Making Music With A New Ibook, Looking for setup help Options

[musicteacher]

I am a public school music teacher who is thinking about getting a new iBook to use as a portable music making tool. Here's what I would like to do with it:

1. Sequence backing tracks in various musical styles for my students to play along with in class. I'd want to burn these backing tracks onto cd and bring them into the classroom so my kids can jam to a calypso-style "This Land Is Your Land" or whatever. What would be good software to do this with an iBook?

2. Record my own music and my students music either live or track by track - what is the best way to get sound into an iBook?

3. Begin to explore the world of software synths. Which ones are easy to use and can interact well with the software/hardware used for the above two items?

I hope that's clear enough. I'd appreciate any suggestions. If there's anyone answering who lives in the NYC area and can help me in person with this I'd be really grateful. Thank you for supporting public education.

[ghess]

musicteacher,

An organization that you might find useful is the Technology Institute for Music Educators-TI:ME (http://www.ti-me.org). This non-profit group was created to specifically to train and support music educators. In the meantime, let me try to answer your questions.

1. For creating backing rhythm section tracks to accompany your classes, you might want to consider Band in a Box. It's very easy, just type in the chord symbols, select a style and tempo and click play. The files can be exported as standard MIDI files. The people who sell Band in a Box also have a very nice Roland Virtual Sound Canvas that they offer as an inexpensive add-on ($20, i think) to any BIAB purchase. This softsynth has a pretty decent sound set and will also convert your MIDI files to audio files. You can then use iTunes to burn your CD. Total cost for this solution is less than $100. Be sure to ask for the educational price.

2. Recording audio on an iBook requires an audio interface. The least expensive option is the Griffin iMic. I've not had any experience with this, so I can't comment on the quality, though some people on this forum have said it works well for them. I believe you can use this with ProTools Free (http://www.digidesign.com/ptfree/). Another option you might consider is the Edirol (Roland) combination MIDI and Audio interface. I use a MOTU 828, which is considerably more expensive ($6-700). Digidesign also offers a couple of audio interfaces for under $1000. Both include audio recording software. There are many supporters of Logic on this forum as well, though that option will tend to be a little more expensive, as would Digital Performer or a hardware based ProTools system

3. The Roland Sound Canvas I mentioned above is probably the least expensive one. However it is primarily a sound module, there's not a lot of editing available. You might want to try Native Instruments free Soundforum Synth.(http://www.nativeinstruments.de). It emulates a basic analog synth an includes an oscilloscope. Other popular software synths include Reason, which I highly recommend for its educational potential. You can get a demo at http://www.propellerheads.se

One final thought. While OS X 10.2 has made great strides towards integrating audio and MIDI, much of the software listed above is still for OS 9. I suggest you plan on using OS 9 at least for the near future.