GarageBand is pretty nice
CarpathiaMan
Been playing around a lot with GarageBand lately. I like it overall.
The interface is really well done, and it's very easy and fun to use.
It seems to have almost all of the basics covered as far as recording
music on a personal computer is concerned (at least for consumers and
serious hobbyists). While getting to know the software, I put
together a quick and short instrumental version of "Billie Jean," and
right now I'm in the middle of putting together my own version of Pink
Floyd's "Goodbye Blue Sky" (from The Wall album).
I'm getting good results. The instruments and sounds it comes with
are of a high quality, and I like the fact that you can add more with
SoundFonts (there are quite a few free ones to be found online).
Those Jam Pack expansions from Apple look tempting, but I'm going to
hold off on those until I think I really need them.
It's pretty neat the way it allows you to enter notes even via the
computer's keyboard, and I did start out that way to see how it
worked, but it doesn't take long before you realize that for any piece
of music that has any kind of complexity to it, it's much better to
use a real keyboard connected via MIDI or USB. Oddly enough, although
my system does recognize my E-MU audio interface (through which all of
my audio is being processed and output), the MIDI ports do not want to
show up in the Mac's Audio MIDI Setup utility in OS X. I therefore
had no choice but to use my MOTU FastLane MIDI adapter instead, which
did get recognized and does work (thank goodness).
Actually, my only major complaint about GarageBand so far is the fact
that it does lack one advanced feature that I could really use, and
that's a MIDI event data list window. Sometimes I prefer to edit my
music that way instead of always pointing and clicking. Also, my
understanding is that natively, GarageBand only accepts MIDI input and
does not transmit MIDI output, which is going to limit its usefulness
in some of my scenarios. Cakewalk Music Creator on my Windows 7
machine has these capabilities (and many others), which means I'm not
giving that up just yet. Still, I see no reason why I shouldn't be
able to use GarageBand for some of my projects in the future where it
would be appropriate. Actually, just now I discovered how to do punch
in/out recording, which at first I thought was not supported. That's
a relief, because it's a feature I really need. It would be nice if I
could define the number of count-in measures, but I think it's totally
awesome the way it lets you perform multiple takes, choose the best
one, and then delete the rest. All that automation really simplifies
things.
Another bonus I encountered while setting up my musical gear with my
Mini is the fact that OS X seems to let me switch easily back and
forth between my external audio interface and the computer's built-in
sound; this is not as easily done on my Windows 7 PC. For example,
when I connect my E-MU to my PC for the purpose of recording, I always
have to disable the Sound Blaster, which means I am prevented from
doing certain other things with my PC at the same time, like gaming.
Having all of these options available can actually become daunting ...
now I have to decide which way to go every time I do a project.
Anybody else here do any kind of musical work with their Macs?
--
Erich K.
Alan Baker
<8bd176ba-2bc9-4d65...@f5g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>,
CarpathiaMan <synth.v...@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm not doing much musical work myself, but I have several friends who
are musicians and who use Macs for doing writing, recording, etc.
If you want MIDI-out from GarageBand, there's an AudioUnit plug-in that
will give you that capability (free):
<http://mysite.verizon.net/retroware/>
HTH
--
"The iPhone doesn't have a speaker phone" -- "I checked very carefully" --
"I checked Apple's web pages" -- Edwin on the iPhone
"It is Mac OS X, not BSD.' -- 'From Mac OS to BSD Unix." -- "It's BSD Unix with Apple's APIs and GUI on top of it' -- 'nothing but BSD Unix' (Edwin on Mac OS X)
'[The IBM PC] could boot multiple OS, such as DOS, C/PM, GEM, etc.' --
'I claimed nothing about GEM other than it was available software for the
IBM PC. (Edwin on GEM)
'Solaris is just a marketing rename of Sun OS.' -- 'Sun OS is not included
on the timeline of Solaris because it's a different OS.' (Edwin on Sun)
Steve de Mena
I have Logic Studio but can't say I've really done much with it. It
is extremely powerful. If you upgrade to Logic Studio (or Logic
Express if they still make that) you will get all the raw MIDI editing
you could ever want, and 1,000 other commands and things you can do.
(Almost too much). I assume the same dev teams works on the Logic
and GarageBand apps.
Have fun!
Steve
Fa-groon
(in article
<8bd176ba-2bc9-4d65...@f5g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>):
I use it to record with (currently) running Audacity as the DAW with a
Firewire 24/96 ADC. However, I've just ordered a Korg MR-1000 HDD recorder
which records in DSD (SACD format) and plan to relegate the Mac to only
post-capture editing.
CarpathiaMan
>
> I'm not doing much musical work myself, but I have several friends who
> are musicians and who use Macs for doing writing, recording, etc.
>
> If you want MIDI-out from GarageBand, there's an AudioUnit plug-in that
> will give you that capability (free):
>
> <http://mysite.verizon.net/retroware/>
I came across something similar (maybe it was the same thing) when I
was looking up information on GarageBand. I'm going to have to keep
that in mind if I need to add MIDI-out ability. Thanks for the tip!
--
Erich K.
CarpathiaMan
>
> I have Logic Studio but can't say I've really done much with it. It
> is extremely powerful. If you upgrade to Logic Studio (or Logic
> Express if they still make that) you will get all the raw MIDI editing
> you could ever want, and 1,000 other commands and things you can do.
> (Almost too much). I assume the same dev teams works on the Logic
> and GarageBand apps.
