Product Description

M-Audio Session is the most powerful, easy-to-use software to get you started making music on the PC. Session integrates seamlessly with your M-Audio interface or keyboard, letting you make great-sounding songs and video soundtracks--even if you've never played a note before. And if you have some musical experience, Session is the power tool to take you to the next level. To get started, just drag and drop professional loops from the huge included library into your song. Use your M-Audio keyboard to jam along and record with Session's built-in instrument collection. Plug a guitar or mic into your interface and record away. Mix your tracks--complete with effects--and share your music with the world. Combined with your M-Audio gear, Session is your ticket to making your own music instantly

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7611 in Musical Instruments
• Brand: M-Audio
• Model: 9910-51964-00
• Dimensions: .55 pounds

Features

• Easy, Fun, Creative
• Make great music even if it's your first time
• Jam and record your own tracks for guitar, vocals, keyboards
• Fast sound library navigation
• Simple to set up and use

From the Manufacturer

Click to watch a video and an interactive demo

M-Audio Session is the most powerful, easy-to-use software to get you started making music on the PC. Session integrates seamlessly with your M-Audio interface or keyboard, letting you make great-sounding songs and video soundtracks—even if you’ve never played a note before. And if you have some musical experience, Session is the power tool to take you to the next level. To get started, just drag and drop professional loops from the huge included library into your song. Use your M-Audio keyboard to jam along and record with Session’s built-in instrument collection. Plug a guitar or mic into your interface and record away. Mix your tracks—complete with effects—and share your music with the world. Combined with your M-Audio gear, Session is your ticket to making your own music instantly.

Make Your First Song in Minutes
Most entry-level music software programs are just reduced-feature versions of complex professional programs—and still overly complicated as a result. Not so with Session. Starting from scratch, we designed it to be intuitive rather than something you have to be a recording engineer to use. In fact, the hardest thing about Session is tearing yourself away from it.

Session Does the Work, You Make the Music
When you start a new song or track in Session, it asks you what kind of music you want to make and then guides you from there. Every time you create a new track, Session presents a choice of common things you might want to do. Let's say you want to play and record guitar. Session automatically sets up your virtual guitar amp and effects, and prepares your interface to record. All you have to do is plug in your guitar and rock. Tell Session you want to record vocals and it sets up a track to record the microphone input—complete with effects that provide professional polish.

Complete Solution
With Session, the days of worrying about choosing and configuring compatible music hardware and software are history. Session is designed to work seamlessly with selected M-Audio keyboards and audio interfaces—just plug it in and it works. It's the one-stop total solution that lets you spend your time playing music instead of reading manuals. Go ahead—embrace your inner rock star.

Instruments Galore
Think of just about any instrument and you're likely to find it in Session. Session's 800MB synthesizer library includes hundreds of sampled instruments, all ready to be played from your M-Audio keyboard and easily recorded to tracks. Session also helps you find and audition instruments, whether the bass you're looking for is an jazzy upright acoustic or a funky hip hop synth. You can even get under the hood if you want to edit or create your own instrument sounds.

Get in the Loop
Loops are the creative building blocks of today's music. Session makes it simple to mix and match loops so even non-musicians can create songs—and it provides a great starting place for layering other instrument and vocal tracks. It comes with 2GB of professionally recorded loops that you can use to make music instantly. Session lets you easily browse musical styles and instruments, auditioning loops until you find just the ones you want. You'll also find families of loops designed to work together such as beats, bass lines and chord progressions. There are even variations for different song sections like verses, choruses and bridges. Creating your own music with Session is as simple as drag and drop.

Mixmaster in the House
Session has everything you need to turn your jams into polished mixes. It features 20 different effects such as reverb, EQ, distortion, filters and more—up to five per track plus two global effects. Trip out your beats. Turn your guitar up to 11. Make your vocals soar. The creative possibilities are endless. And when you have everything just the way you want it, Session even helps you create standard WMA files for sharing and posting online.

Full Features

• make professional-sounding music—no experience required
• works instantly and seamlessly with selected M-Audio gear
• create music easily with drag-and-drop loops complete with automatic tempo and pitch matching—2GB loop library included
• record instrument tracks using the built-in Syntax sample-based synthesizer with:
  • 800MB instrument samples
  • 260+ instrument presets
  • full General MIDI sound set
  • semi-modular design with full editing capabilities
• record audio tracks such as vocal and guitar using an M-Audio audio interface
• includes a wide variety of guitar amp models and "stomp box" effects
• find just the right content using the intuitive context-sensitive browser to filter by instrument type, musical style and other qualities
• audition multiple clips in the browser simultaneously
• play, record and mix with 20 real-time effects including reverb, EQ, distortion and filters (up to five simultaneous effects per track plus two global effects)
• hear your effects while performing and recording
• unlimited audio and instrument tracks playback
• record up to two audio tracks and one instrument track simultaneously

Customer Reviews

A disappointment - Hard to get working
After using GarageBand on a Macintosh, I was excited to see that there was similar software for Windows. However, after trying to use Session, there were a couple major disappointments for me. First, Session refuses to install in a 64-bit version of Windows. That seems odd, since my M-Audio hardware works in Windows x64 (I have a Fast Track USB and a MK-461C MIDI USB controller). Since I use Windows XP x64 edition on my main computer, this is a bummer.

I installed Session on my laptop, which has a 32-bit version of Windows XP. However, Session refuses to run without an M-Audio device plugged into your computer. I was able to get Session to run by plugging in my Fast Track. However, my USB MIDI controller (which is made by M-Audio) was not recognized by Session as a MIDI input device. A major bummer, since I wanted to be able to record MIDI.

The pros:
- An easy-to-use user interface (so they say)
The cons:
- Won't install on a 64-bit version of Windows
- Only works with M-Audio hardware
- Did not recognize my MIDI controller

The cons that I see are fairly big show-stoppers. I would probably look for different software.

Pretty good PC substitute for Garageband
So far I'm pretty impressed with this software. I am basically a music novice, just play a little guitar, so I wanted something easy that would let me dabble with music on my PC for fun. Session hits the mark for me.

The software is very easy to use. There are a lot of instrument loops included with the program, which allows even a total novice to start creating songs immediately just by dragging and dropping the loops.

I also bought the Keystation 49 keyboard, which allows me to layer some of my own instrumentals over the included loops. There are a lot of sampled instruments to choose from, and the keyboard works well as a controller with the Session software.

This is not a professional-level program, but it's fun and easy to use. I've created a few 8-track compositions which included drum/bass/guitar loops from the software, combined with piano and string tracks recorded using the Keystation keyboard. It is a blast to play around with, and I'm hoping to pick up the Fast Track interface soon, which will allow me to plug my guitar and bass directly in so I can record my own stuff.

One caveat I've noticed - you need to have the USB adapter (included) plugged into your PC for the software to work. And your speakers need to be plugged directly into the adapter in order to listen to music. I'm not sure why this is, but it's only a minor annoyance. Just make sure you don't misplace the adapter, or your software will be non-functioning until you get a new one.

Decent substitute for "Garage Band"
I purchased this product for my 15 year old son who was looking for a substitute for Garage Band for his Windows PC. He seems to be pretty happy with it, and I am glad he is no longer asking for an MacIntosh to replace his brand new PC :)