I love Apple Macs and I love using Garageband but as so many of the programs I use in schools are Windows based and having installed a Windows partition on my Macbook, I needed a Windows Equivalent for Garageband. I have been using this Mixcraft software and so far am very impressed.
First, it is very good value for money at around £48. It has a very wide range of features, enough to produce professional recordings, and comes with a huge bank of free loops and backing beats that you are entitled to keep even if you decide not to purchase the product. You can check out all of the features here on their site. Go to the Products Page on the Mixcraft Site to check out all of the features. I will try and do a few posts to show how I think it might be useful for language teachers wanting to integrate more music into their lessons.
For the moment, here is a sample of a reggae backing track that it took me about 20 minutes to create from the free loops supplied with the package.