If you’re going to record sound straight onto your computer using either Mixcraft or GarageBand, an audio interface is highly recommended. You will never get decent results by using the internal microphone on your computer and nothing else. Nor will you get great results by connecting a low-cost consumer-style microphone straight into the 1/8-inch connector on the side or back of your computer.

All professional recordings of any quality utilize an audio interface, which is a small box (connected to your computer via USB, typically) that converts sound waves into a digital signal. You connect a microphone or a guitar into the audio interface. This becomes your whole playback and recording system for your computer. Entry-level audio interfaces start at just under $100 each and include devices such as the MAudio Fast Track II and the Alesis iO2. There are quite a few to choose from—consult www.soundtree.com for details.

Together with an audio interface, you’ll want to have some microphones on hand to use. There’s a wide range of choices of microphones and wide price disparity and quality, but most people are fine starting with a low-cost dynamic microphone for around $60 per microphone. Shure, AKG, and Audio-Technica, for example, all have entrylevel dynamic microphones. For more advice, consult www.soundtree.com. These kinds of microphones come with a cable called an XLR cable (with three pins on the end of it). Your audio interface will have that port on it.

Some people prefer to use a USB microphone as an alternative to an audio interface. This is a microphone with a USB connection on the end of it, and it performs the same task as an audio interface; so you can avoid buying an audio interface and a microphone, and instead just get a USB microphone. The downside to this approach is that you cannot connect an electric or acoustic electric guitar, because there is no 1/4-inch input port on a USB microphone. You can only use it for recording voice or capturing the signal of an acoustic instrument.

Both Mixcraft and GarageBand allow you to enter notes by clicking them onto the screen or by means of a virtual onscreen keyboard that appears for musical typing. You may, however, wish to use a “real” physical keyboard with the software. There are several types of keyboards available. All you really need for these software programs is a silent keyboard (sometimes known as a controller or a mother keyboard). This is a keyboard without its own sounds—just a set of keys. It will most likely connect to your computer via USB (like the audio interface). Keyboards like these come in a variety of sizes and prices. They start at $49 for a Korg nanoKEY and go up to $99 or so for an M-Audio or Alesis MIDI keyboard—and then all the way to more sophisticated controllers with extra knobs and controls built into them. Once again, consult www.soundtree.com for details.

Some teachers will already have a keyboard in their classroom—perhaps even one with sounds—but they may never have tried to connect it to their computer. If this applies to you, take a look on the back of the keyboard. Does it have a USB port? If so, it can connect to your computer via USB. If it has an older-style MIDI port on it, you will need a USB-to-MIDI cable to connect it. These cables typically cost $39 or so.

If you are connecting a keyboard with its own sounds, you can probably turn the volume setting down on the keyboard itself. The software will generate the sounds you hear once you start playing music.

Both software titles are fantastic for recording and playing back real guitar. You’ll most likely need a guitar with an audio output (that is, the means to connect a 1/4-inch TS or instrument cable into the guitar and then into an audio interface). You won’t get decent results without an audio interface. You can use either a full-on solid-body electric guitar or a semi-acoustic guitar. Both software programs give you virtual amplifier combinations that you dial up to get a distorted or effected sound (see Chapters 8 and 9 for more details), so you don’t actually need a guitar amplifier—just the guitar. If all you have is an acoustic guitar with nowhere on it to connect a cable, then you can mike up the guitar using a microphone, the same as you would do if you were recording vocals. You’ll need a decent microphone stand in this scenario.

You’ll definitely need to find a way to listen to student work, and it will be pretty much essential for students to work without their neighbors hearing them, or else noisy chaos will envelop your lab! For that reason, the very least you need is a set of headphones for each student, so they can plug these into their computers (or the output ports of their audio interfaces—recommended) and work without distracting anyone else. Decent headphones start at around $29 per pair. You can also get headphone splitters to allow two students to connect to the same port on one computer.

There’s absolutely no need to have a set of speakers at each computer, and they can in fact cause feedback trouble when you are recording. You will, however, want at least one decent set of speakers at the teacher station, which you can use for playing back student work.

If you get a Lab Control System such as the Korg GEC (Group Education Controller), you get the added benefits of being able to listen in at any student station and being able to talk one on one with students without leaving your desk. This allows each computer to be connected to your teacher station using an audio network. You can team up students sitting at different stations all over your room, and they can converse without having to leave their stations. In this scenario, everyone is wearing headsets (like airline pilots or call-center employees) that have a microphone and headphones combined. You can also easily play a student’s work by routing the output of the student’s computer straight through to your teacher speakers whenever you like. And you can easily play music or talk to all of the students at once without having to take off your headset, thus saving your precious vocal cords from wear and tear!

This is a useful peripheral item to have if you’re planning to record podcasts, vocals, or voiceovers. These start at around $13 each and are a much better alternative to holding a microphone in your hand, as this causes unwanted noise and may cause the signal level to go up and down if you don’t hold the microphone at a solid distance from the sound source. If you’re using a USB microphone, these often come with their own desktop microphone stands. You may also use a regular floor-based microphone stand, but they are quite bulky when you are in a computer lab with lots of students.

One final issue to consider, especially when you connect a keyboard or a guitar to your computer, is the issue of latency (literally, lateness), which is a delay between playing something into your computer and hearing your signal coming back from the computer. This can be a common problem, and it occurs rather more on Windows PCs than on Macs. If you experience latency when using a MIDI keyboard or guitar, there are ways to mitigate this. The best way to lower your latency is by ensuring you have enough RAM on your computer. Having an audio interface connected will often lower your latency as well.

With Mixcraft, you may wish to download an ASIO driver for your computer from www.asio4all.com. This will actually improve the performance of your computer’s soundcard—and the ASIO driver is free. There are other technical ways you can reduce latency on Windows or Mac, too. As ever, talk to experts such as SoundTree for some advice.

If you buy an audio interface or a MIDI keyboard, you may need to load a driver. (This assists your computer in detecting the device when you plug it in.) Some devices don’t need a driver (the technical phrase for these devices is that they are class-compliant), and drivers are sometimes more needed for Windows PCs than for Macs. As ever, if your computer is not detecting the presence of your keyboard or audio interface, call someone for assistance!

The first place to look for help is usually your computer’s internal settings. Most issues with music software relate to your computer failing to “see” or detect the devices you are connecting (typically, the MIDI keyboard or audio interface).

In Windows, go to Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices and ensure that you have the correct settings for your input and playback device. On a Mac, you can do this by clicking on the Apple icon at the very top left of your screen and then choosing System Preferences > Sound.

Both Mixcraft and GarageBand also have settings that you should check when you first run the software. We looked at these in Chapters 2 and 3.