Music makers: what's the best way to create song drafts?
"Song drafts" -- I'm not even sure if that's a thing but let's go with it.
I have an outline for a whole album and some bits and pieces written. Rather than sitting down and starting to record immediately, I'd like to start drafting out everything with MIDI or something to where I can play around with the sounds and also make notes of lyrics, chord shapes, etc. Bonus points if I can use something like Garage Band's drummer features so I don't have to worry so much about the percussion.
What's the best software or website to do something like this? I'm imagining something like Fruity Loops or Guitar Pro, where I can plug in some guitar, bass, etc. tabs and include drums and other instruments. I would prioritize ease of use and speed of composition, since these are just going to be temporary sketches.
Then, when I get the songs in a shape I am comfortable with, I will jump into the DAW and do the actual recordings.
It really just depends what you are comfortable with and what feels intuitive for you. There's nothing wrong with GarageBand. It doesn't make sense to use Pro Tools for everything unless that is where you feel the most comfortable and efficient.
Personally, I like Sony Vegas. It feels very intuitive to me and the simplicity/limitations of it makes me focus on the important stuff. But it's a video editor... so I can't really recommend it publicly and be taken seriously.
Some people are really good at coming up with songs in their head and jotting things directly into Sibelius. Other people can get a lot done in Notepad or other simple text editing tools. I don't think this is for everyone but if you are able and willing to put in quality practice time I don't think it's impossible to learn how to copy these kinds of people--it's just that some people are quicker at learning these kinds of things (and that might be because they've spent a not insignificant amount of time doing something similar and building up those mental imaging skills--but this also ties into Nature vs Nurture and I digress...)
Since you mentioned MIDI and websites specifically, I think there are a lot of small sites that are pretty neat for exploring ideas and playing around with sounds programmatically. Here are a few (some are more esoteric than others) but there are dozens more:
Simple (or tutorial) sites like Ableton's or Chrome MusicLab are actually really good for exploring ideas because you are forced to make the most of the small set of functionality which can help kickstart the creative muscle.
Amazing, thank you.
What I think would be perfect would be simply Garageband, but with the ability to plug in guitar tabs a la Guitar Pro. I could then simply record a separate track with the actual instruments at a later time.
i write lyrics and chord sheets in logseq, and if needed i use flat for transcription if needed (it's superb for guitar because you can convert between staff and tab very easily/show them at once, and easily play around with how to voice it on the fretboard, or otherwise working things out for multiple instruments). then for demo-ing: grouptheloop (looper with song structure, also has some built in drum stuff) and garageband all on my ipad via a umc204hd so i don't have to mess around with JACK [screaming emoticon]