Guys, just to be clear on one thing, because I see it mentioned a lot. The only reason I mentioned loops is because user somecomposer said that music apps don’t have any kind of “helpers” or whatever you want to call them. I mentioned them as one example, however, there’s no chance in hell that I would compose anything using loops, that would be like one step above asking AI to compose for me.
I never used the loops that come with Cubase, I did however made a fun song with the ones that came with Studio One Producer, back in 2014 when I bought a cheap keyboard that came with it, and it was just fun, not a piece I would consider serious by any stretch.
Same more recently, when I did something with Logic Pro’s Liveloops, and those are more fun because you don’t drag and drop loops from a list (which you can still do in Logic Pro), but you get different templates for different genres and you simply click on squares, so each column is an option, and it’s fun, it’s kinda like a game if you will. But it’s still a more complex and fun version of loops, and for obvious reasons, there are no templates in that for anything orchestral.
But I don’t agree with most of you in that every possible way to assist the composer in creating something is morally wrong and your music will sound like everybody else’s if you accept that.
For example, I asked my music teacher for some homework. She sent me a project with just four chords for piano and told me to compose around that. So those four chords inspired me to compose something with more piano, a CS-80, brass, woodwinds, strings, and a cello solo from my friend Tina Guo.
I showed it to my teacher, and she loved it. I’m still working on it, but it all came out of a simple chord progression. Of course if I were to ever publish it, she would be credited as a co-author with me, not that I will.
And sometimes I’m watching something with a nice score, and at one point the composer wrote a melody that I liked, and when I listened to it, I started thinking, what if took the first four chords or notes of that melody but I continued it this other way? I don’t see anything wrong with that.
The estate of Gustav Holst sued Hans Zimmer for “The Battle” having some similarity with “Mars” from “The Planets”. To me that’s ridiculous, and I doubt that Gustav Holst would’ve done that had he been alive. First, because to me that’s obviously a homage, not plagiarism. “The Battle” is a formidable piece in itself, that perhaps gets close to “Mars”, but it’s far from being the same thing.
And if composers who pay a homage to “The Planets” are to be sued, then you’d have a pretty long list. In the late 90’s when I discovered “The Planets”, besides my fascination with the piece itself which remains to this day, I thought “Holy crap, all the composers that made the score for sci-fi movies and TV series started from this!” John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and the list goes on and on. And I didn’t think any less of them because of it.
So to me it’s not wrong to grab inspiration from brilliant works, or to have some tools to assist, without giving you everything on a platter. I have a lot of trouble learning music theory. It’s terribly complicated for me, and it’s very hard for me to retain all the stuff my music teacher taught me, and all the stuff I learned on my own, especially because I have ADHD and horrible short term memory.
But sometimes these tools help you learn. My Native Instruments keyboard can be set to many different ways to use as a learning tool, like showing the LEDs only on the keys that make up a scale, or show you all the different modes like Aeolian, Dorian, Mixolydian, or even Mandalorian! 
In an ideal world, we’d have eternal life, or at least a life that is not so short, and we’d have all the time we need to learn every single bit of music theory there is. But the reality is way different, and some of us have to do the best we can with the time we have left.
