Newbie finally making the plunge. Starting out small (relatively speaking)

[ChronicHeadache]

I’ve had a fascination with DAWs, electronic music, digital audio and sound design for years, yet always feel super intimidated when trying to dive in.
I’m ready to make the plunge I think. I’m mentally and financially prepared for the commitment. Though I plan on starting small and moving up. Right now I’d like to pick up a Mac and GarageBand. Get my feet wet, yah know?

I’ve always wanted to do my own ambient/electronica thing. Just a hobby. A productive hobby lol. Maybe share with friends.

I’ve played guitar for years so would like to plug my guitar in to record myself. So I’d need a audio interface, correct? Looking for a MIDI keyboard too.

I’m browsing sites learning the terminology, getting an idea of what l I need to get start d. I have a decent pair of senheiser headphones, so I may not get any speakers at this time.

What advice, resources, tips, recommended equipment, words of motivation do you guys have for me?

Any rules of the forum I should know of to? Hope to be here a lot and want to learn a lot. Thanks in advance everyone!

 

[Steenamaroo]

Hi there,
Welcome (back?) to HR!

GarageBand isn't a bad choice for getting started, particularly if your focus is on virtual instruments over analog recording.
It is basic and limited compared to most suites, but it does come free with the OS and has a bunch of instruments included so...certainly enough to get the ball rolling.

You're correct, if you want to record guitar you're going to want an audio interface of some sort.
Something with a hi-z input, obviously, and headphone output will take the built in soundcard out of the loop, which is good.
Maybe figure out now if you're going to want microphone input(s) in future, so you can save on buying interfaces twice?
Some have midi, some don't. Doesn't really matter if your chosen keyboard is midi over USB.

You can get by with headphones to a point. Assessment of stereo image, and volume of central information, is skewed by cans, though, so I think most would recommend
at least checking on some sort of speakers once in a while.

Advice, resources, tips? Do what you're doing - Gather information in advance, preferably from experience.

Rules? Be decent; Don't advertise. That's pretty much it.

 

[ChronicHeadache]

Thanks.
Yeah GarageBand is limiting, I know. I’ve also been thinking of moving into Logic after getting a good handling of Garageband. Do different DAWs work better for different genres? I’ve read that Ableton is more appropriate for electronic music, logic having massive sound sample library. Are there trial downloads?