im a first year music engineering student at the university of miami... this means i am studying audio, sound, and studios and all those types of things as well as music itsself... i am a jazz guitar principal and play a variety of other instruments as well... i play in a band and i compose music and know i will obviously be getting very heavily into recording music (i will be training in and eventually have full access in 2 years to a professional quality studio here at my school)... i purchased a powerbook g4 for use here at school and am looking to get some type of audio software for it... the only one i know of is logic pro 7 (which i can get through my school's software store for $300)... i really am pretty close to clueless on exactly what this software does... but i do know that its used for recording, mixing, and basically everything else im looking to do... i basically need a program that i can do recording with, mixing, playing around with the things i'd be doing in a studio, composing music (need notation software - standard and guitar tab), and everything along those lines... i see that logic has notation capabilities and recording/mixing capabiliities and has guitar amp simulators and effects... i'm basically just wondering if this program would work on my system and if maybe someone could give me a little overview of what i could do with the program so i can decide if this is the right program for me... if also anyone could tell me what some other options might be, that would be good too... thanks for your help, i know that was a lot to read but i appreciate it

I suggest looking at the Apple website for a detail rundown of Logic Pro's capabilities.
As a all-in-one soloution it is fairly un-beatable.
I use it everyday professionally and occasionally the scoring features. Although not as sophisticated as Sibelius (the standard for scoring) it does a decent job for basic layout.
The big bonus with Logic is all the included plugins, audio loops and sound files, and for $300 thats a bargain!
10 years ago an average sampl,er would set you back $2000, EXS24 comes included - hopefully that puts things in perspective.
If your're running a recent Powerbook Logic will run fine, you can always make judicious use of the freeze function!
cheers

Logic is a good all-round package especially at that price -
SIbelius is more specialised notation software and most people
using it professionally for scoring do so in conjunction with
a sequencer/DAW such as Logic or Digital Performer. I feel
the latter is better suited for music to picture and its software
instruments are superb but are extra - unlike those included
with the former

best of luck

thanks for your input but lets just put the notation part this way... are logic's notation capabilities good enough for someone who writes songs and needs a way to get his ideas down so he doesnt forget them? i'm not looking to make professional scores or anything... just basic notation for songwriting purposes