Music Creation - sound idea

[gtaylor]

Much to the annoyance of my wife I have decided to invest in an SB Audigy platinum EX sound card, the really big one, for 2 major reasons, amongst others:

1. To create backing tracks to play along to with my guitar, outputted to CD for playing in a standard CD player.

2. To write my own stuff, recording my warbling and playing and putting other CG stuff to it, again outputted to CD for use in a standard CD player.

What software is good for doing this kind of stuff with? There is a lot out there, ignoring the dance music sequencers which is not my bag baby. Therefore, from looking at software it is very difficult to get a feel of whether it woud actually do what I want.

Anyone with any experience of these packages, please post and let me know what you reckon, experience is always better than guesswork!

Graeme

[rangeral]

I'd look up cakewalk and soundforge products at google.com seems to be whats used these days without the high cost of other apps in the field.

[rasson]

I used cakewalk for a while, but its not that user frendly, and its just a big pain. i dont really know what other soft ware there is but i dont really recomend cakewalk that much

[gtaylor]

I just bought Cakewalk Music Creator 2002, as a cheap introductory package that can get me started. I'm quite impressed with it on the whole, MIDI has come an auful long way in the last 10 or so years since I last did a lot of MIDI stuff on an Amiga. Bearing in mind the obvious limitations of buying the cheapest package in a range, it's quite powerful. I'm just frantically writing lyrics now so I can put music to them!

Graeme