I'm an improvisationally oriented musician....I play synths (karma, S90, and Planet Earth), guitars (Parker fly Deluxe and Taylor Acoustic). I have a new Laptop G4 Mac 1GHZ.....I'm new to recording (been using Korg PXR4 as scratchpad), but an experienced musician. I've been dabbling with the Live demo and find it fascinating.

I'm lookling for a program that will enable me to capture my improvisational loops (on guitar or synth, or even vocal drones)...and then allow me to sing, play and record over them. It seems that LIVE is perfect for that. I'd also like a program that can let me do my singer-songwriter thing and just record some acoustic guitar and vocals. Then I'd like to burn all that to CD's, just for fun, no demoing or professional aspirations in mind.

My other option is to get going with Logic, Protools, or DP....from what I''ve read Logic is the best deal and most optimized for OSX, but I'm somewhat daunted by its complexity, fearing that I'll spend more time with the software than with the music....I have a busy professional life (not as a musician), and when I play in the evenings I want to focus on my musicianship. LIVE seems ideal in that you can just get going with it, plus you can learn about recording at the same time. I'm slightly concerned, too that without Midi recording LIVE will quickly eat up a ton of discspace.

From your experience, and what I've described will LIVE suit my needs as a DAW, or am I better off getting started with something like LOGIC......any help is greatly appreciated.....

Also...I'm considering the new MAUDIO Firewire interface...any thoughts on Interfaces are much appreciated too. I'm grateful for any help and advice, especially from folks who have been up a similar decision-making tree.

With DP4 is included a neat little gizmo called, Polar.

It's a bit like loop-recording with a classic drum-machine but it records live audio
into your computers ram-memory.

You can choose to overdub, over-write or write new
takes for every new loop-cycle of a pre-defined length.

Actually you loop & layer loops of differing lengts into & on top of each other,
creating extremely complex poly-rytmic grooves.

When you're satified you can save it as Polar-session and go back later for editing.
You can also import/export it into DP4 for further recording editing mixing - whatever.

Polar sounds like it was made for you, by your own resume.
It's a great creative tool. Next best thing to be jamming with good musicians

Cheers: Dixiechicken

you're absolutely right. nothing on Gods green earth can touch
Abletons Live. Not Logic, Not Radial, not anything. you need to continue to spend time with the demo, really get into it and see if the resources you can squeeze out of your laptop will be enough for you, if you find that it is then buy it and dive right in. The only problem facing you is finding out whether you can get enough performance out of your computer, after that you're home free.