Making Music With A New Ibook, Looking for setup help Options

[musicteacher]

I am a public school music teacher who is thinking about getting a new iBook to use as a portable music making tool. Here's what I would like to do with it:

1. Sequence backing tracks in various musical styles for my students to play along with in class. I'd want to burn these backing tracks onto cd and bring them into the classroom so my kids can jam to a calypso-style "This Land Is Your Land" or whatever. What would be good software to do this with an iBook?

2. Record my own music and my students music either live or track by track - what is the best way to get sound into an iBook?

3. Begin to explore the world of software synths. Which ones are easy to use and can interact well with the software/hardware used for the above two items?

I hope that's clear enough. I'd appreciate any suggestions. If there's anyone answering who lives in the NYC area and can help me in person with this I'd be really grateful. Thank you for supporting public education.

[rickenbacker]

Noooo! Don't do it! Don't go back to OS 9! Go straight to OS 10.2!

Only joking. Well, kind of.

If you buy an iBook quick smart, it should still come pre-loaded with OS 9 and will boot into 9. In 2003, all new Macs will only boot into OS 10.2, though OS 9 will still be on there to allow you to run Classic apps. In other words, you stay in the OS X environment and OS 9 loads within it. But you won't be able to boot into OS 9. Silly, isn't it?

However, not all OS 9 apps will run in the Classic Environment. All my Macromedia web apps do, plus Photoshop etc, but a lot of OS 9 apps won't - especially most music apps. You're better off rebooting into OS 9 proper if you want to work in that environment.

Computer music: no-one said it would be easy...