Greetings

[Alexinactive]

Hello, world. I'm on a quest to develop a video game, and I'm at a stage where developing music for it would now be appropriate. I also have absolutely no musical composition experience, although I have seen Howard Goodall's Story of Music and many videos from TwoSetViolin. I have lots of visual arts experience, and a decent amount of programming experience (for a non-professional in everything but applied chemistry); if I combine my artistic skills with my troubleshooting skills, I'm sure that I'll eventually figure out this musical composition stuff.

This is why I chose to make music with Online Sequencer: the only free offline options I know that are available to me are MuseScore and LMMS, but I've tried using both and neither feel beginner friendly. Online Sequencer feels easy to use; maybe it's not the best for creating music, like using KolourPaint to create artwork (as opposed to GIMP), but it's good enough for me. Besides, the artwork of my video game is pixel art; if the quality of artwork isn't going to be exceptional by modern standards, neither does the quality of the music. But just as there are good chiptunes (I love Kirby's Block Ball's soundtrack), I do plan on making music that sounds good...

[Lopyt]

My best free DAW recommendations are Ardour, Cakewalk, and Reaper. They may not be "user friendly" as OS but they are very powerful and used in many professional recording studios. Highly recommended.

Also Krita is a good painting app

[PuzzlePuddles]

totally agree with lopyt here

[Benvisions]

agreed with lopyt.

[cosmicPython]

agreed

[Ctrl]

There are tons of people around that could give you a hand with composition techniques, basics of music, etc. If you plan on using OS, I would highly recommend reading Lucent's Guide, it's got tons upon tons of tips and tricks to use.

[Alexinactive]

My best free DAW recommendations are Ardour, Cakewalk, and Reaper. They may not be "user friendly" as OS but they are very powerful and used in many professional recording studios. Highly recommended.

Also Krita is a good painting app

Thank you for your suggestions. I'd heard that Krita is actually better than GIMP for creating artwork, but I wasn't interested because I'd heard that Krita provides better support for drawing tablets, and I don't have one. I've just tried using Krita, and... it's already won me over. I'll definitely be using Krita for future artwork, but I'll probably still use GIMP sometimes. As for your digital audio workstation recommendations, I'll just use Online Sequencer for now; like how I eventually transitioned to using GIMP after using KolourPaint for some time, I think I'll eventually transition to using one of your suggestions after I've gained experience with musical composition.

There are tons of people around that could give you a hand with composition techniques, basics of music, etc. If you plan on using OS, I would highly recommend reading Lucent's Guide, it's got tons upon tons of tips and tricks to use.

Thank you for recommending the guide. Knowing some things before getting started with using software for the first time (or for the first time in several years: I'll definitely need to relearn how to use Blender if I ever want to make 3D artwork again) is always a good thing. I know the history (and therefore, the basics) of Western music, and I don't believe I'll need help learning musical composition techniques: just as I may unintentionally use anastrophe (a literary term I had to look up) in my writing, I could unintentionally use counterpoint (a musical term I remembered) in my musical composition.

If I do need help, I'll probably be able to find something on the internet – like the cheat sheet by Tone Deaf Comics here – but I very much appreciate the helpfulness of this community: I've tried using software better for making artwork (admittedly because I wanted to find flaws to argue why it's worse, but for making artwork, it really is better); I now know what software I should use if I want to make more professional musical compositions; and I'll be reading the guide after I've posted this reply.

[Lopyt]

Good luck with art (as a whole)! Yeah Krita is much more focused on digital painting than GIMP I think, and I've actually not tried the other one,not much of a drawer haha. Yeah learning new apps can be difficult, I agree.

[Lopyt]

Funny how there is a great free open source app for everything, except video editing. Have to use my DAW to edit videos since its less buggy than kdenlive, and openshot