Music Software For Electronic Musician Options

[dgm]

Hey there. I would consider myself an electronic musician, and have been using GarageBand lately as my music software. However, GarageBand really limits me in these ways:

1) I do not have enough software instruments or samples to work with. GarageBand barely provides anything in that area.

2) GarageBand's mixing tools are also extremely limited.

Can anyone recommend a good piece of software, that will resolve the above two issues? I just want to be able to have my MIDI keyboard plugged into my Mac, and be able to write electronic music with a good library of software instruments and samples, and also a satisfactory set of mixing tools. I also am not willing to spend more than maybe 7 or 8 hundred dollars. In an extreme case I might spend 1k, but I am hoping that this is not necessary.

Nothing with a HUGE learning curve either. I am willing to spend some time getting familiar with the software, but nothing extreme.

I was looking into Propellerhead Software's Reason, but I'm still not sure exactly what it is. Is it what I am looking for?

Any help greatly appreciated.

This post has been edited by dgm: Thu 19 Jul 2007, 00:32

[epidermus]

If you have somewhat deep pockets, you could spring for Logic (I believe it is $1k). I used Garageband only a few times, but I believe the two programs look pretty similar visually, which would help reduce your learning curve. Logic is a superb program, one with myriad abilities, a lot of which I haven't touched yet. The thing I like about it is I can use it for scoring (what I started with) and then gradually learn the entire program. I also have ProTools, and to be honest I like the Logic interface better now that I'm used to it.

I'm not sure what you mean exactly by "electronic musician," but as far as I know Reason is just a souped-up sequencer. So if you do mostly dance beats, techno, etc. I guess that would work.