Access Music

Abstract

Music is a powerful way of conveying emotion. Its strength perhaps lies in the fact that we can all make music in one way or another. From the day we are born we are encouraged to do just this. Our parents sing to us, we are taught to clap and sing along to music at school, some of us learn to play musical instruments and eventually there will be those of us who move on to make a career in music. Traditionally, to pursue such a career would require considerable study into the theory of music and the practical aspects of performance. More recently there has been a move towards making music production more accessible to novices. Rapid increases in the availability of affordable music technology aimed at the home-user market have changed our attitudes towards who can and cannot become involved in music making. Computer-based applications allow us to learn how to play an instrument, to record and edit our own performances, to write and print music notation and even to create new and unusual synthesised sounds. Professional quality music can be recorded, mixed, mastered and transferred to CD from within the home-environment. Not that long ago, each stage of this process would require separate expert technicians.