GarageBand too advanced for a 7 year old?

theoretically he should have no problems. assuming you bought a mac compatible keyboard his workflow could be as simple as:

launch GB, double click the Piano icon when the dialog appears, enter a name, and once the timeline opens up, start playing.

that's really it as far as what you HAVE to do.

to record, he could click the record button, turn the metronome on or off via a menu item, change the sounds from piano to some other instrument, etc, but he needn't do any of these things at the onset.

i'll leave keyboard recommendations to more piano playing members, but you can get an idea on prices here:

http://www.bulletsandbones.com/GB/MIDIControllers.html

Personally, I think I could've handled Mac/GB/midi-keys at seven years - +and I'm no rocket scientist, believe me!+ 😀

Just, you know, keep the juice box away from the mac/keys, etc.

and I'm no rocket scientist, believe me!

No, but you're a musician!

Never under estimate the power of your child.

poflynn wrote:
No, but you're a musician!

Just like Jake and Elwood, sort of, hehe!

key should be fine but weighted/full size keys, right?

Weighted or at least semi, yes. Full or close to it, like 60-something.

I am a full time private music teacher. About half of my time I am at a primary school that is stacked with mac's. I routinely see 6-8 year olds in GB. My youngest is 8 years old. After spending just a little bit of time with him on a regular basis he has no problem with navigating the main elements of GB, using my axiom 49 keyboard and my nanopad.

Warning though, learning piano will not even come into the picture once sound effects, goofy noises, cool synths, loud sounding guitars and hip hop drums are discovered!!!

What is difficult for little ones and GB is applying musical concepts to their projects. Randomness rules. Once I spent an hour with my son while he made a 30 sec sound bit of comedy sound effects, sheep bahhing and cows mooing all for the purpose of him emailing the mp3 to his older brothers to essentially annoy them. Did the trick nicely.

In terms of a keyboard, maybe check out the latest M-Audio Oxygen 61. It has a new feature that syncs up faders, knobs and transport controls with GB. No matter how you slice it, there is a lot of discovery to be made for a 7 yr old in GB, might as well get him comfortable with recording and 'tweaking.' 😉

I think in this day and age, with all the video games and gadgets, kids are more technologically advanced then we might think. If you want your child to play the piano, then why not let him learn GB? Think about it this way: your son will learn an instrument AND music production. Man, I wish I had that instead of Sega Genesis when I was 7! I encourage you to show you boy some basics and let him explore it by himself. If he's interested, he'll learn. It might take a while, but what's the rush?

Good idea!