I was thinking about Logic, and it's a tempting thing to upgrade to
now that I've gotten my feet wet with GarageBand, since it is such a
nice application. I'm not sure -- it might be overkill. For my
needs, there's not much that a combination of GarageBand on my Mac and
Cakewalk Music Creator on my PC can't do.
> Have fun!
>
> Steve
Oh I definitely will! :-)
--
Erich K.
CarpathiaMan
>
> I use it to record with (currently) running Audacity as the DAW with a
> Firewire 24/96 ADC. However, I've just ordered a Korg MR-1000 HDD recorder
> which records in DSD (SACD format) and plan to relegate the Mac to only
> post-capture editing.
Sounds like serious business ... you'd probably have to fill me in on
some of the terminology, since it's new to me (although I have heard
of Super Audio CDs before).
I love Audacity, though. One of the best free programs I've ever
used!
--
Erich K.
Alan Baker
<38cf5426-55e8-4b5c...@a21g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>,
CarpathiaMan <synth.v...@gmail.com> wrote:
Happy to provide it. :-)
MuahMan
LOL @ Mac apps. They are so "Pro"!
Alan Baker
<4f85069f-da06-4f17...@d20g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>,
CarpathiaMan <synth.v...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jan 4, 9:54�pm, Fa-groon <fa-gr...@mad.com> wrote:
> >
> > I use it to record with (currently) running Audacity as the DAW with a
> > Firewire 24/96 ADC. However, I've just ordered a Korg MR-1000 HDD recorder
> > which records in DSD (SACD format) and plan to relegate the Mac to only �
> > post-capture editing.
>
> Sounds like serious business ... you'd probably have to fill me in on
> some of the terminology, since it's new to me (although I have heard
> of Super Audio CDs before).
The "24/96" refers to bits per sample and number of samples, as in 24
bits per sample at 96,000 samples per second.
>
> I love Audacity, though. One of the best free programs I've ever
> used!
>
> --
> Erich K.
--
Fa-groon
(in article
<4f85069f-da06-4f17...@d20g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>):
> On Jan 4, 9:54ï¿œpm, Fa-groon <fa-gr...@mad.com> wrote:
>>
>> I use it to record with (currently) running Audacity as the DAW with a
>> Firewire 24/96 ADC. However, I've just ordered a Korg MR-1000 HDD recorder
>> which records in DSD (SACD format) and plan to relegate the Mac to only ￜ
>> post-capture editing.
>
> Sounds like serious business ... you'd probably have to fill me in on
> some of the terminology, since it's new to me (although I have heard
> of Super Audio CDs before).
>
> I love Audacity, though. One of the best free programs I've ever
> used!
>
> --
> Erich K.
It works fine. It's better than most of the freebies that one gets with
recording equipment, such as Cubase Lite, etc. At least Audacity lets one
capture audio at full 32-bit floating point and 96 KHz sampling rate. Most of
the others are limited to 24 (or even 16)-bit and 48 Khz.
CarpathiaMan
> On Tue, 5 Jan 2010 08:26:39 -0800, CarpathiaMan wrote
> (in article
>
> > I love Audacity, though. One of the best free programs I've ever
> > used!
>
> > --
> > Erich K.
>
> It works fine. It's better than most of the freebies that one gets with
> recording equipment, such as Cubase Lite, etc. At least Audacity lets one
> capture audio at full 32-bit floating point and 96 KHz sampling rate. Most of
> the others are limited to 24 (or even 16)-bit and 48 Khz.
Alan, Fa-groon: Is this a trend now, to produce music at that level of
quality? Usually when I lay down a final version of something, I try
to get it to sound as good as I can, but I only go so far. The wave
samples that make up the instrument sounds coming from my Alesis QS7
keyboard, for example, are somewhere in the neighborhood of 44.1 or 48
KHz (I bought that synth in the late '90s), and I usually never record
vocals with anything more than that. I usually use a rate of at least
192 Kbps when I encode my creations into MP3s, and sometimes I use
256, but I don't always like to go that high because of the increased
file size. I know that in GarageBand, I set the preferences to export
to the highest resolution of audio quality, and I also use 24-bit when
I export a final wave file in Cakewalk Music Creator on my PC.
I think my Fostex MR-8 multitracker usually records at 16-bit, 44.1
KHz stereo ... but I'm wondering if that's something I can control.
I've heard good things about AAC, but I'm still sticking to MP3 at the
moment for compatibility reasons.
(Mind you, I'm just an enthusiast.)
--
Erich K.
Alan Baker
<3c6be3bd-f3ba-426e...@a15g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
CarpathiaMan <synth.v...@gmail.com> wrote:
I think it's certainly the trend at the professional level, yes, but
that's because they are looking forward to wanting to deliver higher
quality than most people currently use.
Fa-groon
(in article
<3c6be3bd-f3ba-426e...@a15g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>):
> On Jan 5, 4:35ï¿œpm, Fa-groon <fa-gr...@mad.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, 5 Jan 2010 08:26:39 -0800, CarpathiaMan wrote
>> (in article
>> <4f85069f-da06-4f17-ac44-772c1b3fa...@d20g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>):
>>
>>> I love Audacity, though. ï¿œOne of the best free programs I've ever
It's arguable that the high sampling frequency actually buys one anything.
What is not arguable is that 24 or 32-bit floating point gives the recordist
more headroom and that's always good (especially when doing live recording),
even if the final result is output as 16-bit and 44,1 KHz.