In my O’Reilly Digital Media blog, I pondered what Microsoft’s rumored GarageBand tribute, code-named Monaco, would be like. For example, I doubt it will center around podcasting, given that word’s Apple origins. On the other hand, it would be cool if Monaco incorporated some of the algorithmic music technology from Microsoft’s sadly departed DirectMusic. Any more hopes or fears, Mac folks?
What could “Monaco” learn from GarageBand—and vice-versa?
If microsoft have anything to do with it it'll be a turkey.
I’m told that when the E-mu Emulator digital sampler came out, the ads said, “Play a Turkey!” Interestingly, though, GarageBand started as the Windows program called Sonic Foundry Acid. Apple hired away some of the key Sonic Foundry developers.
GarageBand tribute
What a lovely play on words from "tribute band"! I guess that means it will be close, but not the real thing!
Are many people seriously using Garageband? Or is it more of a "hey, my computer can make noise" rebirth/tracker situation?
I agree, the midi creation software Microsoft Music Maker was da bomb back in the day (1997) for creating royalty free muzak in about 5 seconds. If Monaco brings that back along with multitrack editing it'll r0x0r!!!
@David Battino, AFAIK the Sonic Foundry developers went lock stock and barrel to Sony. But it would be great if GarageBand morphed into an app like Sony (Sonic Foundry) Vegas.
That's a made-up image, right? Surely even Microsoft these days knows how goofy it looks to have two guys with identical guitars and both hands outstretched and a finger pointing in each, standing in front of a screen advertising software.
Bob: One of the slick things about GarageBand is that it’s upwardly compatible with Logic, so I’ve heard from pros who start projects in GB and then load the session file into Logic for high-level tweaking. And the bundled sounds are certainly good enough. Composer Stewart Copeland told Derrick Story and me, “I could use these on film scores.”
Rod: You’re right that most of the Sonic Foundry team moved to Sony, but product manager Xander Soren and programmer Chris Moulios went to Apple to do music apps.
Derek: Ha ha! Yep, that’s a joke image I made in Fireworks by pasting a distorted screenshot of GarageBand onto the Vista background and lowering the opacity. The guitars are simply the GarageBand icon with a touch of drop shadow. I used a freeware program called IconGrabber to grab them. Unfortunately, the underlying fingers-in-the air image is an actual photo from Microsoft’s site.
why didn't the morons at microsoft release a garageband like program with windows vista. If mac ever do becom more popular they have no one but them self to blame.