Everyone seems to be doing “lists” and stuff, and I have done ones in previous years. This year, I will list a couple of Mac specific software things that I use for music.
Logic Pro X – If you are a Mac person, this is something you should have. You can use this to record yourself, or your band, generate charts (notation), use it’s huge library of loops to generate practice backgrounds, compose with it, use it as a synth for your EWI. And there is never an upgrade price. Free upgrades. And they add stuff to it all the time.
Band in a Box 2019 for Mac – This is really a no brainer. You need to have this program. The ability to generate chord progressions, in any key, style, tempo, and duration. Amazing. And the program only keeps getting better with interface tweaks and more styles. Well worth the money.
Arq Backup – You should be backing up your stuff. Arq is a great little program that lets you backup to any cloud service of your choosing. I use it to backup to my Google Business account ($12 a month for UNLIMITED storage). Well worth it. Another choice would be Backblaze.
Snagit 2020 – A great little utility to do screen captures of images, or video, or anything.
Omnifocus – There are a LOT of to-do things, but Omnifocus is the best. I use it for so many many projects. It’s great for if you have any idea, to capture it, and then come back to it.
Downie – Want to download something off Youtube or some other streaming service? Downie can do it. It can extract audio only as well.
Transcribe/Amazing Slow Downer – Two different programs, but you need both. I use Transcribe to visually slow down things. Either for students or if I’m transcribing something. Amazing Slow Downer can slow things down, and then SAVE them. Transcribe doesn’t do that. I find I need and use both.
Raindrop.io – This is a service that allows you to bookmark a site, and then come back to it. I find it extremely useful as I frequently use multiple browsers on multiple platforms, and bookmarking on Safari doesn’t show up if I use Chrome on a PC. Plus, Raindrop lets you categorize bookmarks, and you can do searching of the bookmarks (it does a capture of the text of the site).
Finale – There are a few notation choices, but Finale is still the one I go to. Mainly do to the rich plugins available and the infinite tweaking one can do in the program. Another one to look at is Musescore. It’s made great progress, and it’s free!