Odesi Music Composition Reviews

This program can be used by both beginners and more experienced music theorists. As a more experienced theorist I find it easier to place single notes and make my chords like I want them, and I enjoy the fact that I am not limited to a "grid". That way your notes don't HAVE to snap to grid, and you are able to make the music sound more natural if that's what one is going for. For beginners it's a good product to use since it has a very accessible and easy to manage chord progression feature which you can also easily set basslines and melodies for. I can't say much about it though, but this here is true. What I am missing as a more advanced producer is: - A fade out and in feature - Being able to edit single notes' features like volume and strength(Don't remember the right word for it, but how hard you press the note on a piano for example) - The ability to have a menu next to your work as an independent window maybe enabling you to work on your project while editing the instrument

Whilst this software is now quite a few years old, it is still very much worth having. If you're not too musically inclined it will allow you to create some nice stuff pretty easily (even if you can't play a note on any real instrument and wouldn't know a major chord from a major car crash, the video tutorials will have to up and running in probably less than two minutes), but if you are a bit of a 'muso' there is still plenty of reason to give it a whirl. I've been making music for many years, sung and played in bands and as a solo artist, but also enjoy making a lot of stuff in my own home music studio which is good fun. As such I have a ton of guitars, basses, keyboards and some other instruments, and I've tried out a lot of music software digital audio workstations, currently I'm using Reaper for that (you don't need any of that stuff to use Odesi incidentally, just a computer with an internet connection). But one thing you can never have enough of, is inspiration and motivation to make new tunes, and this is what Odesi delivers a ton of, so it's well worth the price of entry for that alone. On the face of it, you would think there would be very little need to use something a bit simpler like Odesi if you have a lot of fancy music studio gear, however, to think that would be to misunderstand where Odesi is coming from, in short it is essentially a musical sketchpad, which not only facilitates being able to quickly put some ideas down, but perhaps more importantly and as noted, it helps a lot with inspiration for new ideas for chord progressions, melodies, drum patterns and bass riffs. It does this by allowing you to quickly put down chord progressions and rhythm section parts from a wide selection of preset examples which you can either use 'as is', or further edit, or simply use as a bit of inspiration for ideas, so it is a big help in getting you into the flow of coming up with, and producing your own original tunes. Or if you like things easy, you can just go with what it serves up from its built-in selections, because these are very good anyway. There is a great selection of musical instrument sounds and styles built in and they are all able to be fully edited and tweaked, but it's worth noting that it does support pro VST plug ins (for example, I can use Arturia's Roland Jupiter 8 synth with it), so you don't actually need any hardware instruments at all, although you can use these too if you like via MIDI, so all those fancy keyboards you might have will work with it too. There are some basic mixing and post processing effects built in too (Reverb, Delay, Filtering), nothing too fancy, but what there is, is just as capable as what you find in the average DAW or with many hardware effects pedals and racks. It can export stuff to a DAW if you want your sketched ideas in a fancier bit of software for further production, or you can export MP4s and WAVS if you prefer, so there is a lot of flexibility in what you can do with what you have created. One thing to be aware of if you are considering buying it, is that it can run in either 64 Bit or 32 Bit, and this can cause a bit of an issue with initially getting it up and running. If you start it up in 64 Bit, the first time you do this, it asks for your VIP serial number, but does not auto-complete this, so you won't know what to type in that field and won't be able to start it up and register it. The solution to this is to crank it up in 32 Bit and this registration process then works just fine. If you happened to tick the box where it no longer shows this option on start up, this can be a bit of a puzzler, but what you can do to get around that, is to right click on Odesi in your library, then go to the settings and select the prompt for a 32 Bit start up and all will be well. Thereafter you will be able to run it in 64 Bit with it registered. So in short, whilst it is absolutely great in terms of features and how easy these are to use, it's best feature is its ability to inspire you to create new and completely original chord progressions and melodies. And in doing that, it also helps you with a bit of painless education in good music theory practices too, yet without making this tedious or in any way restricting. I strongly recommend it to anyone who likes making music and particularly for anyone who is looking for something to inspire new ideas. It's well worth the price for this aspect of it alone, let alone all the nice music you can make with it when just using its default presets as they come. It is absolutely one of the best bits of music software I've ever bought and a must have if you are looking for something to inspire you to create cool tunes.

