Making Music with Your Computer 2E [Paperback]

Brent Edstrom (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2000

The industry's best-selling book on the subject has been completely revised and expanded, bringing you detailed instruction for using your computer to create music. In three exciting areas, Edstrom vividly covers MIDI orchestration, musicianship, understanding and using today's music technology plus an anatomy of styles including example scores to demonstrate the use of computers and synthesizers to create music in a variety of modes. An audio CD demonstrates concepts used throughout the book making this title an absolute must-have for anyone using a computer for hard disk, MIDI, recording, composing or orchestrating music!

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

For the past twenty years, Brent Edstrom has utilized music technology as an integral part of an active career as a performer, composer, arranger, transcriber, and music synthesist. Highlights of industry work include hundreds of arrangements and transcriptions for the Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation, music for industrial films and regional television, arrangements for symphony orchestra, and session work for a wide variety of recording projects. In the realm of traditional composition, his pieces have been featured at universities and major festivals such as the International Trumpet Guild. His theoretical work includes an ongoing publishing project on the topic of music notation algorithms in C++. Edstrom currently works as a freelance arranger for the Hal Leonard Corporation and coordinates the music theory and composition program at Whitworth College.

Product Details

• Paperback: 462 pages
• Publisher: Artistpro; 2 edition (August 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872887448
• ISBN-13: 978-0872887442
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,848,850 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars So, So, July 6, 2004

By 

Jessica "Buck II" (TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Making Music with Your Computer 2E (Paperback)

I think the best title for this book should be "Making Music With Your Computer BUT Let's Learn about Music Theory and Do The Music in a Later Edition." This book is more about theory than programming music on your computer. The theory in this book assumes you know how to read music. It does not instruct those without a clue, but I was lucky to have already known how to read music. If you're looking for a book to give you some insight to write commercial music, this isn't the book. If you're looking for ideas on composing for an orchestra, buy it.

So, what's good about the book? There are a few chapters on mastering, MIDI, and sound synthesis. They aren't highly detailed, but it will give you a clue to what those topics are about.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Music theory and an author's self importance, December 17, 2003

By 

Dan Hayman (Pine, CO United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Making Music with Your Computer 2E (Paperback)

This is NOT a book for the neophyte musician--computer savvy or otherwise. The author assumes a fairly high level of musical background and what is presented is probably not new material for people with said background. Therefore the new information presented, could be offed in a couple of chapters. Conversely, any reasonable book on basic music theory (as it pertains to In essence, this book attempts to be too much to, too many and succeeds in being not enough in any given area to be of any real use. Additionally, Throughout the book, the author comes across as self important and preachy--no to real end.composition) will offer more pertinent information. After that, anything else needed could be found in most user's manuals for any electronic music instrument you may have or be considering.

I can not stress this last point enough: if you do not have a musical background, this is not the book for you. All it is, is a survey of music theory which can be applied to any musical discipline with the addition of a small number of pages on MIDI basics. In this day and age where electronic musical instruments and sequencing software is so inexpensive, it would be nice if somebody could put together a good primer which covers the basic elements of music from notation to theory to synth's to sequencers, from hardware to software.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book!, September 14, 2003

By 

Chester Tan (Singapore) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Making Music with Your Computer 2E (Paperback)

I must say that title is misleading. Not only it covers making music with your computer, it covers HOW to make music in any media. There are chapters on practical music theory, on classical, pop and jazz chords, on music composition, etc. This is a must-have for musicians to learn more theory on composition and to use your computer to compose music.