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I’m a dad with kids in middle school. GarageBand seems to be the big reason my kids have been asking me to buy an Apple computer. GarageBand for Windows is my hope to avoid shelling out for another computer.
Maybe some disclaimers here are appropriate: GarageBand is owned by Apple and Windows are on houses and buildings everywhere.
GarageBand for Windows 
Thanks for the information. I’m in a very similar situation, kids in middle school, using a PC, and they love Dad’s Mac with GB. I’d love to get them a Mac, but not just now. Acid seems a good substitute, though I wish it were less complex. Mixcraft is very easy to use, but without Midi support, it’s just a toy.
Did you look into the other competitors, such as Ableton, or Cakewalk, etc? Ableton seems to come with some Midi keyboards, so that’s yet another option.
Nice little blog, found it useful. Anyways, hoping to find the music of Garageband, and edit them in MixCraft.
Hi there
I found your blog/site as I have a similar quest to find a Garageband alternative for Windows. And I have, so I thuoght I’d share it with you 🙂
Its called TrakAx, and is great! Have a look here: http://www.trakax.com/software
Its totally free! I love it.
Hope you enjoy it.. and thanks for the starter!
Mixcraft 4 supports MIDI, virtual instruments, external MIDI devices.. I think its exactly what you were looking for. Definitely more powerful than Garage Band, and the virtual instrument stuff is really easy to use.
I’ve been a Mac fan (but not user) for quite some time now, and I’m going crazy over all of the cool stuff Apple throws in the box. GarageBand is just one more reason for me to love buying a Mac, because it would be so much of a help with my podcast.
As for Windows software, right now I’m using a combination of Audacity and Kristal Audio Engine, a free but pretty basic DAW. It features VST effect support and 16 tracks of audio, but it can’t import MP3 files (though it does take WAV files).
FLstudio should do anything garageband can do and more
mainly vst plugins which garageband cannot do..
There are free to use samples and loops included in the FLstudio 7 – 8 demo’s
and i know it does midi!
Did you check Sonar Home Studio by Cakewalk?
Here is the link:
http://www.cakewalk.com/Products/HomeStudio/overview.asp
It ‘looks’ pretty much like garageband and I haven’t tried it yet as I don’t have much time to run around the shops and don’t need it yet, however when i do get the time if anyone tries it i’d love to know how it compares to Acoustica and Sony acid music.
If i’m correct, cakewalk DOES support midi (it’s their ‘field of expertise’ I believe)
Please check out http://www.jamstudio.com
Its an online music factory – with 100,000 music loops ready to use and build songs. This is the leading “create music online” web site with over 60,000 registered users. I worked with a team of musicians to record all the sounds and write the software – its free for my kids and yours! Let me know what you think.
Like Garage Band, its goal is to help you make music quickly. You may agree that it offers even greater simplicity and capability than Garage Band (chords like C G D C make it possible for a complete virtual band to play together!). You can make the song and play it for free at the site. For only $10 you can buy royalty free rights to all the sounds you use in your songs and have a digitally mixed mp3 of your songs emailed to you ($10 for all the songs you can make in a month!) and add vocals and other tracks offline. I would be interested in hearing your opinion about it. And thanks in advance for helping get the word out about JamStudio.com – a lot of effort went into building it – a lot of effort goes into helping people find it! -Dave
Hi
I’m on Mac and GarageBand 3 and a friend just bought FruityLoops Studio. I’ve tried it and the only thing I miss is a notation view (not critical if you’re not into reading sheet music). Most of its included plugins are demos but you can download an incredible variety of free plugins for Windows (no such luck with the Mac). I think FL Studio might just be what you’ve been loking for. I’ll stay with GarageBand because . . . it’s on my Mac and I want so see the notes.
A solution not discussed is this one:
Either buy a cheap miniPC $400 ebay (comes w/ GB)
or
buy a mac clone from pystar before 11/1/09.
That is when they might be required to shutdown there business. As of right now they are legally in business because of Apple’s potential violation of anti-trust laws:
“In an order signed on Friday, US District Court Judge William Alsup gave Psystar the go-ahead to amend its lawsuit against Apple. According to Alsup, Psystar may change that countersuit, which originally accused Apple of breaking antitrust laws , to instead ague that Apple has stretched copyright laws by tying the Mac operating system to its hardware.”
If a clear violation was on record in court Judge would have shut them down. They did not. Therefore, and I pray….that the court sides with Pystar. This would allow you to run GarageBand on a PC for $80 (ebay price of course if you find a deal).
Retail would be: $50 ilife $130 OSX = $180
That assumes you have compatible hardware for oxs86.
Recording and mixing is great with Audacity nothing even comes close including GarageBand. As for midi recording and good synthesizers can’t find anything remotely as easy to use as garageband. I might try some listed.
Thanks for a wonderful and very useful blog. I gave the link to my students to refer to when making their final project extra credit podcasts. Thanks again!
Hi, I’m Colm from the trakAx Team.
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New features in trakAxPC PRO include direct upload to YouTube, text and credits, automatic crossfading, BlueCat Audio Effects, segment snapping and grouping tracks, as well as exporting and converting media files to popular file formats such as MP3, MPEG-4, M4A, AAC, H264, FLAC, OGG, WMV, WMA, WAV and more.
If you would to try trakAxPC Pro for yourself, please click on the link to Download:
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Hope you guys enjoy the new version.
Hello,
Have you updated any results with your search for a Garage Band
for Windows. Would be very interested in your results.
It sounded like you were deciding on Mixcraft.
Any ideas why Audacity is not preferred?
Thank you.