Aether Musician

Thanks for the link! Very informative and helpful! Unfortunately it's not very useful to me at this stage, as I don't even know how to get to that point. If I wasn't clear enough before, let me try again, haha! I'm a musician and composer. I've been in music pretty much all my life. But I'm limited to "real" music. I've written for bands, and I've conducted, etc... But that's it. I KNOW music, but I don't know computers. All I know how to do on computers is typing, simple music notation on Finale, and how to play Team Fortress 2. I know Gario is trying to help, but most of what you said doesn't compute. I don't know what a Digital Audio Workstation is, or what I need it for. I've kind of gathered that Finale isn't good for composition like this, but I don't understand why, as it's one of the best notation programs. So I'm sorry if this is a bad place to ask, but I really don't know where to go for a complete beginner like myself. I'm confident in my composition ability (As I've composed a lot), I just am completely clueless on the computer side of things. (And I did look at the tutorial section, but nothing there explained what I needed, and many of the tutorials were broken links...)

Hey all, I know this might not be the exact right website to ask this, but I've lurked here a bit in the past, and know it has to do with music and video games. Anyway, I'm a composer (a music education major currently, but I've been composing for years), and I've been looking into doing some actual projects and commissions. My only problem is that I have no idea on the hardware I need. I can write music, but I want to orchestrate it digitally, and I don't know how. I have Finale 2012 (Recent upgrade from Finale Allegro, so I'm not 100% comfortable with it yet), and I know it comes with a sound library, but it's not the same quality as the music you usually see in indie video games or films. Doing lots of (mostly futile) research, it seems I need a soundboard for mixing? But considering I hardly know what mixing is, I want to ask for some advice on what programs and hardware I may need to get started properly, with some decent sounding music. tl;dr is basically I want to write music for indie games/films, and I don't know what programs or hardware I need. Also, in case this was missed, I AM a composer, and have been composing for a while. But a pencil and staff paper doesn't make music without the proper instrument! Thanks! ~~aem