As a little side project I've been writing a music composing application. I've been planning to for a few years now, just never got round to it! Actually I've learned a bit more win32 programming since I last did a music app around 10 years ago, so things are coming along quite quickly. Having said that, although I've done a lot of programming I haven't done a lot of windows GUI type coding, partly because lots of flashy user interface stuff doesn't interest me as much as the things going on underneath... so the user interface so far is pretty basic lol! Of course once I have the basics working I can photoshop up some graphics and make it look more flashy.
My aim is to produce something like fruityloops (FL studio) in functionality, but more geared towards composition. In the past I've found many sequencers very annoying because although they tend to be very versatile, and let you program any music, they tend to make it a very tedious process that takes many hours. I instead want a system designed for rapid composing, with lots of helpful tools and systems that are 'composer friendly' instead of being 'tech friendly'.
The other thing I used to find really annoying back in the old days of MIDI and multitrack tapes was the nightmare of getting everything in sync. I completely solve this problem in my app by placing samples / instruments in precisely calculated accuracy, sample accurate so accurate to 1/44100th of a second typically. Of course to get bang on sync, you also need to make sure your samples start on the B of the Bang, so I have tools for simplifying this. The interesting case is for instruments with a slow attack (such as a slow bowed string sound). To get this tight, should you chop off the attack, or start playing the sound BEFORE the 'note start'? Some interesting questions that a human player would do naturally, but a computer needs a plan of action for this type of thing.
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