Initially had a bug occur where the License Key field of the registration form wasn't filling itself out when you closed the program without completing the registration [make sure you complete registration the first time you start the software up until this is fixed!]. Contacted the company's support E-Mail and had Yakov deal with my problem. It was fixed within a couple of hours, and I was even given a second copy as an apology for the mishap. So you can expect great customer service as part of your purchase! As for the software, it's very easy to use, and removes a lot of work for you as a composer. Being able to insert chord progressions quickly and make edits along the way [and the software changes the bass notes to fit the changes you make to chord progressions etc], the tool helps you make edits such as key changes and rythmn adjustments with very little effort on your part. It's like having a referee manage the rules and constraints of the instrument you're using, and you being able to play in a freeform manner within the environment, which gives you more time to write music, and less time managing it. The claim the company makes on their website is "It doesn’t change your workflow, it just speeds up your creative process.", in this I would agree. Only after using the software for a few hours, I can already see how I will incorporate this as my Step #1 in producing a new piece of music. This will be where I come to experiment and layout the foundations for what will become an eventual completed project. Highly recommended for beginners who's music theory isn't at a level yet where they feel comfortable composing music without support and aid from various tools and resources, yet even professionals can use this to speed up their workflow.

I used to like it. It was fun to mess around and make little beats and stuff. However, I'd love an explanation as to why it's no longer available for Mac. They literally rendered it useless for me. I purchased it several years ago and had to get a new hard drive. When I went to reload Odesi, it won't let me because I'm on a Mac. I wouldn't buy it considering you don't know if you'll be able to use it in the future. Absolute trash.

This is a Great, simple to use piece of software, In only a few minutes I was creating awesome music and beats. It really helped me to generate ideas. It doesnt do everything but what it does do, it does really well Good: The interface is simple and easy to use You can generate your tracks or write your own for more control You get the choice of may different voices for your tracks Great for generating ideas and creating loops, has the ability to write full pieces as well (as midi files) Easy to make changes such as the key and have the whole piece update Has not crashed on me and the autosave is helpful, seems very stable. The Bad: I could not find a way to manually save, you have to leave the project to work on a duplication, a "save as" would be helpful. The menus that pop up cant be moved (as far as I can tell), this would be nice as sometimes they appear on top of the tracks. Overall this software is really good for both begininers and professionals.

NOTE: I have used a good 5 hours on this. Unfortunately my account says I haven't used a single hour out of this because I didn't open the program through steam. I am also writing this with a crappy 3mbps internet in mind. TL;DR: You can make quick and dirty sketches for your song with this and import it to your DAW to fully flesh it out. Needs a crap load of UI improvement, though. And you can't use it if you don't have internet which sucks. REVIEW: If you don't mind the clunky UI, then this would be an invaluable tool in significantly reducing music production time. It took me three weeks to consider getting this because of how expensive this is in my currency but I think its worth every penny as It reduced my time on making music by a whole fucking lot. It usually takes me two hours to make a 2 minute song. But when using this, I was able to reduce production time to a measely 40 minutes. And that was on my first time opening this app. However, there's two drawbacks I'd like to point out. First is the UI. Everything is too big to fit in my monitor. It would really be helpful if there was a way to reduce the UI size ranging from font to button sizes aswell. Everything is just too big to the point where I can't even click on some of the buttons. Zooming in and out of the piano roll is a bit of a hassle too. You would think that there'd be a shortcut to do this but there's no option to do so when you go into the shortcuts menu. You can't even bind keys! You can zoom in and out lengthwise by clicking the designated zoom buttons but there's no shortcut key for it. You would expect the program to be fully ready once it finishes downloading but nope. After opening the program, you are prompted whether to download an additional 1gb of vsts and sound samples or something. This should've came with the download instead of separating it and prompting you to download AFTER you just finished installing it. My biggest gripe with this is that it requires you to have internet just to use it. Fuck that shit to kingdom come, man. I want to use this awesome program without having to worry about my damn internet connection dying out on me when I'm in the middle of making a song. All in all, its a good program for its price. You can tell alot of work has been put into compiling the chord progressions and stuff. I just wish it came with an offline mode and a better UI with customizable keyboard shortcuts.

Really nice software, easy on the computer, no crashes at all so far (and I use it in a VM, which is probably not the best environment). Now let's be clear, this is NOT a DAW, it's complementary to a DAW. It's here to help you quickly draft a chord line, a melody, a bass line and some drums, then you export all this to a proper DAW and polish everything. I strongly disagree with the reviewer who said it doesn't bring anything that a DAW can't do, it's a ridiculous assertion. No DAW, as far as I know, provides you with so many building blocks for creating a quick tune. That's not the role of DAW anyway. What Odesi gives you really is this, hundreds (thousands?) of MIDI patterns that you can mix, match and edit, while making sure evrything stays coherent and in-scale. Nos I understand "purists" might dismiss this as "cheating", but this also is kind of ridiculous. What you learn in music school is exactly this: learning lots of scales, patterns, how to make then fit together and sound good. And, yes, also how to break the rules when you have mastered them well enough. Odesi helps you skip the tedious learning by putting all this at your fingertips. And, yes, it does let you take things in your hands and modify notes yourself to break the rules and add your personality. Last but not least, the tutorial videos are great, simple, and useful, they make you want to jump in the software and start playing. If you like playing around with making music but don't have the technical baggage of years of music school, this really is perfect. And if you do have the years of school, this tool will just make it easier and quicker to apply your knowledge.

