I downloaded the demo.

No sound. No nothing. Not much help to be found, either.

No tutorials on Youtube?

No User Manual?

I have worked with dozens and dozens of music programs successfully.

This is the first one I've not been able to figure out at all.

Is there a manual I can find somewhere?

I should have been able to open the program, set up MIDI, and push "Play" and gotten some kind of a sound.

Nothing.

How can you expect us to want to pay a lot of money for this software, if it is so difficult to learn to use?

http://www.musicdevelopments.com/rapidcomposer.html

This page of the developers website has the equivalent of a tutorial. Just open the '+' icons at the beginning of the paragraphs and generally animations open to show you how to do various things.

The basic trick for sound is to recognize that until you drag and drop one of the 'phrases' from the phrase tab in the browser window AND if you add a track go to settings and add your VSTi or soundfont, you won't hear anything.

As far as I know the midi is only so you can record input and the equivalent of 'thru' to a module. I can't figure out how to send midi output from the program itself to trigger an external module. May not be possible.

There are several soundfonts included ... but you can down load a whole gm module for free from nytonyx ... which I find easier than messing with a VSTi in a program I ultimately expect as a compositional midi sketch pad. When I have the composition worked out, I plan to export the midi file and open it in my DAW.

Anyway, once you download the soundfont, if you want to do that, you need to go to 'Settings' in the left pane and click on either SF2 for soundfont or VSTi to add an instrument.

Click on the vertical border that says 'Line 1" and you can "add track." Click in the new track panel and at the left an inspector panel will open and you can select the instrument for that track from what you have picked in settings. You will see faint note markings like in the master track that reflect the chord sequence ... but again you won't hear anything unless you have either selected "fill in chords" at the bottom of the track inspector or added a phrase.

It took me a while to get started ... but then it's a giant downhill snowball!

Como

Como - thanks for the info regarding this GM soundfont - I found the link and posted it for reference.


Ntonyx 32MB GM soundfont is free, http://www.ntonyx.com/sf_f.htm

Thanks, Como!

Hi jerrypettit,

there are three tutorials on the web site:
http://www.musicdevelopments.com/tutorials.html

Please note that the "User Guide" included with the installation (same as http://www.musicdevelopments.com/readme.html) has some important sections that a new user must read (yes, please read those) to understand the concept of RapidComposer, starting with "Phrases And Operations". Once that is done, using the program does not require special knowledge, and is similar to any DAWs.

Attila

Hi,

Thank you for your tips and the soundfont!

Indeed, built-in soundfont support is nice because
- they load fast,
- they are integrated into the instrument browser so you can add tags, sort and filter them, etc
- they do not require loading and executing an external DLL which is still the No.1. stability problem
- there are several very good quality, inspiring soundfonts available.

For sketching an idea you don't necessarily need to load a multi-GB sample library. Some people may disagree, but this is why VSTi plug-ins are supported.

So that you can quickly instantiate a VSTi plugin preset, one can save the VSTi plug-in state as an instrument, and later selecting that instrument will quickly load the plug-in and restore the internal VSTi settings. This unique feature was zootook's idea that we implemented.

Thanks,
Attila

Still no sound.

There are "chords" in the Master Track. There is "Piano" in the track immediately under, pointing to the Piano SF2. I've dragged and dropped a phrase or two into the piano roll.

Push "Play". Nothing. Again: I've worked with dozens of music programs. On this very computer I am successfully running Band In A Box, Fruity Loops, Reaper. I'm sure I can learn to do all the "fancy" stuff eventually. Please just tell me why pushing "Play" gets me no sound.

This would be SO much easier, if someone was putting YouTube tutorials up. I've read and am getting nothing from any of the written materials that explain why there is no sound.

Ah, got some sound. It was that "fill the chords" step I had been missing.

(It would still be nice for someone to put something on YouTube...)

Good deal, Jerry!

I'm also a Band In A Box (BIAB) and Reaper ... but mainly Cubase ... user, but I can already see that this program is going to take me all kinds of places I was frustrated in not being able to get to in BIAB.

I posted a glowing 'have you heard about this?' type post on the BIAB yahoo forum earlier today.

I want to see Attila be really successful with this program, so he can continue to build on the incredible idea upon which it's based: 'collectible' musical phrases that easily and harmonically correctly morph into what ever key signature and chord progression you choose.

BTW ... did you try adding any additional tracks and drag n' drop phrases to them. I think 'fill in chords' is just one option. I had no problem getting additional tracks to play just be selecting the instrument and pulling the phrases onto them.

Como