{"id":24037,"date":"2014-08-27T10:42:57","date_gmt":"2014-08-27T15:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=24037"},"modified":"2015-01-25T17:58:49","modified_gmt":"2015-01-25T22:58:49","slug":"magix-music-maker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=24037","title":{"rendered":"MAGIX Music Maker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ages ago I dabbled in making music. How long ago was it? Well, I was making tunes for the Doom 2 mods I was building. So, sometime around the mid-90’s. While writing this post I searched around and found that my mods are still out there in the wild, still being played. Here is someone playing through one of my levels with the music cranked<\/a>. <\/p>\n

That is a pretty good demonstration of my musical approach at the time: Find a few notes that sound barely tolerable together, then loop that arrangement to the limits of human endurance. Seems ghastly now, but I remember thinking it was awesome.<\/p>\n

I never really understood music or music theory. My music-making was purely brute force. The software I was using at the time (Cakewalk) let you build MIDI music a note at a time. This is ideal if you can’t play an instrument and don’t know what you’re doing. Just shove the little notes up or down until you find something that doesn’t sound dissonant. Didn’t understand chords. Had no idea how different keys worked. I had no idea what the sharps and flats were for. (They always sounded dissonant, so I stuck to the “white keys”. I suppose this means all my stuff was technically in C major?) <\/p>\n

Recently I got the urge to try my hand at making music again. I have no idea why. I have important projects that need doing. But in a mad impulse I bought myself MAGIX Music Maker 2014 Premium on Steam. It wasn’t even on sale. <\/p>\n

I’ve hammered out a couple of tunes. Here is probably the most complete effort:<\/p>\n