or sample players.
I would highly recommend using Audacity 1.3.12 as it has much more creative scope than the old 1.2.6 version.