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.

[ryosode]

NYC being a huge market for multimedia, I bet there are classes or individual teachers involving OS X and music making. You should search for those.

The fact that matters is that this audio stuff has a very steep learning curve. But once you are past certain point, everything will make sense to you. So try and take a couple of classes or find an expert in your area who can sit down with you and walk through this. If not, join a band that does computer based recording by themselves. That's how I learned my stuff.