IF you own a home studio AND you have a Mac, the big question is “What DAW do you use?” Most Mac users run Logic, but there’s a lot of people running Pro Tools, GarageBand, Cubase, Ableton Live, and Studio One. Every DAW has things it can do better than the others. In the case of Logic Pro, it slaughters the competition when it comes to built-in keyboards at the base price… meaning Logic Pro is $199, and while you can get great add-ons for the other DAWs, you won’t get them without going way over $199. Ableton Live is like $100 for the entry level version, but to get a ton of instruments you’re up around $500.
Yup, Logic Pro has a great, killer collection of keyboards, which make it THE DAW of choice on the Mac if you play keyboards. But that’s not actually true, because you can get ALL of the keyboards in Logic for $39. It’s called MainStage.
For my live rig, I use backing tracks and I run an entry level version of Ableton Live, because it’s the best DAW there is for live use (super CPU efficient, easy to program in patch changes and DMX lighting changes, etc). I trigger MainStage patch changes from Ableton Live and it works great.
So basically, you could get Studio One or Ableton or whatever, and then just use MainStage and get all of Logic’s keyboards for $39? What’s the catch? There isn’t one.
Apple has been trying to turn Logic into DAW Of All Trades by giving it a screen that sorta kinda works like Ableton. It IS nice to be able to launch one program instead of two. So there’s that. But I wonder if Logic would sell better if MainStage wasn’t a thing. Personally I’m glad MainStage is available and cheap. I mean, there’s nothing for $39 on Windows that comes anywhere close to MainStage. It’s probably worth $399, and Apple sells it for $39.
What does this have to do with guitars? Nothing, but I’m also a keyboard player with a home studio. Lots of guitarists have home studios and need keyboards sometimes. If you’re on a Mac and you don’t own MainStage, you have no excuse (unless you already own Logic.)
