GarageBand is Awesome
I just finished an hour long composition session with GarageBand, and I have to say it is probably one of the best production programs I have ever used, at least if you want to compose with virtual instruments. I've been playing with Cakewalk, Cubase, and Reason (all on Windows, but that's beside the point) for a while now, but none of these applications really lend themselves to easy input and manipulation of MIDI data/score data (rather surprising, since the cheapest one is still $400). GarageBand makes dealing with MIDI data easy though...after a few minutes of getting my feet wet with the controls and user interface, I actually found I didn't have to grapple with the program to deal with the music. It's such a refreshing feeling, and I'm so amazed that a cheapo $99 application can do a better job of providing a UI for music input than some of these $500 applications.
I'd really like to play with Logic, which is the "real" application that GarageBand is based on. GarageBand has some pretty lame limitations that I guess make sense for an entry level application. For example, there can be only one tempo and time signature for the entire song, and you must chose from a (relatively small) list of predefined time signatures. Not sure why they placed these restrictions on the user, though maybe they were going for a simpler UI.
Still, even with its limitations I really like GarageBand, and I think it's really cool of Apple to provide an entry level music composition/production application like GarageBand. I will have to write move as I discover more of GarageBand's features...and maybe even post some compositions eventually.
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