Franklin Taggart: Hi, I am Franklin Taggart. I am here talking about home computer recording, setting up your own home computer recording system. One of the integral pieces of your computer system is going to be the software that you use. In technical terms, it is called sequencing software. There are a lot of possibilities to choose from here.

There are software setups that are available for both Mac and PC, some of them are cross platforms, so they work with both. What you need to do is you need to do some research and find the sequencing program that is the easiest for you to learn and use and best fits the needs that you have. There are so many to choose from. They range in price from free up and to the thousands of dollars and almost all of them have demos available that you can download and try at home before you make the decision to buy them.

They all have different applications, but with starting that, happen is that, the sequencing software is all starting to do about the same kind of set of things, but it may approach it from a different angle. You have sequencing software that is used for standard recording; it is recording the way it has always been done. Its also has a really strong MIDI features, so that you can incorporate MIDI keyboards, MIDI sounds; all of the different possibilities that you would want.

You have got others that are set up for experimentation that allow you to put different combinations of synthesizers together that you may not or never would have tried that otherwise. They have got host for synthesizers that are software based and hardware based. So, you can link all of your hardware and software together.

Then, you have got other types of software that are designed more for live playing and experimenting and creativity, that also are used for recording full length projects. So, there are a lot of software available; go to their website for the software developer that you are interested in. Download a demo of your sequencing software, and try it out. See, if it meets your needs, see if it is easy to learn how to use.

The other thing to keep in mind is that all of these different software developers have forums that you can go to, to ask questions. Find out information from the people who have used the software for a long period of time and there are just really great places to find the help that you need to get your questions answered about the specific software that you want to use.

So, when you are choosing your sequencing software, make a list of the things that you want to do; is that something that you want to record your full band with? Is that something that at one point you might want to score a film with? Is that software that you would want to use at some point to record an entire orchestra? Or, is that just software that you want to use at home to record really high quality demos and to may be add some instruments that you do not have through the software sequencers or software synthesizers that are available to you from these manufacturers.

Find yourself a sequencing software that fits for you and plug it in and get ready to record, thanks.