Building a Low Cost Recording Studio around an iMac G4

Hi, I'm Ben Barsh, Low End Mac's newest writer. I'm a lot like the other LEM writers in many ways. The main difference is that I'm 13 and live in the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA.

My first Mac was a nearly broken 333 MHz iMac G3 tray loader. My current (and second) Mac is an iMac G4/700.

What drew me to the Mac was iLife - specifically GarageBand.

I have a minor recording studio, so a Mac was necessary.

My main computer is a Winbook running Windows XP. My Mac isn't hooked up to the Internet (yet), and I travel to a beach house, so I needed a laptop. My next Mac will probably be an iBook or PowerBook of some sort.

Being 13, I've never had enough money to by a new Mac. I find my iMac G4 perfectly adequate for what I need a Mac for. It's been treating me well for the six months I've had it.

I need to use OS X in school every day, so I was already used to the interface. Ever since I started working with OS X, I've been becoming more and more interested in Unix.

Without a computer, I'd go crazy. I highly recommend that parents start their kids out with computers at a young age.

GarageBand

Being a bass player, I found GarageBand fascinating. After learning about GarageBand, I had to have it. I scrounged up a used iMac on my local craigslist for $50.

Unfortunately, that Mac couldn't run GarageBand.

But I had the Mac, so I decided to make the best of it. I bought two microphones and a cheap 4-channel mixer from Radio Shack. Shortly after that, I got a free Yamaha synth with a broken screen on craigslist. Then I got a MIDI USB adapter, and I was set.

But there was still a problem. I had no GarageBand and virtually no Mac. The iMac had been acting funny ever since I upgraded the RAM. I toyed around with that machine too much, and I think I busted the motherboard.

I wanted a machine with a G4 processor. But $30 couldn't buy one. I went on craigslist and found a guy selling an iMac G4. I ended up trading him my modded Xbox with tons of games and accessories plus $100 dollars for the iMac.

I couldn't wait to load up GarageBand. I finally got a copy and loaded it up. It recognized my keyboard instantly, and I made my first song within 15 minutes. My love for Macs really started there.

That's it for today, but keep checking Low End Mac for more Mac's with Music columns. (By the way, anybody want to sell me an original PowerBook G4/400 or a G3 iceBook for cheap?) 

UPDATE: LEM readers, I'd like to thank you for the positive response I got from this article. I am about to put my iMac on the Net. I would just like some reccomendations on browsers, AIM clients, FTP clients, and ways to make Hotmail work with Mail.app. I would also like to know if it's possible to print from a printer hooked up to a Windows machine on the network. I do it with my Windows laptop, and I wonder if you can do it with OS X. Email me with suggestions - thanks!

Recent Macs with Music articles

• The life and death of Aqua in Apple software and Mac OS X, 08.23. Aqua was a fresh new look that Apple previewed with iMovie 2 and iTunes, thoroughly embraced in early versions of OS X, began to tone down with "Jaguar", and is abandoning in "Leopard".
• Improve productivity with a second display, 03.20. There's nothing wrong with using just one computer screen, but adding a second can make you more efficient.
• Firefox a wonderful browsing experience on Mac or Windows, 08.24. Not only is Firefox a better browser than Internet Explorer, but it's also good enough to replace Safari as a Mac user's default browser.
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• More in the Macs with Music index.

Links for the Day

• Mac of the Day: Macintosh LC, Oct. 1990 - only 3" tall, the LC was the least expensive color Mac in 1990.
• List of the Day: The iPhone List Low End Mac's forum for discussing and supporting Apple's iPhone.
  
• October 15 in LEM history: 90: Mac IIsi, LC, and Classic - 97: Yale threatens to drop Mac support - 99: Decelerate your Mac - Time magazine on Jobs and Apple - 01: Is Microsoft the enemy? - 02: Confessions of a Mac to PC convert - The IT job market - 03: Microsoft's holding pattern - 04: October 1990: The first low-end Macs - Dual core 'Books - 07: When to pick Tux - SteelSeries 4D the best mousepad ever? - Irrational rantings of an Intel hater

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• More links in our archive.

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