Music Production for Communications Class

When I was in high school my ancient-and-mostly-clueless video teacher somehow had the foresight to get something called ACID Music for the computer, so we could make original songs for the news. It was ages before Apple's Garageband came about. I liked it so much, I went home and told Mom to buy it for me for Christmas. I did, however, use the phrase, "Have you used ACID?" around the wrong people...

ACID Music is still around for those of us stuck with PC's. (The one plus to using PC's is Home Designer, which is still a Windows-only program.) But at the moment it's just a little too expensive to put on 35 computers. So I went looking, and stumbled upon MusicLab, by LoopLabs. (The former link brings you straight to the regular editor, where I send my students. The latter takes you to their home page, and you'll quickly see why I bypass it when dealing with my demographic.) The biggest thing that I love about their site is that you can start making music without ever giving away an email address. Granted, you'll have to sign up if you want to save what you make, but it means I can use it as a filler, or as an optional project.

The biggest downside, on the other hand, is that you can't download your songs without paying some fee or selling your soul, or something like that, which is why I still want to buy ACID eventually. (The music software, people.) Oh well.