The TL;DR version is "It does what it says, and it does it well; I would recommend it as an awesome composition aid, with the one caveat that it is an online only application, if that matters to you". Since I think that last bit may be a sticking point for some, I'll cover it first: This is really a web application that you're buying access to, with the added benefit of a custom client which extends the functionality. This means that as long as you use the proper browser (works in Chrome, not in Firefox, for example) you can access this from any internet connected Windows, Mac or Linux computer. Your project files are stored on the Odesi server, so they're always available no matter where you are. For Windows and Mac there is a custom Odesi application which extends the web version by allowing more than just a single set of sounds, which gives you more creative freedom to audition your ideas with. This includes the use of Audio Units on MacOS and support for VST instruments on Windows. As of the time of this review (March 21, 2016) the Mac version is not available on Steam and the VST support in the Windows version is still in beta. However, since you're really buying access to the web version, if you buy this and go to the web version on a Mac, you can download the Mac client right now. Do keep in mind however that these native versions still require internet access to talk to the web version. As for functionality, as the steam page and official web page state, this is not a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) but more a "Musical Sketchpad". I'm sure someone more talented than I am (read: most anyone) could create a full song with this software alone, but that's not really what it's for. As the name suggests, it's for helping you to compose your musical ideas. What this means is that it helps you to build up your song using 4 main parts: chord progressions, a bass line, a drum line and of course the melody. For the first three of these parts, you have a large array of presets to draw from. You can use them as-is or as the basis for your own creative ideas. There are not (currently) any presets for melody lines, which makes sense. Instead, you get helped out by being able to have it only allow you to enter notes that fit with the key of the song that you're working with, although you can certainly go outside the bounds of the key if you want to. If you don't know music theory, the short version of this is "it helps to make your random keyboard mashing sound more like music". (NOTE: although there are "4 parts" to the song, you can actually have any number of each kind of item; the software works with sound "layers" similar to how Photoshop works with images) I find the presets to be invaluable; I play guitar, not drums, so having solid well known rhythmic backing to start off with is very useful. Similarly, it's ridiculously easy to audition and tweak your music ideas by being able to quickly get the core parts laid out before your start your hand tweaking. Everything is tied to the currently set key of the song, so you can change the key on the fly and have everything adjust automatically. Similarly, the bass line can be tied to the current chord progression, so once you set a style and rhythm for the bass line you can tweak the chords and the bass updates automagically. Your export options are MIDI files and MP3 files; the latter of which allows you to generate either a single file that is all of the tracks mixed, or each track in its own MP3 file for further editing and tweaking. Additionally, you can optionally also have Odesi send you an email with the MIDI version of your project a short while after you stop working on it, to help you ensure that it's not lost (this is currently turned on by default). I've tested out on Windows, Mac and Linux, using the native and web versions for all platforms (except Linux, which is web only) and tested the exported MIDI files in my DAW (Reaper) as well as in Guitar Pro, and everything worked great. Lastly, the native versions of the app allow you to use MIDI input devices; I tested with my Line 6 KB37 and my Akai LPD8 and both worked flawlessly.

I absolutely love it. If you are looking for a much faster and simple way of making your own tracks and music without the complexities of other advanced DAW software, then Odesi is perfect for you to get started. The UI is easy to get used to and very simple to use. If you have a hard time putting together a beat you can have Odesi generate one for you which is good for getting new ideas and changing the beat to your desire afterwards. You can set up Odesi to email your MIDI file and import it into other DAW software which I find useful for Mobile DAW apps. I imported a MIDI file from email into FL Studio Mobile on my iPhone and continued editing, tuning up the beats, and changing the instruments and it was awesome. :D I use a lot of different DAWs for PC and Mobile and couldn't believe how simple it was to create music on this. Odesi can be a nice replacement for other DAWs if you are on a budget and don't want to spend hours researching and learning them. If you are looking to condition yourself into using music producing software, give Odesi a try. You won't be disappointed and it's definitely worth the asking price. :)

Simply put this software will not run well on Windows PCs, period. High CPU leading to sound stuttering and input delay was experienced on my Intel i7. It turns out, the software was originally written for Mac, and Windows users get a repackaged browser version of the software. I would not recommend Windows users buy this software until it will run decently well. That said, the software otherwise accomplishes what it sets out. There's a small learning curve with the UI. Jamming with your laptop keyboard is easy and fun, as the notes you press are snapped to the chord structure. Standard MIDI samples are included, and your work is saved to the cloud and emailed to you in the form of .mid files. Nice to see the ancient standard still being used.