[fionapiano]

Hello:

I have a g4 running 733 Mhz. i am a piano teacher that teaches a variety of music styles and have a computer lab for my students. i am keening on turning my Mac into a recording studio for some of my teenagers. these are kids, mostly boys, who compose their own pop music etc...I've been looking at products like Reason 3.0 and Garageband, but find the whole thing a bit overwhelming. My question is, is there a software program that would allow kids (who aren't experts like you all are) to record their own songs, using diffferent intruments and in effect create cd's of their own music? I want something that is pretty intuitive, For example i have Finale for notation software and it's too powerful for most of these kids who only want something more simple for making sheet music....

Thanks in advance, Fiona

[loki74]

hmm. Garage Band is fairly straightforward - it comes with the iLife package, a good sign that it was intended for consumer level use. I think that it would probably be perfect for what you want to do.

Another program I would highly reccomend is Native Instruments Guitar Rig. Well, if you have any students who play guitar, or plan on implementing any guitar in their music. Essentially, it takes a raw signal (instrument -> computer) and does to it what professional quality amps, effects, and microphones would do, but digitally. Its kind of tough for me to explain this, but basically for 500 bucks you can have a myriad of amps, effects, and microphones at your command. Saves a lot of money and a lot of space. The interface is very intuitive, made to resemble what a person would actually see if they had a physical stack in front of them. But make sure you have a good sound card otherwise you'll end up with unwanted latency.

NI also has some other apps you may find more useful than that... havent really bothered to check it out.

Next I would reccomend getting your hands on some high quality samples. Drums, voice, etc. Some of them may cost a lot, but if you know how to use them, the audience will not be able to tell that it is a machine and not a real drummer.

Also, not everything is software. It might do you well to try and work on a faster, newer Mac. High quality balanced cables, mics, etc will also play a role in good production.

As for burning CDs, you could do that with iTunes, I guess. There are other options which you could pay for, but I dont think it would matter that much how a CD is burned...

Finally, even if the recording quality is crappy, if the music is good, the music is good.

[fionapiano]

Hi: Hey thanks, I appreciate you taking the time to answer me! I'll have to check out the program you suggested since many of these kids play guitar too- although I don't teach guitar myself.

In terms of buying samples, would these iwork with a program like Garageband? Or would I need a separate program to use higher quality sounds?

Thanks again, Fiona

[k_munic]

Hi Fiona,

I'm not a musician, but maybe that is an advantage to answer your questions…
have you a made a look on Logic express? http://www.apple.com/logicexpress/ that is a highclass product, but maybe way too much for your task…

but I would work with Garageband… I do call it "the LEGO of music"… because, it comes along with thousand of samples you can use instantly, and you can buy the JamPackages with additional samples. you "stick them together", the app keeps the keys and tempo of the samples, so you don't have to care about that! within minutes you get a … well, for my ears, got "looking" track…

secondly, Garageband is a very intuitively record machine… you can layout tracks, you can play in by midi or "analog" (e.g. guitar amp, voice, any mic-in instrument), you can manipulate the tracks, add effects, edit them, erase them, mix them etc.pp. for recording analogue, you need a converter as the iMic from Griffin (50$)

as said, I've no idea of music, notes etc. but I realised some nice tracks for my homevideos…

and, for a teacher, the new Version 2 offers notes, you can printout the music etc.pp.

you can get tons of information on Apple's website, but Garageband is a typical hands-on product… go to the next store and spend some days playing around : ;-)

[OogaBooga]

Fiona, here's something you may want to download and check out:

http://www.apple.com/logicexpress/trial/

It's a full-featured 30-day trial for Logic Express 7, essentially GarageBand with many more added features.

[analogika]

Actually, for just enabling people to give their ideas some shape - provided the point is that they actually *play* some of the parts themselves - GarageBand is the perfect solution.

It's cheap, it will do 64 tracks, and it's the simplest, most straight-forward audio/MIDI sequencer that I know of. It also comes with a large number of software instruments that actually sound quite good, and it has fairly decent effects presets for a variety of different recording sources - piano, guitar, male vocals, etc. - that make it *extremely* simple to achieve decent results very very quickly.

The guitar amp simulation is also quite decent, meaning you can record anything directly into the Mac and then send it through a "virtual" guitar amplifier. That is the same thing that NI Guitar Rig does (as mentioned above), except Guitar Rig is a better-sounding and more powerful stand-alone program that doesn't do your situation any good on its own, since you still need a multi-track sequencer to record the results.

Note that GarageBand will not allow you to print sheet music - you'd need the $300 Logic Express for that. It is, however, by far the LEAST "overwhelming" of all possible solutions.