Scorewriters make it very easy for a composer to write different sections of
the same piece of music for a variety of instruments, such as brass and wood-
wind instruments. The program automatically does the transpositions neces-
sary for instruments set in specific keys, which is very handy when you are
playing the music to be notated on a keyboard or guitar.There are also a few scorewriters available with optical character recognition
(OCR) capabilities. This means that you can scan a piece of music directly
into your computer — via a scanner, of course — and then either edit that
piece of music through the scorewriter program or play it through the pro-
gram’s MIDI output to see what it sounds like. Programs with this feature
include SmartScore and Sibelius.Repetition and the computer............................................................
As we have seen from previous chapters, repetitionplays a large role in music
composition. Binaryand ternarycompositional forms include repeating
motifs and the storytelling concepts of statement, development, departure, and
resolutionor recapitulation. The central concept is this: If something is worth
listening to once, it’s probably worth listening to twice (or more).Computer-aided composition benefits from the computer’s editing prowess
and greatly speeds up composition. You can structure an eight-measure phrase
and, instead of having to write it all again, you can simply copy and paste it
into the next eight measures. Once copied, you can make changes to it as you
see fit. You can add and delete material and experiment with any aspect of
the phrase or motif you like. You can paste it in again as many times and in as
many places as necessary. You can then compose another eight measures —
say, for a bridge or a chorus — and perform the same copy, cut, and paste
operations with it. Modern computer programs make this all very easy.Chapter 18: Composing Electronic Music 233
What is MIDI?
MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital
Interface. It’s basically a process that digitizes
the timbre and quality of sound coming out of an
instrument, meaning the attack, vibrato, modu-
lation, sustain, and so forth — the things that
make up the “feel” of an instrument’s specific
sound. Then, because the sound is now digital,
notes on the keyboard can be assigned to the
sounds. When you play a MIDI synthesizer, and
the MIDI file being used is “bowed violin,” for
example, every note you play will have the
timbre and quality of an individual violin string
being bowed. MIDI is not a straight audio
recording of an instrument — it’s simply the
encoded characteristics of an instrument.