Re: GS Musicians, Please Help!

[damin@hoare.cba.csuohio.edu (Greg Boehnlein)]

In article <93004.180804JC8YOPER@MIAMIU.BITNET> <JC8YOPER@MIAMIU.BITNET> writes:
>Hello!
>  So it's been a while since i've been on the IIgs scene at all and I
>am wondering what the quality of music production software/hardware is
>out there.
>1. What's the starting cost to get up and running (MIDI card, keyboard,etc)?
>2. What's the best software to use? (Soundsmith looks cool...)
>3. Any other information/ sample/ advice would be great!!!

I bought my MIDI Interface (hooks up to the printer port) for about 60$
locally. You can get one for a Mac as it is the same thing. 

Keyboards are more expensive. Much more expensive. You can get ahold of
the cheaper Casios if you just want to input music into SoundSmith, but
then again, that's not REAL music. (No flames, but the GS can't compare
to my 32 bit Akai Sampler with 12 megs of ram!) Well, it's not broadcast
quality in any case. 

Software. Master Tracks Pro V 1.04 is the best thing available for doing
multitrack MIDI sequencing. It's not being supported any more and is
slightly expensive, but it is a solid, usable program. Nothing like
Cakewalk on the mac but it does what it does very well. 

It takes a little bit to get used to it but the software is very
functional. 

I have used it to lay down the backbones for several songs in the
studio. It's saved me upwards of 5,000$ in studio time! Consider 65$ an
hour in the studio. And it takes roughly 3-5 minutes to run through the
song once, drop down SMPTE code and record the basic instruments in one
take.