Thursday, January 15, 2009

Mixcraft - Music Making for the Mac Challenged




So you don't have access to a Mac? Did you actually listen when your tech advisor told you not to buy one? So now you are stuck without GarageBand. In my search for a PC replacement I come accross Mixcraft 4. It is looking promising. I haven't spent too much time on it yet but it looks like a powerful music creation tool. It has lots of clips that you drag and drop to create your own song. It supports multiple tracks and it also records instruments and voice. There is lots of support for Midi instruments as well.

I gave it to one of my students to try out. I wanted her to compare it to GarageBand. She liked it and put togther a neat little clip (and if I can figure out how to upload it I have her permission to share it). When I asked her she said that she preferred it to Garage Band. I think that the included clips are a little longer and have better variety (not completely sure though.)

I spent a couple of hours trying to hook the Rock Band instruments up to it (like I did with the Mac and Garage Band). No luck. Now that doesn't mean it can't be done - it just means that I have not figured out how. I am still new to the world of digital music creation.

It isn't free, but the $65 price tag won't break the bank either. Go on over and download the free trial. Let me know what you think. If you have any other music editors/creation tools I would love to hear about them.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have tried almost every music program on both Mac and PC and I keep going back to Mixcraft for songwriting. It does resemble garageband however the editing in Mixcraft is more straightforward.

I wish there was a Mixcraft for Mac. The problem with Garage Band is that it doesn't allow you to resize a track vertically. I'm not sure why but it's frustrating!

Real Gary Ball said...

Huh........now there is something that you don't hear every day. Thanks for the comment.

Terrel Hill said...

so what do you mean resize a track vertically?

Real Gary Ball said...

Don't ask me. I don't actually have any music editing skills. Haven't you seen my previous post? http://insidegaryb.blogspot.com/2009/01/rock-on-garage-band-style.html

Anonymous said...

I have used both Mixcraft and Garageband. Mixcraft is far more intuitive and easy to use. I actually find Garageband difficult to use.

Mixcraft - please have a chat with Steve Jobs, tell him to ditch Garageband and pay you to migrate yours to Mac? PLEASE !

G