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]

Bowsk: there's no difference between recording on a laptop or a tower, per se. The crucial factors are the same for any computer: hard disk size and speed, processor speed and type, sound card, graphics card, screen size - these are all the things that matter.

Towers are usually better-equipped and offer a higher level of tech spec than laptops and are also more flexible in terms of adding new components. But if you were using the same setup on a tower or a laptop, you'd get the same result.

If you could afford a new 17" 1GHz G4 Powerbook and add on a FireWire audio/midi interface and FireWire hard drive ( ) that would be the ultimate portable studio.