These types of pianos can also be used with a MIDI-to-USB adapter. Many digital pianos made over the past 30 years have MIDI ports in lieu of USB ports for connecting. Note that you may need a USB-C to USB-A adapter to do this on a newer Mac. Once you’ve plugged in, your Mac should recognize the piano right away, and you’re good to start performing. Today, most MIDI keyboards include a USB port for connecting to a computer. Pianists can get started quickly by connecting any MIDI-compatible digital piano or keyboard. Almost every Mac, both new and old, can comfortably run multiple instruments in GarageBand. To get started, install GarageBand, which is freely available in the Mac App Store. Within GarageBand you’ll find many tools that make practicing your instrument a fun and rewarding experience, such as unique drum pattern loops. Connecting a digital piano or electric guitar is a straightforward process. For the 3-chord strummerįor anyone who is completely new to playing and recording music on a Mac, GarageBand is an excellent starting point. We will be using GarageBand, Logic Pro, Mainstage, Ableton Live, and Pro Tools as examples while discussing hardware. This article isn’t going to try to weigh which Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) is best.

Note: The music production industry is unique in that there are over a dozen excellent software packages available. What are the best Macs for musicians? Read on, and we’ll discuss some common starting points from selecting a system to basic gear, use-cases, and software. (They’re basically the same ones as in the M1 and even in the A14 processor that powers the iPhone 12.) If you buy the lower-end 14-inch MacBook Pro it will lag behind the rest of the line in terms of CPU speed but still be faster than the M1.Music production and Macs go hand in hand. Both chips top out at eight high-performance processor cores, and those cores are more or less identical. But the truth is, the difference between these two chips is much more nuanced.

If all you heard were the names, you’d assume that the M1 Max would outperform the M1 Pro across the board. It’s doing its job-and for people not performing pro workflows, it’s going to do it well. Throw in limited ports and a hard cap on RAM at 16GB, and obviously, the new chips begin to pull away. As you might expect, GPU-intensive tasks will be two or three times faster on a new MacBook Pro. Similarly, the M1 only has seven GPU cores (in low-end configurations of the MacBook Air and iMac) or eight, while the GPU cores on the M1 Pro and Max range from 14 (again, in the low-end configuration of the 14-inch model) to 32. As you might expect, the M1 can’t hang with the new chips when it comes to intense, threaded workflows. The M1 only has four high-performance cores, while the M1 Pro has six (in the $1,999 14-inch model) or eight, and the M1 Max has eight. The M1 finds its roots in the A12X and A12Z in the iPad Pro.

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