Since there are a few musically inclined people here I figured I'd ask this! I have "written" melodies on my keyboard but I didn't write them down I just memorized it, and I can't really read music. :S
How can I write a melody for music made on the computer? I can't use the keyboard (piano) atm and I have no listen-to-able way to record it anyway...So how would someone suggest for me to get started somehow?
I need to make original music for my game (at least the start menu!) because if I use a none original song I'll be that person that is just using it for fun but sued because I used it. (You know how copyrights people are! )

Anyone have any ideas?!

Thank you!


~ God Bless ~



~ Moko

What about something like this Moko?

mokonafan: i keep telling people about noteflight.com. it's been a great help to me - i keep making up tunes but forget how they went and i can't really write music. noteflight works like this: you set up an account, it's free and you get to make a maximum of 25 scores. when you click on "new" you get to the editor. you click in the notes with the mouse, but you hear the note played at the same time, and you can always play back what you have written so far. i have actually learned to read music a bit better since i started writing my tunes down with noteflight, thanks to that. after you've finished writing you can export the music as a midi file, so you don't have to record it. the quality of the noteflight midis isn't fantastic, but if you start by a simple noteflight midi you could always polish it up with other software - erisian would know how to do that.

You can use an online virtual keyboard, like this..

http://www.virtualpiano.net/

It can record too..

You can download virtual keyboards from several sites that are much more powerful. They can record, generate notation and even create a midi/wav file for you to use in your game or video.

http://vmpk.sourceforge.net/

hmm if your simply looking for safe music to can simply use creative commons,public domain,cc0 songs while providing credit to composers, some good sites include,
http://www.jamendo.com
http://www.ccmixter.org

If your more inclined to create your own music then midi programs like
http://anvilstudio.com/ are good for creating midis and editting
also creates and shows midi file sheet music.

although if you want a higher quality sound that is more realistic than taking
your midi file and using the amazing
synthfonthttp://www.synthfont.com/ synthfont (1.711 is freeware newer is not.)
to convert it into soundfonts sounds
http://soundfonts.homemusician.net/
are much higher quality since it uses real recorded instruments
from wav. files.
Synthfont also supports VST plugins
http://www.kvraudio.com/q.php?search=1&q=&f1[]=vst
allowing for more effects onto midi files like reverb and chorus
or vsti instruments. lol I know that it all sounds intimidating yet its kinda fun one you get the hang of it.
If producing for commercial purposes I would be sure to use Ogg. Vorbis format instead of Mp3. because of licensing, unless you want to pay the license fee.
Of course theres also Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
its does not add to composing midi music but its good for editing music files and splicing them together for finished product.
yet sorry for those who use Linux there are not quite as many options for music composing at least none that I know of.

If your also looking for voice actors then http://voiceactingalliance.com/board/forum.php is a good forum to visit with friendly voice acting talents, (not exactly melody based yet nice place I'd thought I'd mention.) Of course if you want to voice act yourself another great tool is kerovee vst. its a filter that changes your voice, not just the pitch but the timbre as well if set right can create pretty convincing male or female voices, kinda strange when I use the filter my voice sounds kinda like my sister lol. must be family genetics.
you can use it by placing it in audacity's plugins folder. Audacity supports vst effects just not vsti instruments.

here's kerovee site link.
http://www.g200kg.com/en/software/kerovee.html
kerovee is also a autotune plugin

don't know if any of this might help you mokonafan, I hope it does your a great friend.
hope you have a great christmas.

I would go with a virtual piano that records audio wave files like Tux suggested.

For music notation I suggest looking at, MuseScore. Check this Subject: MuseScore Team thread for more info.
Here's a Comparison of scorewriters. Names to look for, Denemo (Lilypond gui) + Lilypond, RoseGarden (Linux) or something basic like TuxGuitar to get you started.

Many options I see thank you everybody! :>

My main issue is remembering how the melody goes but I guess I'll figure it out eventually! xD