A quick way into all kinds of music
There are plenty of affordable Windows programs for digital music enthusiasts – including Steinberg’s Cubase Elements, Cakewalk Music Creator and Ableton Live Intro – but nothing quite like Apple’s GarageBand for those of us who just want to dabble without a lot of complications. Music Maker includes some of the kinds of features you’d find across all of these, at a relatively basic level.
You can arrange songs just by dragging some of Music Maker’s thousands of loops – short snippets of music in styles such as rock, pop and dance – on to the multi-track timeline, or connect a USB keyboard and play the included software instruments to create songs from scratch. The program can also record live instruments and vocals (preferably using an external microphone), and it supports standard loop and effects formats, so it’s easy to add more sounds.
New features in the 2016 edition include the ability to control software instruments from an iOS or Android device, which is fun, and a virtual accordion, which is lovely if you like the sound of accordions. There’s a powerful ‘cinematic synth’, a fancy graphic equaliser, an extra drum machine, 2,000 new loops, and an on-screen keyboard that plays only correct notes. Now that really is magic.
Music Maker 2016 Live (£70) adds on-screen pads for hip-hop and electronic dance music performance as well as extra sounds and an unlimited number of tracks. The Live Performer edition (£140) includes a two-octave hardware keyboard with drum pads, while Control (£120) comes with a plain four-octave keyboard.
VERDICT
You get plenty for your money, and the neat user interface makes it all reasonably easy to get to grips with.