Control Surfaces for GarageBand

[Boyd01]

Have been reading up on this, and the M-Audio iControl has been mentioned as the only control surface with native GarageBand compatibility, but it's no longer available.

However Korg offers a GarageBand plug-in for use with its nanoKontrol2: http://www.korg.com/uploads/Support/nanoKONTROL2_PlugIn_GarageBandLogic_E1_634479713702770000.pdf
But it seems that at least one person had issues with this and GarageBand 11: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2630372?start=0&tstart=0

So is anyone here using a control surface with GarageBand 11?

 

[Boyd01]

So, for $60 I decided to take a chance on the Korg NanoKONTROL2 and just received it from Amazon. Downloaded/installed the KORG MIDI driver, then the GarageBand plug-in. Everything seems to work as it should with no messing around.

I now have full transport control and a Volume slider, Pan pot, Solo, Mute and Record buttons for 8 tracks. Would have been nice if I control things like effects too, but I guess that's asking a lot for $60. There's an editor program that lets you reassign the controls, but I'm not clear on whether this works for GarageBand. The readme for the plug-in says not to run the editor while GarageBand is running.

The pan knobs feel a little wobbly, but not too bad. All things considered, it looks and feels like a decent piece of hardware considering the low cost. It's going to be a big improvement over using the mouse to turn the dials and hunting for the hotkeys to control the transport, so I'm happy. 🙂