For the home studio user, computer music history started with the invention of musical instrument digital interface (MIDI). MIDI is a standard language to allow electronic instruments and computers to communicate. The invention of MIDI led to the computer's ability to control a keyboard synthesizer. Unlike audio, MIDI does not have to be played in real time; it's a text file of commands, not sounds. Because it's just simple commands and not actual recorded audio, you can play MIDI parts one note at a time, as slowly as you want. MIDI is a form of electronic composition; you write it one note at a time and the computers/instruments play it back for you. Since MIDI issues simple note-on/note-off commands to control the keyboard, editing and manipulating MIDI music is very simple. The sequencer was born from this marriage of MIDI and computers. Sequencers can either be physical machines or computer programs. Nowadays, it's more common to use sequencing programs in your computer.

Sequencing

A sequencer functions much like a multitrack audio recorder. Tracks are recorded one on top of another and arrangements are built up one layer at a time. Since the sequencer doesn't actually make any music — all it does is control the keyboard, much like a player piano — the sequences can be highly edited. Just like book publishers reveled in the idea of being able to cut, copy, and paste text in a word processor, the creation of sequencers gave MIDI-based musicians the same power. Whole sections of music could be rearranged with ease, and editing could be as precise as note-by-note changes. Since sequencing didn't require a powerful machine to operate, computers of the 1980s could handle the job of sequencing MIDI. A great deal of the commercial music of the last twenty years has been a combination of sequenced and live music.

Digital Music

The unbelievable editing power that sequencers afforded composers and musicians contributed to the growing need for the ability to edit audio as easily. Editing audio with analog tape meant cutting and gluing tape together on a splicing block. This was a very difficult and arduous task to do without the music sounding like it had been hacked up. Initially, the computer was used for stereo master mixes only. It was possible to do edits at high resolution on the computer screens. However, the computers had a hard time dealing with the large file sizes of audio and handling the complex processing needed to work with audio data. In time, multitrack computer audio became available and there is now an industry standard for multitrack audio: Digidesign Pro Tools. All of this technology came with a price, a price that was out of reach for almost all home studio owners. Recently, the power of the modern personal computer with its lower-cost, well-crafted software has allowed home musicians to join the party.

What It Can Do for Your Music

The computer has changed the way music is made. The flexibility of the current software and sound quality has made the computer an indispensable tool. You might be asking, “This is all great, but what can it do for me?” Here is a short list of what a computer can help you accomplish:

• Integrate multitrack audio and MIDI

• Edit and move music around much like a word processor lets you do with words

• Easily burn to CD and distribute your music online

In short, the computer can be whatever you want it to be. It can easily function as a recorder, sequencer, effects processor…you name it, a modern computer can handle the job. Now that you're convinced you want to go with the computer, you'll need to get the computer set up.