But what about being musical? Can a piece of software substitute for talent? You know the answer to that. A music program can’t “make” someone a musician any more than a Stradivarius can transform a tone-deaf fiddle player into Pinchas Zukerman. It can, however, give you the best opportunity you’ll ever have to discover if you have talent. And if you do, it will release it in ways you never thought possible.
A good software program literally pulls all the stops. It takes the lid off your brain. It frees your fingers, your thoughts, your time and energy for the art of composing and the craft of editing what you write. Imagine what Beethoven or Mozart might have done with a Mac, a mouse, and a synthesizer. How many more masterpieces might they have created if they hadn’t been forced to write by hand, copy, and recopy? How many ideas were lost when they had to pause in the heat of a thought to scribble a phrase? And what if they had had hundreds of instruments at their command — not to mention the new ones they would have invented?
