PaulinMaryland
Dec 9, 2007, 10:14 AM
I am a lyricist and tunesmith. Together with an arranger/orchestrator and an orchestrator, I'm developing a musical play that will be performed at a local high school in December 2008.
The arranger/orchestrator uses a Mac PowerPC running OS 10.4; the orchestrator uses a MacBook Pro running 10.5 or Leopard. To create their orchestrations, each uses professional notation software (not sequencing software). One uses Finale, the other Sibelius.
I use Windows XP Professional.
I want to create quick-and-dirty mixes, in three stages:
the piano arrangement plus multitrack vocals (all recorded using my voice), to let the orchestrators hear all singing roles in harmony.
orchestrations plus my multitrack vocals, to let prospective singers hear the completed songs with all harmony.
orchestrations plus the multitrack vocals recorded by trained singers, to give the full effect for the school singers and prospective investors.
Accordingly, I am in the market for cross-platform mixing software that will let the three of us collaborate to complete the mixes. I don't need MIDI or anything fancy; I've completed my first mix using NCH's $25 MixPad MultiTrack Mixer (http://www.nch.com.au/mixpad/index.html). But that's a Windows-only application.
None of us has any experience doing digital mixing.
I'm prepared to upgrade my hardware: My desktop is a 1GB 2GHz Pentium with a Creative Audigy I soundcard. My laptop is a 1GB, 2GHz thinkPad with an Echo PCMCIA soundcard.
What do you recommend that would cost us less than $250 apiece? CuBase SE3? UltraMixer 2.1.4 (http://www.ultramixer.com/)? Some other commercial product? Freeware, like Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)?
PS: The arranger/orchestrator is the music director at a high school, so he would qualify for academic pricing.
The arranger/orchestrator uses a Mac PowerPC running OS 10.4; the orchestrator uses a MacBook Pro running 10.5 or Leopard. To create their orchestrations, each uses professional notation software (not sequencing software). One uses Finale, the other Sibelius.
I use Windows XP Professional.
I want to create quick-and-dirty mixes, in three stages:
the piano arrangement plus multitrack vocals (all recorded using my voice), to let the orchestrators hear all singing roles in harmony.
orchestrations plus my multitrack vocals, to let prospective singers hear the completed songs with all harmony.
orchestrations plus the multitrack vocals recorded by trained singers, to give the full effect for the school singers and prospective investors.
Accordingly, I am in the market for cross-platform mixing software that will let the three of us collaborate to complete the mixes. I don't need MIDI or anything fancy; I've completed my first mix using NCH's $25 MixPad MultiTrack Mixer (http://www.nch.com.au/mixpad/index.html). But that's a Windows-only application.
None of us has any experience doing digital mixing.
I'm prepared to upgrade my hardware: My desktop is a 1GB 2GHz Pentium with a Creative Audigy I soundcard. My laptop is a 1GB, 2GHz thinkPad with an Echo PCMCIA soundcard.
What do you recommend that would cost us less than $250 apiece? CuBase SE3? UltraMixer 2.1.4 (http://www.ultramixer.com/)? Some other commercial product? Freeware, like Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)?
PS: The arranger/orchestrator is the music director at a high school, so he would qualify for academic pricing.
