GarageBand help!

[age]

Hi kids!
I've been a PC guy for 25 years but just picked up a an intell mac-min166 (one gig and a hundred gig) I got all turned on by Garageband from a friend of mine so I bought an M-Audio i-Control (which is really cool, by the way) and an Oxygen 8 keyboard. I have a Mackie 1402 VLZ mixer. Now I just bought a Focusrite Saffire with cuebase LE off Ebay and I'm pretty much lost here.

I want to use Garageband as much as possible but didn't have a fast firewire interface and I'm going to want to do some external signal processing. I'm not interested in using more than two inputs at a time (I pretty much work alone) Can I use all this stuff together or do I have to use Cuebase or what? Is there a place where an idiot chart can be found to show me how to connect all this stuff?

Your's truely,

Duh!

[travism]

click on your garageband prefs... before you do that though, go to system prefs then highlight the focusrite as your soundcard. you should be able to find every setting in your garageband prefs.

[loopy]

hey. never used cuebase though it's quite popular. i understand that it's a sequencer. whether you use that or garageband, i guess, that depends on what you want to do. they'll both record audio for you from your audio interface. i like the simplicity of garageband. you can get up and running quickly with minimal fuss but it has its limits in the quality of the recorded/exported audio and the tools available to it. for the amature musician, it can entertain for a long time. it's perfect for demos.

if cuebase LE is bundled with focusrite, i assume it has limitations to the number of tracks you can use just like ableton live bundled with m-audio gear. this is something you might want to consider as well. probably has better quality of output than garageband though. see which GUI among the two is more comfortable for you to use too.

if you're only recording one stereo input at a time, then a usb interface will be fine. if you want to multitrack, then a firewire interface might be better. but as a solo musician, i figure you'll be recording one track at a time mostly?

great place to start is apple's site. there's a good tutorial on connecting a guitar (and by analogy, other instruments and mics) to your mac. they have seminars too that you can sign up for and stream to your mac. useful info there.

in general though, i lay tracks one by one since i do all the recording myself. so that's a midi keyboard (oxygen 8 for you) plugged into one usb port and an audio interface plugged into another usb port/firewire port (focusrite saffire for you) (same goes for your other hardware as you need them. as travism already said, go to system preferences to select your audio interface under sound - input. then fire up garageband, go to preferences and select your audio interface in the input/output tab. you should be good to go to record external signals then.

[greta87]

hey. never used cuebase though it's quite popular. i understand that it's a sequencer. whether you use that or garageband, i guess, that depends on what you want to do. they'll both record audio for you from your audio interface. i like the simplicity of garageband. you can get up and running quickly with minimal fuss but it has its limits in the quality of the recorded/exported audio and the tools available to it. for the amature musician, it can entertain for a long time. it's perfect for demos.

if cuebase LE is bundled with focusrite, i assume it has limitations to the number of tracks you can use just like ableton live bundled with m-audio gear. this is something you might want to consider as well. probably has better quality of output than garageband though. see which GUI among the two is more comfortable for you to use too.

if you're only recording one stereo input at a time, then a usb interface will be fine. if you want to multitrack, then a firewire interface might be better. but as a solo musician, i figure you'll be recording one track at a time mostly?

great place to start is apple's site. there's a good tutorial on connecting a guitar (and by analogy, other instruments and mics) to your mac. they have seminars too that you can sign up for and stream to your mac. useful info there.

in general though, i lay tracks one by one since i do all the recording myself. so that's a midi keyboard (oxygen 8 for you) plugged into one usb port and an audio interface plugged into another usb port/firewire port (focusrite saffire for you) (same goes for your other hardware as you need them. as travism already said, go to system preferences to select your audio interface under sound - input. then fire up garageband, go to preferences and select your audio interface in the input/output tab. you should be good to go to record external signals then.

I do the exact same thing. this works fine. & I agree, GB is good for demos but not for quality recording stuff. you lose a lot on the mixdown to aiff. although GB does have nice presets in balancing the master tracks but you'd want to do it manually most of the time.