Before a few days i tried to install my Roland TD-20 Drum module at my mac. The TD-20 should take MIDI data, play, and the mac should recieve 8 tracks of wonderful audio files. This way I have everything seperated for a mix.
When I tried that, i figured out the very first time when GarageBand is not enough. GarageBand cannot use the MIDI out slot of anything – it’s simply not possible. After a while I realized that I have other problems with that sequencer, like: export MIDI from GarageBand.
Altough I like the GUI of GarageBand more, I had to switch again to Logic 7, which I bought before long time (and for expensive money, altough it was used!). It didn’t want that software cause it was ugly, complicated and well, oversized for my needs. It seems that I am now an adult haha.
However, connecting the TD-20 to my Phonic Firewire card was quite easy.
I started the Logic Setup Assistant. Here i could tell Logic where my MIDI Device is connected. Nearly all enviroment work will be done by Logic no. As soon as I understood the I have to connect an Instrument port to the little “Drums mapped” icon at the enviroments window (APPLE-8), I just had to make sure that the track, which uses that instrument has chosen the correct MIDI-channel. In my case, the TD-20 uses channel 10.
I am now more into MIDI than i was before weeks, and everything was going well for me now. I got some other surprises by Logic now and altough it’s ugly, I think I’ll stay with it for a while. I mean, why should I not use my hardware modules? I understand more and more now, and meanwhile it’s something like…. hu… love?

When switching back to Logic, i didn’t find my GarageBand Instruments anywhere. I get ravenous, i had installed them on my external drive. However, i found it as Instrument / Insert / Channel Strip – no worries here. My article about “moving the garageband instruments” still work for logic

Before a while i installed the Native Instrument “Kore Player” App at my Mac. It was pain, cause everything started up, i choose my Firefly-Interface and heard – nothing. I asked at the message boards but nobody could help me. I tweaked everything around and around. I also installed my Cubase LE Version which came with my Firefly and then suddenly my Mac was slower and slower, with the result that my Songs couldn’t be played well at GarageBand.
Last weekend I reinstalled OSX and my songs played well, but still Kore Player refused to give a sign. It was frustrating and then there was enlightment: I was used just to choose my sound and everything works, but Kore Player needs to DOUBLECLICK! I did so and hej, the player played.

Kore Player is quite nice and integrates well as a “Generator” into GarageBand, but the standard installation just gives you 100 MB of sound. This is ok for testing purposes and for use sometimes, but I am not excited. The sounds are fine, mostly for electronic music, but didn’t leave me stunning. I will now try out any longer and leave it installed, but I am not sure if I should buy these Kore Packs, with which you can extend your sounds.

However it’s a nice idea for all those of us, who have not 999$ to buy the NI Komplete package

I just have 80 Gig on my harddrive and this is quite less when doing development work at daytime and music in nighttime – in fact, it’s not possible to have more bigger music project at the same time with this space. The loops (i don’t use them, but installed them to see what’s behind that stuff) take more gigs than i can efford, same goes for the garageband instruments.

This morning i had a reinstall and decided to put all that space consuming stuff on my external harddisk. If you want to do like i did, i recommend you about 300 Gig space on a Mac OSX journaled filesystem. I had a FAT32 on my mac to get on it via Windows too, but this harddisk is not always activated when i need it. I have to make a harddisk check to activate it, which is quite uncomfortable. I guess you don’t want to have that problems with your instruments.

However, having your instruments on an external disk is straightforward. Please note, my volumes name is FELIX, replace that name with whatever you call your harddrives.

LOOPS
I created the folder:
/Volumes/FELIX/audiolib/loops/Apple Loops/Apple

With my Finder I clicked at “Macintosh HD”, where my loops are currently installed. Switch further to
/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple
and copy all that folder in there to your new Loops-Folder (and delete the old content). You can do the same with “iLife Sound Effects” if you want. Cause you instrument installer indexed all that loops, you have to go to:
/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/
and delete all txt files in there (maybe three or four or simliar- depends on how much Jam Packs you installed, i guess). Start up GarageBand and open you Loop-Browser. It will tell you that you don’t have any Loops installed. Open your finder with your new loops-place, drag the folder where all subfolders with instruments are and drop the into your loop-browser. GarageBand does the rest for you.

INSTRUMENTS
It’s a similar process for your instruments. I created:
/Volumes/FELIX/audiolib/instruments
Then i copied everything from /Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Instrument Library to this folder. I emptied the Instrument Library Folder. Please note: if you have some stuff allready installed in you new folder (FELIX in my enviroment) pleas copy carefully. OSX will delete old stuff when you just copy folders, and this is not what we want. In this case you have to copy manually file for file. And: you’ll need your superuser password for this action. If you don’t have any yet, open a terminal:

> sudo su

This will ask you for a password. By default you have none. Press enter. If you are in without error message, do this command:

> passwd

and get a new password. By the way, you should do this ALWAYS, it’s a bad idea not to set a superuser password – everybody can login and manipulate your computer this way.

Before you do that, of course i cannot give any guarantees. And please note, i have some kind of bug with my method, if you know how to fix that, let me know. All my instruments are now in the same JamPack, which may be a result of my heavy metal copy actions

When you next start up GarageBand i tells you that it has no Instruments installed. There is “Choose” Button where you can point to your new Instruments folder.