Composition thread

[D. Michael McIntyre]

On Saturday 08 December 2007, Christopher Stamper wrote:

> Well, I'm basically limited to software, a I've got no money.

You're in good company there, I'm sure.

> So is qSynth good? Or should I use something else, like freebirth\whatever?

QSynth sounds as good as the soundfont you load into it, and it works well.

I hadn't heard of Freebirth, actually.  I tried it, and it seems to be an OSS 
app that doesn't speak JACK, and I can't seem to figure out what's blocking 
it from /dev/dsp.

Well anyway, it says it's a bass synthesizer, so I guess you might want to use 
that to synthesize basses!  There's nothing wrong with variety, and we have a 
nice variety of soft synths to do different jobs.

Hydrogen excels at drums, Aeolus is an exquisite pipe organ synth, and 
ZynAddSubFX is an equally exquisite multitimbral synth with hundreds of 
twiddly controls and endless possibilities (and a bank of very nice presets 
for the twiddling impaired), then there are a number of DSSI synth plugins 
such as Hexter, XSynth, and Whysynth (requires a DSSI-capable app like 
Rosegarden or a freestanding plugin host,) and let's not forget ALSA Modular 
Synth which is twiddly in a completely new and different way.

If I'm omitting anything, no slight is intended.  These are just the things 
I've run across in my own wanderings, and I've used all of them at one time 
or another with good success, depending on the kind of sound I was after.  
These days, I tend to favor synths that are trying to be synths, instead of 
synths that are trying to be a fake orchestra.  My current trend is to write 
parts for my real instruments and record them, filling out as much of the 
balance as possible with choices that wouldn't offend anybody who played the 
real thing.  (Except drums.  I concede that point, and just use fake drums. 
Sorry drummers.)
-- 
D. Michael McIntyre