Music Composition and Relaxation - Mp3 Music Album Software for Windows

Sheet Music Designer
$3.95 - PC Shareware, Inc.

Sheet Music Designer is a utility to print blank music paper on letter size (8.5" x 11") paper. With this program you can print treble and bass staves, along with guitar tablature. You have the ability to adjust left and right margins, line thickness, and closing brackets. Can print several varieties of blank manuscript paper for transcribing music. Choose from three different line thicknesses, single or grand staff style with individual lines or combinations of treble, bass, or guitar "Tab" clefs. You can also specify line closings and the left and right margins of the output. A handy software tool for composers, musicians and music teachers! Note: This software is NOT a music composition program. Sheet Music Designer does NOT allow you to compose music on your computer, or place notes on the blank sheets on your computer. Our software simply prints BLANK staff sheets for use with pencil and ink.

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PianoFX STUDIO
$20 - Tanseon Systems

PianoFX Studio 4.0 from Tanseon Systems is an advanced Piano Music Keyboard Synthesizer for the Personal Computer. You can play live piano music using your PC keyboard or mouse without the requirement of a conventional Piano. The player piano music keyboard interface & piano keys has been designed to exactly resemble a fully featured Professional Keyboard Synthesizer. It produces a ultra-high quality midi sound output with 127 different realistic Musical and Percussion Instruments, piano chords, 4-note Polyphonic sounds, a 10 Drum synthesizer machine, multiple sample Melodies and has a Recording option to save your musical compositions in wav file format. The software runs on all Windows Operating Systems has been designed for ease of use and flexibility.

Features include Realistic full-size 64 piano keys music synthesizer, 8 Octaves of piano music note output, fully featured with ultra-high quality sound output, 127 different Musical and Percussion Instruments, Variable Pitch and Volume Adjustment, full piano chords and realistic piano keys, 4-note polyphony player piano instrumentals, sample Musical scores and Melodies built in, 10 Drum Machine synthesizer available, Record and save music compositions as .wav files, MIDI Mapper or Microsoft GS Wave Table Synthesizer, software works with any standard sound-card.

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BankStep
$0 - Algorithmic Arts

BankStep is a software emulation of hardware bank sequencers found in the big analog synthesizers, that produce control for the sound but not the sound itself. Instead of analog control voltages BankStep produces MIDI (and can make standard MIDI music files). Otherwise, BankStep functionally emulates a big $50,000 bank of hardware sequencers and supporting modules just as it might sit on top of a big Moog analog synthesizer - or your soft synth, MIDI module or sound card.

The main module in BankStep is the Bank module, which is a 3 or 4 bank knob sequencer of any number of columns up to 48. The Bank module is a "smart" module, with the ability to set sequence start and end points, and to automatically switch direction when the end points are reversed. There are no dangling patchchords in BankStep. Instead, module inputs (the red and blue buttons) connect to outputs by selecting them from a popup menu of all available outputs. When an input is connected to an output, the input button label indicates the connection.

Like the hardware sequencers it emulates, BankStep is modular in concept but it is not modular in the sense that you create modules as part of the composing process, as you would with our other MIDI composing software, SoftStep and ArtWonk. While you are free to create your own module Layouts, this should not be part of your composing process, just as specifying the modules of a hardware modular synthesizer is separate from the use of the modules in creating the music. This is less flexible than SoftStep or ArtWonk, but it is often easier to get started with; and because you likely will use the same layout over and over, you become familiar with it.

With BankStep, you are not creating an algorithmic music composition so much as you are creating music with a stack of sequencers, just as you would if you had a stack of hardware sequencers. But with BankStep, you can have a lot more of them to work with!

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Speed Processor
$29.9 - Voice Imitation & Recognition Ltd.

Speed Processor is a software module that allows transformation of vocal and music pitch and speed by manually changing the speed values and voice pitch with high performance and quality. This powerful tool is based on robust algorithms that provides flexible process of vocal file and let the user to save and play the transformed file.High-accuracy efficient mathematic processing with friendly user interface.
- Handling 44.100Sps 16Bits Stereo WAV signal format
- Manually Pitch and Speed adjustment
- Play files in loop for continuous processing
- Digitally scales for accurate process inspection
- High-accurate low resolution manual adjusting
- Internet downloads updates ability
- Stereo vocal signal graph

User Benefits
- Ability to provide special voice speed processing effects
- high-accurate wide-spectrum transforming
- Improving vocal composing for recording studios
- Editing effects for post-productions studios
- Performing high quality vocal transformation and shaping.

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Virtual Music Composer
$29.95 - LvB's X

Making music with a computer is easier than ever and offers many advantages. The use of Virtual Music Composer is based on listening to musical phrases created by this software. Program is designed to help you to make your own music: it does not require any prior knowledge of composing or programming. By providing a visual-based and easy-to-use interface it simplifies work without regard to the user's skill level. The graphical user interface refers not so much to the standard musical terminology as much to the general description of program's features. By this way, the use of Virtual Music Composer is suitable for newcomers to the art of composing music as well as to the professionals. Just having a piano certainly does not make you into a pianist, as just having this software does not make you a composer. In order to take the most advantage of Virtual Music Composer, the playing of any musical instrument is not necessary but recommended or, at least, it is convenient. Virtual Music Composer does not replace the human factor: it's just an endless source of inspiration for making music 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So, it is more and more important to make a distinction between "making music on a computer" and "composing music with a computer" software. Programs from the family "Making music with a computer", commonly, include features such as editing, sampling, sequencing, recording, mixing... Programs from the family "composing music with a computer" include only "computer generated music" feature. PRO version is free for educational, research and review's purposes.

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'Mystic Forest' Screensaver
$0 - Sounds That Soothe Ltd

Mystic Forest is a free screensaver from Sounds That Soothe - music to calm & relax. The screensaver features forest images and music by media composer, Martin Mayer. The images were photographed in forest areas in the North of England. The images from this screensaver are available free to download and use as wallpaper for your desktop.

The first CD in the Sounds That Soothe catalogue is "Silver Streams". Melodic, instrumental pieces written and produced by Martin Mayer. Music developed to relieve stress and aid the body in relaxation. Ideal as music for relaxation, meditation or massage. Over 55 minutes of warm orchestral movements and original nature sounds, inspired by the beautiful views of the Peak District, England.

"...Silver Streams impressed me with its engineering and production (both of which are excellent) as well as the overall positive feeling that flows through the entire album..." Review by Bill Binkelman - Wind & Wire

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