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