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Composing digital music, like any other endeavor, is easier when you have the right tools. Here are a few hardware and software devices to know about when composing digital music — for when you want to impress your fellow musicians or if just want to understand what the pros are saying.
Sampler
A sampler is a computer music device that can be either hardware or software. The sampler doesn't generate its own sounds, but it contains a library of sounds and combinations of sounds called instruments. These instruments can be any type of sound, from traditional acoustic instruments to weird digital noise. The samples can be edited with a DAW or sequencer in a studio, or played by a MIDI device like a sequencer or a keyboard controller on a live gig.
Hardware samplers are not as popular for digital music creation as they used to be. Software samplers have really taken over the music production market.
Most samplers are polyphonic, and many are also multitimbral. DropZone is a polyphonic, multitimbral sampler plug-in that comes with several SONAR products.
Sequencer
A sequencer can be either a piece of software or a hardware device that allows the user to record MIDI data, and then play it back and edit it. A sequencer does not record audio (either analog or digital); it just controls the digital data information going to and from other MIDI devices, such as synthesizers and tone modules. The MIDI devices are what actually produce the audible sound.
In the first days of computer music, and even up to the last decade, all sequencers were hardware devices. Today, they are primarily software products. As the personal computer has become more powerful, software sequencers have been able to replicate the functions of the hardware varieties and provide many more features, such as Internet updates and bug fixes.
The term digital audio workstation (DAW), which originally referred to a hardware device that only recorded and edited audio, is often used today as a synonym of sequencer. But today, a DAW usually has many more features than a sequencer has.
Software Synthesizer
Most digital music hardware is being replaced by software versions. This is also true of the keyboard synthesizer, which is evolving into a MIDI keyboard controller using a software synthesizer (softsynth) program.
A softsynth can run on a regular Mac or PC, and replicate synthesizer sounds through the audio card of the computer, or input synthesizer sounds into the digital audio recording program.
A softsynth has two main advantages over a hardware synthesizer:
- Expense: A softsynth is almost always cheaper than a hardware synthesizer.
- Upgradability: The program can be easily upgraded and the sample library expanded quickly and simply over the Internet.
Stand-alone hardware synthesizers are still preferred for live performance, however, and can be more stable and reliable than software synthesizers.
Software synthesizers come in many varieties. A softsynth can be a VSTi or DXi plug-in to a DAW or sequencing program, emulating older, popular synthesizers, like the Yamaha DX7 or the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5.
VSTi (Virtual Studio Technology instrument) was developed by Steinberg as a universal platform for softsynths and samplers. Cakewalk, initially, did not go with VSTi — it created DXi, which is based on Microsoft Direct X code. But now Cakewalk's products support VSTi as well.
Some softsynths may have a large sample library. Because softsynths are computer-based, the software synthesizer's sample library is only limited by the amount of free space on the hard drive and by how much you're willing to pay for libraries.
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