New to composing and such... hoping here's the right place to ask for help.

[NickTheBassoonist]

I was hoping some of you here can give me some tips or something to get started with composing/arranging. Like, what I should work on first...

I downloaded Finale, or the demo of '08, I'm not sure if I need anything else... Any input would be greatly appreciated!

[KefkaticFanatic]

If you want to just start arranging, download finale notepad.  The demo of the full version is nearly useless as you can't save anything.

[NickTheBassoonist]

Ah yea, That's what I have- Finale Notepad 2008. My bad.

[Brawler4Ever]

um... some vocab help(for fun).

arranging: a song that you like has already been made (i.e. Good Egg Galaxy from Super Mario Galaxy). You listen to the song, and put it in midi format(I'm assuming that you know what a midi is. It's fine if you don't  ) on your Finale. That is an arrangement  of the song. It's supposed to sound like the original as best as possible. We use piano arrangements, which means that we tkae midis/our ears and we make songs into playable piano format.

Composition: This is a song that you have completely created yourself. This was not taken from a game, music artist, etc.
...
For arranging: Try to arrange a song by ear, and see how easy it is. If you're like me, you'll get to measure ten and have no idea where to go next. I use midis; I download a midi from vgmusic.com and open the midi in Finale. I open a blacnk Finale page and move the notes, measure by measure, into the black document. In almos tno itme at all, I have a perfectly good piano arrangement. 

Try this for starts. It's nice and easy. It's called "Pre-battle" and it's from Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories.

[Parker2334]

When your arranging by ear, it is helpful to have a sound of the song the song you're attempting to recreate like a YouTube video or a .mp3 or .ogg, or .wav, or anything.

[Shadoninja]

if you're gonna arrange by ear with windows media player then:

[B-Kpianist]

Advice for composing: Try to come up with a melody by humming or whistling something that is playing in your mind. If that doesn't work, look at a picture to get inspiration. If your writing video game music (like me), try to picture what the level your music would go on looks like. If all that doesn't work- listen to a piece of music you like and try to bounce off of that idea.

Advice for arranging: If your like me and arrange by ear- find an Mp3 to listen to while you arrange. If your slow at it... take the first segment of the song, and work on it, then the second segment to finish it up. You can find Mp3's at Galbadia Hotel or Apollomix. If you can't arrange by ear- go to VGmusic, download a midi, and copy off of that. Midi's are not always clean, so you'll need to tidy up the sheet (key sigs, correct time sigs, cleanliness, etc.). Oh- one last thing if your using a midi, you should ALWAYS check an original Mp3 of the song your arranging to make sure the midi is accurate. Sometimes people will slop together something crappy and give it a title

Umm... that's about it- i hope that helped

[Sirus]

and dont copy directly from midis
ppl will flame u for that
and if ur song sounds like someone elses arrangement (especially from a different site)
thats not good
so far we didnt have a major problem with that
so i dont know the consequences
MORAL OF THE STORY dont copy/plagerize
good luck 

[B-Kpianist]

yeah- that's why i said to "tidy it up", cuz if it sounds too similar, ppl will flame u.

[Parker2334]

Original poster,

If you're new on the interwebz flames are bad.

[Echo]

Ok, I just had to laugh when Brawler said that song was easy, and yet it's wrong at least 10 seconds into it.

Oh, and as for advice, try playing the song first before notating it. This can help visualize the notes better, giving you a sense of what the key of the song is and such. For arranging, I recommend starting off with a gameboy game song if anything, since it's basically two channels at a time for the melody/background parts, one channel for the bass, and another channel for percussion (which you can ignore). Also, you should practice on focusing and listening to each individual pitch in a chord. Again, gameboy music is good for this since a chord should only be two pitches due to channel limitations (unless the bass is a part of the chord, and even then it should be easy to separate the pitches).

[NickTheBassoonist]

Wow, I didn't expect so much notice so soon! Thanks! I don't have anymore questions for now- you guys gave me more than enough information to help me get started, plus some tracks to work on.

Actually, here's a question- when I want to contribute, is there omewhere here I go to make sure two people aren't going to contribute the same song?

[Echo]

In "Requests" there's a pinned topic for people to call dibs on songs. Also, the arrangers' topics in the Submission forum should show what songs they are doing. Even with all that, though, people like me are so careless that they'll end up arranging a song even if other people have already done it.

[NickTheBassoonist]

I lied- I have more questions- Brawler4Ever said that you find a song and put it in MIDI format... is there a program that puts mp3s to MIDI format, or do you do that by hand?

EDIT: Ha, I read that wrong- that's what arranging is. I always thought 'arranging' was the official word for 'remixing'. I suppose there's no program to do that, is there? That would make arranging too easy. =)

[Shadoninja]

arranging: a song that you like has already been made (i.e. Good Egg Galaxy from Super Mario Galaxy). You listen to the song, and put it in midi format(I'm assuming that you know what a midi is. It's fine if you don't  ) on your Finale. That is an arrangement  of the song. It's supposed to sound like the original as best as possible. We use piano arrangements, which means that we tkae midis/our ears and we make songs into playable piano format.

Arranging: Taking an original song and making it into another genre, or putting in your own spin on it. or, Mixing it with another song. basically trying to get the general feel of the original but in a different way.

what you describe is a transcription. and it doesn't HAVE to be on finale, it can be on any manuscript program, or even on a normal sheet of paper.