As multimedia shops have matured our needs increasingly expand into the areas of music production. Not long ago adding music to client projects meant hiring outside composers, musicians and recording studios. This is still the option of choice for high-end projects, but is beyond most modest production budgets. While modest projects can be satisfied with stock music and lower end music tools, creative control is stymied.

In between these two extremes is an area of music production that is dominated by the MIDI/sequencer market of tools and digital-audio workstations (DAWs). These tools are not new. What is new is how they now offer better quality, greater ease of use and lower price points than any time in the past.

What all this means is that non-music shops can now more easily make the leap to open small music production departments in-house. This will enable you to produce your client’s productions, and all of your own pitching, pre-production samples, animatics and demo work as well.

This article will look at the software, hardware, the man-power/talent needed to run such a department, and some educational source to get up to speed. For this article we got to work with some of the top developers including Steinberg, E-MU, M-Audio, and PianoTeq. We also got to look at educational material from ASK Video, Thomson Course Technology and the Institute of Audio Research, a NYC based school.

Getting Started

The best way to approach this subject was to go through the steps of setting up a music department ourselves. For this project I was very fortunate to be joined by Broadway composer Michael Valenti who brought in his musical talent that I lack, as well as his years of experience recording in New York studios. While I have some experience producing music in studios, it dates back to the open reel days before MIDI took hold.

As you would do, we started by looking at our various options and narrowed our choices. We wanted to build the studio around a MIDI core since this would give us a wide range of instrumentation and also help us sidestep the need to build any sound-proofing into our space (saving that for the next audio article).

Choosing the Software

We scoped out the major applications in the field: Apple’s Logic, Steinberg’s Cubase, and Digidesign’s ProTools. We also took a quick look at Sony’s latest version of ACID Pro which has recently added MIDI tools. Each of these applications have strong points in its favor, and each also have legions of devoted and talented user communities that support them.

Through a process of elimination we decided Cubase ($799 street, $399 edu version) would be the best solution for the needs of this article. Our reasons: ACID’s MIDI tools are still too new, so this option was pre-mature. Logic may be the most popular application with musicians, but since it is only available on the Mac it would leave out a large number multimedia developers who run PC based shops. We wanted something that could run on either platform.

This left us choosing between Cubase and ProTools. How did we decide? We spoke with a number of studio pros here in NYC and asked for their thoughts. Sam Skafe, who is a recording engineer, instructor at the Institute of Audio Research and an internationally recognized percussionist had strong opinions on the choice. “ProTools is the program of choice for recording studios. Sure it does MIDI, but its real strength is in recording and mixing live music. For serious MIDI work, Cubase/Nuendo is the hands down best option”. (Ed. Note: Nuendo is the higher end version of Cubase with a few additional features.)

Cubase has a heritage that is all MIDI. In fact its original incarnation was one of the first commercially available MIDI applications in the world. Cubase’ publisher, Steinberg, was also the creator of the industry standard format for virtual instruments, the VST format that other applications use. Steinberg was also purchased by Yamaha Music a while back, so its musical roots are very strong.

Okay, the main software was decided upon, now onto our hardware needs. For hardware we would need the following:

1. INPUT DEVICE—Real productivity comes from using a dedicated instrument (“MIDI controller”) connected to your workstation. These generally come in the form of keyboards and drum inputs. Keyboards are available in a range of sizes and capabilities, from workstations, to the ultra-compact affordable devices that generally offer 25 to 49 keys.

2. MIDI/AUDIO CONNECTION—With its MIDI in and out ports, this is how outboard MIDI and audio hardware connects to the DAW/computer. This type of hardware is generally available as a PCI or similar card to be placed in your computer’s expansion slot. An alternative to traditional MIDI connections is available today with most new hardware that connects via a standard USB port.

3. AUDIO PLAYBACK—Your needs may vary, but it is generally safe to say that the “desktop computer speakers” you bought at Staples just won’t cut it. You can go the amplifier/speaker route. There is also the new crop of high-end desktop speakers that come with build in amplifiers.