Customer Reviews

Making Music on the Apple Mac

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This is a very thin book. It's about 100 pages and it covers a lot in that frame. The book takes you end to end, from buying the hardware, to using the software, to burning the CDs. And it does it at an absolutely lightning pace.

For the money this is a good introduction. But if you are looking for something about GarageBand in particular, I would buy a book specifically on that topic.

Like nearly everything else in our culture, music is becoming more on and more digitalized. Performers, producers, composers, and other music-related parties are coming to rely more and more on computers, especially Apple Macintosh computers, to assist them in their endeavors. If you're in one of these categories of music personnel and want or need to make the first step into digital, "Making Music on the Apple Mac" is a good guide.

Author Keith Gemmell is an experienced musician who has made the leap into digital music. In this slight volume (103 pages, with index) he gently guides the serious musician and novice computer person. The book is designed to get one up and running with digital music tools quickly and easily. All computer hardware references are to Macintosh computers, but much of the discussion of music hardware is platform neutral and should apply to PC users, as well. And, except for the chapter on Apple's GarageBand software, references to music software will apply to either Mac or PC versions.

Chapter 1 provides guidance to Macintosh machine will suit you best in your music endeavors, providing an itemization of the entire 2005 product line with comparison specifications and suitability for music making usages. Chapter 2 covers other hardware components needed to record and produce music like microphones, headphones, speakers, and the various USB and Firewire interfaces needed to input and transport analog, digital, and MIDI information, including descriptions of the various audio connectors. The best parts of these sections include the author's specific hardware recommendations.

The most extensive chapter is on making music with GarageBand, Apple's multichannel audio recording and sequencing software. There is a "Quick Start" section on using GarageBand's built- in loops to produce a quick song sample. Gemmell shows how to use the software to change instrumentation, extend songs by looping and moving segments, how to add and use drum kits and effects, and how to edit in the software's timeline and track editor. Later sections cover how to edit and manipulate MIDI data.

A short description of of what's new in GarageBand 2 follows, detailing the 8-track recording capability, importing of MIDI data, the built-in guitar-tuner, and new notation capability with MIDI data.

Clearly, the author favors more professional and higher capability software than GarageBand. He provides information on Logic, Cubase, and Digital Performer which allow much more manipulation of sound data, provide more capability with plug-ins, provide for better audio quality and mixings, and include sample sound libraries.

Chapter 6 briefly covers score-writing and promotion of final product. There is a brief segment on the big two notation programs, Finale and Sibelius. The book ends with details of how to produce final projects using Apple's iTunes program to tag, encode, and burn your songs.

There are plenty of photographs, illustrations, and screenshots of software settings to make the material easy to learn and digest.

For anyone that is looking to record music onto their computer, the Macintosh is the best option going today. For decades, all superusers that record music or work on digital imagery know that the Macintosh is the best computer out there to get the job done and done right. If you are interested in learning how to use your Macintosh to record and edit music, this is a great starter guide for doing just that! While short (just over 100 pages), this book is very dense and covers all the basics that any new music aficionado would need to get started. A nice book at a nice price!

***** RECOMMENDED