Z-Maestro
Imagine being able to compose, record, mix, and play a musical composition all in the same program. With Z-Maestro, you can. Z-Maestro is a complete music mixing solution for the PC. It's easier to use than most professional programs, but offers a similar level of functionality. Both home users and professionals will feel right at home.
Project Timeline
The main project timeline provides an intuitive way to layout your projects graphically. A project is grouped into tracks and parts, with tracks representing logical sources such as a grand piano or a soloist, and parts representing the various musical parts played by them. Parts can be looped or lengthened with a simple drag motion that snaps to common note values. Fades and pans are also easy to achieve using the advanced mixing controls, which provide a visual way of animating values like volume and pan over time.
Fast Editing
Quickly edit any type of part using Z-Maestro's fast editing environment. Using the roll editor, instrumental and percussion parts can be edited without any knowledge of musical notation. Meanwhile, the audio editor provides an extremely powerful interface for working with any clip of audio. Effects can be applied with just a few clicks and are completely undo-able. Performing simple edits such as deletions and rearrangments is a breeze.
Adaptive Audio Parts
Not only can simple audio clips and sound effects be inserted, but actual instrumental recordings are simple to add with adaptive audio parts. Simply import or record the audio as you would normally, but also tell Z-Maestro the tempo of the recording. The part will be automatically and non-destructively stretched to match the project's tempo.
Live Audio Effects
Audio tracks can have live audio effects applied. For example, make an entire track echo in one go. Other effects include chorus, echo, and pitch shift. The best part is that live audio effects are completely non-destructive, so the audio clips remain untouched.
SoundFont Rendering
Even the best composition sounds horrible on the wrong instrument. Z-Maestro gives you the power of the SoundFont 2 format, an industry standard. A SoundFont file is usually built using recordings of actual instruments. Then, when it is used to play instrumental and percussion parts in Z-Maestro, you get the sound of the original instrument. This allows your creations to sound just like they were arranged for a full orchestra. You can find literally thousands of free SoundFont files on the internet, many of which sound as good as a real orchestra.
Recording
Turn your own computer into a full sound studio using Z-Maestro's recording abilities. Record audio through any available audio input device. If you have a MIDI-compatible device such as a keyboard, you can also use that for recording instrumental parts. Don't have any recording devices? Not to worry, Z-Maestro will let you use your own computer keyboard as a piano.
Full Project Export
When you have finally completed your masterpiece and want to show it to the world, you can export the entire project using just one menu item. Projects can be exported in MP3, WMA, WAV, or MIDI format, ready to be burned onto an audio CD and shared.
To see a full list of all currently planned major features for each version, see the Z-Maestro Roadmap.