Advise me on loops and looping - do it for the kids!

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Jitters
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Advise me on loops and looping - do it for the kids!

Post by Jitters » Mon Dec 09, 2013 4:24 am

I am fortunate enough to be tasked with putting together a music room/program for the residents of a residential treatment facility that I work at, ages 8 to 18. One thing I want to provide them with is software for them to create music based on collections of prerecorded loops.

I believe that ease of use and a friendly interface is more important than a deep feature set. We will also have Garage Band for the kids who want to delve deeper into the black arts. :wink: Mainly, I just want to make it super easy and fun for the kids to get in and get creative.

We will be using mac minis with the latest OS to run the software. I don't have access to all the specs yet but we can assume that they will have sufficient RAM and storage.

I would appreciate recommendations regarding the software, as well as insights as to what company is putting the bestest, widest ranging collections of loops. It's important that the kids have access to a large collection of loops in many different styles to keep them from getting bored, from all having to share a small limited pool of sounds, and to be able to appeal to everyone?s various musical tastes.

Ideally, I would like to find a single company so that we can buy all their collections off of a single website in one fell swoop as it will make things much, much easier and quicker. I will have to put my requests in to someone who will have to pass it on to someone else who will need approval from someone else, if you see what I mean.

The kids are stoked - almost as much as I am - and I really want to get moving on this! Any recommendations, advice, or insight will be greatly appreciated.

chris harris
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Post by chris harris » Mon Dec 09, 2013 6:32 am

I would use GarageBand for all of it. It can be super simple, or relatively deep, depending on how you use it. And, there are tons of loops available. Then, maybe consider Logic for the advanced kids who are really looking to dig deeper.

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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Mon Dec 09, 2013 9:00 am

+1. i don't think you're gonna find anything that's simpler and easier to deal with than garageband. i haven't actually spent much time with it, but when i did i was very impressed with how intuitive and straightforward it was.

i'd probably go with reaper over logic for the really advanced kids.

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Jitters
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Post by Jitters » Mon Dec 09, 2013 11:15 pm

Well Garage band certainly makes things simpler, and if we want to incorporate some singers, rappers and/or musicians into the tracks we are already there. I like it!

I've had a few suggestions for Ableton and a controller, at least for some of our more advanced kids. This might help facilitate the upcoming epic rap battles for our freestylers, and I?m all for that. What do you think of that idea? Would Garage Band work just as well for this? Or is Ableton the standard for this kind of thing to the point where it is worth having the extra software?

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Post by GlowSounds » Tue Dec 10, 2013 9:21 am

If you're going for ease of use, I'd stick with Garageband. There's kind of a steep learning curve on Ableton (at least in my opinion). Especially for those that aren't already familiar with DAWs, soft synths, etc.

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Post by RoyMatthews » Tue Dec 10, 2013 9:58 am

While I'd recommend sticking with Garageband if you want to look at something else I'd consider Reason. I haven't worked with it for a while but it was pretty easy and straightforward as well as having a layout and routing that mimics the real world.
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Jitters
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Post by Jitters » Tue Dec 10, 2013 11:54 pm

I hear you guys. I'm going to keep it simple for now to get everyone involved, and worry about keeping our advancing kids challenged when we get to that point.

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Post by Jitters » Wed Dec 11, 2013 12:06 am

Reason seems like it might be a great idea for the next phase. The graphic nature or the drum sequencer, the virtual patch bay aspect, all of that plus the fact that you can use it within Garage Band. I?ll defiantly keep looking into this.

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