Help Dad Get Daughter Started!, A complicated (for me) Christmas gift Options

[chanzilla]

For Christmas, I want to give my teen daughter a "portable music studio." I'm not rich, but she has shown great promise in the studio, so I want to encourage her even more with the perfect gift.

Here is where I am. I am donating my Pismo 500 with Jaguar. I will upgrade to Panther if highly recommended. Um, that's as far as I got so far .

Here's what I'm aiming for. If she gets a tune forming in her head, I'd like for her to open up the Pismo, launch an app, and start fingering the notes together with an instrument of her choice. She can record the simple tune, and play it back for review, change the instrument on the melody if she wants to. She can create another track for drums, etc. Once she has her draft version, she can save the file or burn it to CD (there's a modular burner I picked up on eBay) to share. Is this possible? Can it be that simple, or is there a learning curve?

She does have a nice Yamaha keyboard I gave her last Christmas, which she enjoys and has shown enthusiastic talent for. It has a MIDI port, and I know I'm going to have to dish out for a USB-MIDI interface -- any recommendations? While she already has a music keyboard, I want her to be able to create on the road with just the laptop, if possible.

Also, if she wants to add vocals or a non-digital instrument (my acoustic guitar, for example), is it hard to do? Can she just plug into the mic jack?

What is a good program for recording music tracks? For a beginner with room to grow? Does it take more than one program to do what I described above? Where can I go to learn more about how all this stuff works?

By the way, if you haven't figured it out, I know NOTHING about music production. I am a mac addict, but that's about it. I need to learn just enough to help her get started. I appreciate any help, advice, suggestions, links, references, whatever you can provide to a fish out of water.

[chanzilla]

Good thoughts, RickenBacker. Cost is an issue, isn't it always?

To put it all in perspective, my daugher is 13, exploring her talents and interests. Actually, she is freakin' awsome with cgi, mastering Poser and currently trudging through Cararra on a 233MHz iMac. Last Christmas, I spent $250 on a full-size Yamaha keyboard with a bazillion instruments and features. I can't remember the model name, but it was a display model with a missing manual, a few scratches, etc, but fully-functional. I was going to get her a cheaper basic Casio keyboard ($75 - $100 was the original budget), but I knew I would have to upgrade sooner than later with her. She took to it well, beginning her lessons only a week after. Within a month, she began making her own tunes, and recording them onto cassette tape. I accidentally found the tapes while reorganizing her "workspace." the next time she came to visit (I live in California, she's in NC with her mother), my roommate, who produces hip-hip, took her to the studio a few times. She went home with a song that she composed and arranged with only guidance from the engineer. We even photoshopped a cover and insert to give it a professional look. In NC, she has no such friends, resources or connections. And that's when I thought about a portable studio for her. She currently has a strawberry Rev B iMac, but I think it may be too slow. Until I get her this Pismo all set-up, I'm considering sending some of the freebie midi software to use, and a USB MIDI interface, just to get her started. Once she's comfortable with that, then comes the Pismo with some professional software.

What do you think guys - good idea or bad idea?