To enhance my musical computer experience, I bought my first MIDI interface today. I've had a keyboard for several years, which I use for most of my compositions. Now I can play notes directly into my computer, which paves my way for finally buying either Finale or Sibelius. And what a battle of decision that will be.
But for now, I started fiddling with Garage Band today, and it seems to be a pretty powerful little sequencer (I have version 1, but 2 looks tempting). The output options are limited but workable for me at this point. I can record sounds either from my keyboard via MIDI or as an actual audio file via myMac's built in microphone, like for vocals or guitar. If I ever want to get really serious with recording, I'll need to get a better microphone, but for now, this works nicely. Garage Band has all sorts of filters to add to the sounds, and you can create your own as necessary.
Fun, fun, fun. Back to work tomorrow.
Posted by jonhanneman at January 17, 2005 8:59 PMyeah...tell me about garage band? i'm new to mac-land and know enough to know it doesn't seem to interfere/intersect with iTunes much, but i don't know what it IS for or how it works...is it an editor?
Posted by: joy at January 18, 2005 6:46 AMGarage Band (at least version 1) does its mixing into the .aif format, which is Apple's old sound file. It runs around 10MB per minute of sound. You can do an export of your mix to iTunes. From there, you can covert it into and AAC file (.m4a, I think--shrinks it by abount 90%) from the advanced menu. You have to select the file before that conversion is an option. After that, if you want to send the file to anyone by any method other than CD, you have to hunt for your file in the depths of your hard drive. Not the easiest way of doing things, But it's a start, and it's free.
Posted by: Jonathan at January 18, 2005 7:34 AMI've been using Apple Soundtrack (the big brother to Garage Band) for about a year now to sequence music for video projects. It's incredible what one can do by just dinking around with sampled music.
Any chance we can hear some of your Garage Band creations, Jon?
Posted by: Jason at January 18, 2005 4:34 PMSince one minute of music translates into a Meg or so of space, I probably won't post files via the blog--at least not yet. Once I get some MIDI-exporting software, I may be able to post some files. Those should be substantially smaller.
Posted by: Jonathan at January 19, 2005 7:43 AM