General questions from a newbie.

Hello forum,

I don't know if this is the best place to post this, but I just wanted some input from the group. I have a 15 year old who wants a setup that will allow him to compose and arrange orchestrations. He really enjoys unique instruments (owns about a dozen of his own) and so I'm looking at the World Instruments library, but this is totally new software and hardware space to me, so I really know nothing about it. So I have a few questions.

1. Do I need to have a DAW for him to be able to lay down tracks and create music or will the free ARIA player be enough?

2. If the ARIA player is enough, does it come with the World Instruments purchase? The only one I see it stated explicitly as being included with is the Personal Orchestra.

3. Thoughts on having JUST the world instruments collection? Would it maybe be better to start with Personal Orchestra and add the World Instruments down the road?

4. Is the ARIA player easy enough for a 15-year old to learn and use?

5. Can all this be done with a standard QWERTY keyboard or do I need a special MIDI music keyboard for him to do this?

6. Or to sum everything up, starting with just a powerful PC, what would you suggest (Garritan or otherwise) to get my kid up and composing/arranging orchestrations on his own?

Thank you!

Hi Derek,

I'll give you my opinions, others may differ, but it'll be a start.

Your son will need a DAW or notation software to create music. The Aria player is just the interface in which you load different sounds, it does not have any ability to record music on its own. The Aria player comes with any Garritan sound library.

As far as what sounds to start with, that depends on what his interests are.If his passion is unique instruments from different cultures, then World would be a great choice. Personal Orchestra for standard orchestra instrumentation. Or Instant Orchestra for epic sounds, great for trailer music type of projects. And there are a lot of other sample developers out there. I know this is MakeMusic's website, but I just heard another orchestra package called Amadeus Symphonic Orchestra that in my opinion, is just amazing, and it's $120. Incredible.

You can use a midi keyboard or type things in on a QWERTY keyboard. In my opinion it's more intuitive to use a midi keyboard to enter music, but if he understands music notation and wants to create music by writing musical scores, then he could input everything into FInale and playback his music. If his abilities are more limited at this point, he might be better served by having a midi keyboard and just experimenting by laying down tracks and overdubbing himself.

As far as DAWs, there are many out there, start googling. I use a Mac, every Mac comes with Garageband, that's a free basic DAW to use that comes with its own sounds. I use Apple's Logic as my DAW. It's a fully featured music creation system. Best $200 I ever spent. A lot of people use Reaper, a low cost excellent DAW. Many others out there.

Here's some: https://ehomerecordingstudio.com/best-daw-software/

And can a 15 year old do this? It's more the other way around. These kids are born understanding technology, the real question is can a geezer like me figure it out.

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