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.

[annadyne]

Hi there,

Let me first mention that I'm a girl and I have 4 macs that I use for music. One of them being the Pismo 500.

I will give you some very helpful tips that will work for your CPU without taxing it. This is what I use on my Pis500:

0) Make sure you have at least 384MB RAM. This is the absolute bare minimum to get into music these days if you want to record audio without crashes. 512MB will even be better.

1) Beware of people that encourage you to get software that uses a bunch of 'VST' 'RTAS' or 'TDM' instruments. I don't mean effect. I mean "Virtual Instruments'. The aforementioned formats are respectively for each of the companies that makes Audio&MIDI Recording software.
Virtual Instruments are EXTREMELY CPU heavy.

The 'Studio Box' previously mentioned has a collection of Virt. Instruments some of which will turn your sweet little CPU into roadkill in a wink. Same with buying Logic and using some of its VIs.

2) www.propellerheads.se. The best instrument solution that is highly CPU efficient and will run like a charm on G3 500 is to go buy a copy of Reason. $299 - $349. Yew, yeow. BUT it is the most CPU efficient software instrument program on the market. It has synthesizers, drum machines, sample players including sounds for pianos, orchestra, etc. Plus there are lots of instrument 'Refills' on the company's site that will give you more sounds .

3) www.ableton.com. 'Live' is a great program that you can feed the output of Reason into, so you can simultaneously record audio - voice for example, while hearing and playing your Reason song. It's expensive but you may find an earlier version of it such as 1.5 (bug-free) or 2.0 (actually 2.1.2 is the bug-free version or 2.0) for less than $299.

4) Midiman Uno - single MIDI port interface.

5) Edirol USB Audio interface. OR Echo IndigoIO PCMCIA Audio input and output card.

6) Yes, you can probably get away with using the Mic inputs. God knows I did until I later on got a MOTU 828 Firewire interface. But you may experience a bit of time lag which we call 'latency' - in other words the time delay between when you hear the pre-recorded or Reason-sequenced audio playing and the actual sound that you're recording at the moment.

6) www.audiomidi.com. These gals and guys are really nice and will take the time to answer all your questions.
www.sweetwater.com is also an excellent place with informed people that can help you out. I've ordered and been very happy with both these outfits. www.musiciansfriend.com is good for discount prices but some of their people are not so knowledgeable about computers and software.

7) When asking about software to run on the Pismo, be sure to ask if your CPU can really accomodate it well.

8) Alternate software:
Musys - for recording audio. Don't know if it has Rewire capability which is needed to 'wire' Reason into an audio recording program. Don't have the link.

Logic - most inexpensive version. Just be sure you have Rewire.

9) CPU UPGRADE FOR PISMO!!!!- available from company with good reputation -. Upgrade your Pismo to a G4 550 Mhz for $340.00. Go to www.xlr8.com and check out their Pismo specific upgrades. I'll be getting one of these for mine soon. There are other companies that make accerators but I read a very good review from someone who got to personally speak to the CEO before going through with the upgrade.

11) Partition your system drive and put apps and sys software on one part and audio recorded on the other. Keep them separate. Or get cheapie external firewire drive for recording raw audio. You can buy them for $110 now.

12) If you invest in the software and other stuff and your daughter does for some reason not like the 'Pismo Studio', the package you have created will be very tasty to a potential buyer who can't afford to buy one of the new laptops for music production.

13) There's a lot I haven't covered but this should be a good start.

14) Almost forgot - you can pick up the latest issue of Computer Music magazine (from UK)- at a good indie newsstand or chain bookstore - and the CD included will come with free fully working, non-demo instruments, effects and recording software that you can pop on and use right away!!!!! Musys should be on there.

Any more questions - email me at annadyne@yahoo.com

Good luck!

Annadyne Liz
Secret Orange Star
NC, USA