Forum: music.stackexchange.com
Tags: <instruments><composers>
Title: Why do music directors use keyboard (or similar) instruments for composing music?
Question: I have seen that most of the film music directors use keyed music instruments for composing music. I hardly saw directors use other instruments like strings or wind instruments for the same. What would be the reason for this behaviour?

Answers:
sents: text: A piano/keyboard with its usual 88 notes covers the range of most other instruments put together.
text: A lot of instruments have a range of two or three octaves only.
text: A lot of instruments can (usually) only play one note at a time, whereas keys are capable of many.
text: So, someone who is writing music for several instruments has it all covered with piano/keyboard.
text: Want to hear roughly what a bass line or piccolo part is like, in its correct register?
text: Use a keyboard.
text: Want to hear what eight different notes, some high, some low, sound like together?
text: use a keyboard.
text: By the way, a director is usually the one who conducts the other musos, although, chances are, he'll be sitting at a keyboard for the performance.
text: It's a composer who writes the music - usually, as you say, at a piano/keyboard.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/2808/Tim
score: 28
sents: text: Because on a piano you can try out single-note melodies, block chords, broken chords, polyphonic musical lines... and all at once, over a wide range.
text: A composer CAN get along without keyboard skills, but it's hard work.
text: Particularly if he's composing the sort of music that will end up on paper as notation for other musicians to play.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/17003/Laurence Payne
score: 7
sents: text: A film composer usually uses as synthesizer/midi controller connected to a computer.
text: Same with any kind of music producers (rap producers, edm producers, pop music).
text: For music production there is no other competition to keyboards.
text: Once you connect it to a computer, you use software known as Digital Audio Workstations (DAW) such as a FL Studio, Ableton, Logic, Protools to create music and any sound you can imagine.
text: So you can recreate an orchestra if you wanted to just from a little laptop.
text: So you don't need need to physically own alot of instruments (strings, wind instruments)
text: you basically just need a computer and a midi controller connected to it to create any sound/music.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/None/
score: 5
sents: text: MIDI keyboards have become de facto input method of musical notes into computers.
text: Composers use MIDI keyboards to create musical scores like writers use QWERTY keyboards to create prose.
text: Moreover, piano is compulsory instrument in most music schools, so anyone who received formal musical education can play piano.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/9542/el.pescado
score: 4
sents: text: That's not really the case.
text: Not all conductors use keyboards.
text: Of course, there are a lot who use them, and they do it because they can get the picture of the piece they are dealing with.
text: They can have a better idea of the music they're going to perform as conductors.
text: If you used a violin, for example, you could not have more than 4 sounds playing simultaneously, with a keyboard you can have at most 10 sounds at the same time, which would represent the sound of 10 instruments.
text: If you had an organ, this could be even better because you could use your 10 fingers plus your 2 feet, that's 12 instrument families at the same time.
text: That is more than enough to represent instrument families in an orchestra.
text: On the other hand, electronic keyboards are widely used as they enormously facilitate interaction with computer music software.
text: In my case, as a classical musician, I use keyboards and when carrying one is not possible, I use any harmonic instrument, be it a guitar, a cuatro and when none of those are at hand, I use my recorder.
text: Cheers.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/50493/Johann
score: 2
sents: text: Another point I haven't seen mentioned here is that composing music, in your context, sounds like getting it scored on paper for others to read.
text: Writing music on paper is a very visual process, and the piano is a very visual instrument; every key is directly related to the note it's playing, and no other note.
text: On a violin, for example, playing a B on the low string is really playing the A string and shortening it a bit with your finger.
text: But on paper, a concert B isn't related to concert A in that way.
text: Speaking of concert instruments, composing music on something like the Bb Clarinet would be a bit of a struggle (unless you were writing for other Bb instruments), as you would need to transpose every note.
text: The piano is great because that's the note, right there.
text: You don't even have to be able to play the piano to play the note.
text: You just point at it, poke it some, and the note comes out.
answer_details: author: music.stackexchange.com/users/10996/Aaron R.
score: 2

Summary of the answers:
S0: A piano/keyboard with its usual 88 notes covers the range of most other instruments put together. So, someone who is writing music for several instruments has it all covered with piano/keyboard. On a piano you can try out single-note melodies, block chords, broken chords, polyphonic musical lines...  and all at once, over a wide range.  Once you connect it to a computer, you use software known as Digital Audio Workstations (DAW) such as a FL Studio, Ableton, Logic, Protools to create music and any sound you can imagine. Writing music on paper is a very visual process, and the piano is a very visual instrument; every key is directly related to the note it's playing, and no other note.   
The piano/keyboard has 88 keys, making it useful for covering a majority of the instruments in a band's usual range