If I had a penny for every time a student or parent had asked me that...
Apple made a great choice with including Garage Band in iLife. It's a very fun program and there's a lot to it beyond just the loop browser. Above all, Garage Band is making music creativity available big time and that has to be applauded.
Whenever students or parents see how much fun can be had making music on Garage Band in school, they always want to ask if they can do this at home on their PC. I usually steer them towards buying Sony's Acid, or one of its light versions (Acid Express, Super Dooper Music Looper, Jam Trax, American Idol Extreme Music Creator, etc.) After all, Sony's program is the pioneer - Acid was originally made by the clever guys at Sonic Foundry who pretty much created the beat-matching algorithm that makes Garage Band possible. Acoustica's Mixcraft software is also one to watch as a potentially awesome PC DAW.
Now I have found a great free alternative to Acid or to Garage Band. TrakAx is absolutely worth a look-at. It's a fun program, it's a visual delight, it's intuitive and easy to use, the website is outstanding, and the tutorial videos are terrific. Best of all, it's free. You can use it to create great music for music's sake, or you can use it to add music to a slide show or video. You can get packs of loops for next to nothing at the site ($2 for 10 professionally-produced loops is a great price - better than buying a pack of gum). You can also use loops (in wav, mp3, ogg, or wma) that you already have on your computer - access them through the loop browser. If you're totally strapped for cash you could always Google "free loops" and see if you could get some for nothing, but you usually have to subscribe to something to get them, and you have no guarantee that they're virus-free nor professionally-produced - better to save on your next pack of gum and buy some really good loops from TrakAx.
To download, go to www.trakax.com and cancel all appointments for the rest of the day so you can play - this is one of the best music education downloads out there.
14 comments:
Looks like a great product for music class and for home students.
Dr. Nadav Dafni
Israeli Music & computers expert
http://www.musixcool.com
This is pretty good but I think Mixcraft is better:
http://www.guitarguy.info/2009/08/garageband-for-pc.html
My daughter and I stopped by the Apple store today and she immediately began fiddling with garageband like a pro. I was quite taken aback... we have a pc at home so I downloaded the trial version of mixcraft a bit ago. it looks ver similar to what she was using at the Apple store today. I'm crossing my fingers since this is a much cheaper alternative than buying a Mac laptop. Also gonna check out the freebie software mentioned as well. thanks for the recommendations.
Great post as for me. I'd like to read something more about this matter. The only thing it would also be great to see here is a few pictures of some devices.
John Kripke
Cell jammer
Very well written and thankfully, very informative. My son is in an A/V class in middle school, and they use the GarageBand program. He has been hounding me to get it, and of course, it doesn't exist for PC. I have read several articles and watched some lame videos about getting the GarageBand onto PC, but all are hoaxes. Thanks for the advice, I will try your recommendation and hope my son likes it. Thanks.
GarageBand is maybe not the most powerful tool but you can do some pretty cool things with it so I wouldn't necessarily pigeon hole it as just for music class but there are some more advanced tools certainly. That said Mac users are pretty lucky to get this little tool.
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Yes, i just installed it on my pc, just go through this article http://myappsforpc.com/garageband-pc-window78xp-mac-free-download/
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Great tool to use on PC.
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