Do you compose music using composition software on a computer? If so, I need your help!
Our son is hugely talented at piano. He wants to be able to compose music in a software program and then have that music print out through a printer.
I have been trying to research which program we should buy AND which kind of laptop we should buy him-- meaning, what should the laptop have in terms of gigs, memory, graphics or audio card, etc.? It is tremendously confusing as I don't really know how to make sense of everything. Our son's piano teacher has also looked around but computers aren't really his thing-- he composes in his studio but on synthesizers.
For example, we come up against pages with discussions like this one, and just don't know what the equipment is they're talking about, or anything:
http://www.soundonsound.com/...
Until now we've been recording what our he plays on my iPad, but I don't know how to send the music as files anywhere. And I wouldn't know how to make my iPad interface with his keyboard, or what software to get, etc. I am completely techno-idiotic. All I know is that our son is amazing, and that he wants to compose in a way that might end up generating printed music.
More after the squiggle...
I have found many recommendations for Finale, but it seems very complicated to figure out. Is it complicated? Will it do what we want it to do, which is let our son play his piano and then it automatically converts what is played into a printable score?
http://www.musiconmypc.co.uk/...
And would we need some other equipment, like a midi or some other thing to make Finale software work?
I've also seen a recommendation for Wavepad, but that seems to be just a recording program for the sound that your keyboard generates; it doesn't seem to be what we want, which is a program that takes the notes played on the keyboard, and converts them into a printable score:
http://www.nch.com.au/...
Can you help us figure out exactly what would be good and easy to use for a non-tech savvy 14 year old?
We need a laptop that could connect to his electronic keyboard to record what our son plays.
We need software for the laptop. This software needs to have the capacity to put whatever it is that our son plays on the keyboard, into the form of written music ready to be printed out.
What would we need, if anything, to interface with the keyboard and the printer?
His keyboard is a Yamaha Portable Grand DGX-640. (It was never clear to us how to get music from the USB drive onto a device; there is a drive, and theoretically you can record music and then save it onto a device, but we are hopeless at figuring stuff like this out.)
THANK YOU for any help you might give us!!