Help Dad Get Daughter Started!, A complicated (for me) Christmas gift Options

[chanzilla]

For Christmas, I want to give my teen daughter a "portable music studio." I'm not rich, but she has shown great promise in the studio, so I want to encourage her even more with the perfect gift.

Here is where I am. I am donating my Pismo 500 with Jaguar. I will upgrade to Panther if highly recommended. Um, that's as far as I got so far .

Here's what I'm aiming for. If she gets a tune forming in her head, I'd like for her to open up the Pismo, launch an app, and start fingering the notes together with an instrument of her choice. She can record the simple tune, and play it back for review, change the instrument on the melody if she wants to. She can create another track for drums, etc. Once she has her draft version, she can save the file or burn it to CD (there's a modular burner I picked up on eBay) to share. Is this possible? Can it be that simple, or is there a learning curve?

She does have a nice Yamaha keyboard I gave her last Christmas, which she enjoys and has shown enthusiastic talent for. It has a MIDI port, and I know I'm going to have to dish out for a USB-MIDI interface -- any recommendations? While she already has a music keyboard, I want her to be able to create on the road with just the laptop, if possible.

Also, if she wants to add vocals or a non-digital instrument (my acoustic guitar, for example), is it hard to do? Can she just plug into the mic jack?

What is a good program for recording music tracks? For a beginner with room to grow? Does it take more than one program to do what I described above? Where can I go to learn more about how all this stuff works?

By the way, if you haven't figured it out, I know NOTHING about music production. I am a mac addict, but that's about it. I need to learn just enough to help her get started. I appreciate any help, advice, suggestions, links, references, whatever you can provide to a fish out of water.

[rickenbacker]

It sounds like you should read a lot of the Getting Started posts here in these forums. Your solution-sourcing headaches sound awfully familiar.

You need a Midi interface (for the keyboard), an audio interface (for the guitar and vocals) and sequencing software (to record it all), right?

As a Mac addict, I would sincerely recommend Logic as the software. Owned by Apple, it is solid, reliable and very powerful - even the entry-level version. This used to be called Silver, with Gold and Platinum being the higher-end versions. Now the basic version (still incredible) is called Logic Audio.

There are bundle deals, including the very popular Big Box, which has software synths and so forth included. Emagic, the company behind Logic, also make interfaces - you might like to look at the A62m, which has both Midi and audio in one little blue box. Check www.emagic.de.

A lot of people might recommend Digidesign's Mbox, with Pro Tools LE software, but personally I don't think it's right for your daughter's set-up. Logic seems more appropriate.

Whatever you choose, it won't be cheap, but like everything in life you get what you pay for.

Happy hunting - come back with more questions as you narrow the search.