Are you not musically inclined? No worries. Don't be put off by GarageBand. You don't have to be a musician to play with Apple's music software. So at the very least, read through the next few paragraphs to see what GarageBand can do for you.
With GarageBand, you don't need to be able to play licks to create background music for your movies. If you can place blocks from start to finish, you can use GarageBand's loops to create a compelling score. You can also create your own ringtones from your favorite songs. You can edit any compatible audio file - not just music files but also recordings you've made with your iOS device (a lecture or business meeting, for example). And if you want to try playing guitar on piano, GarageBand includes introductory lessons for that too.
And if you're a musician, GarageBand offers much more. It can serve as a musical sketch pad to write songs with. You can use the built-in stompbox effects and amps to play your guitar at three in the morning without waking up your neighbors. The Drummer feature helps your songs sound more lifelike. And the software instruments offer a synthesizer palette that once cost thousands of dollars to replicate.
Let's walk through the interface first.
Choose a project
When you open GarageBand for the first time, you can choose a project. If you have downloaded the free version of the application you will see options for New Project, Learn to Play, and Recent on the left side of this window. If you paid five US dollars in the app for the complete set of content, you can also Lesson Store see standing.
Select New Project and you will be presented with seven different types of projects: Keyboard Collection, Amp Collection, ringtone, Hip Hop, electronics, songwriter, and Empty Project. We'll look at each of these types of projects below.
If you Learn to Play chooses, the main part of the window contains the following tabs: Guitar Lessons, Piano Lessons, and Artist Lessons. The guitar lessons include Intro to Guitar and Chord Trainer. The piano lessons include a Intro to Piano lesson. And the artist classes are empty by default.
These lessons won't get you far, so select Lesson Store (available when you purchase the additional content) and you will be presented with options to download additional guitar and piano lessons and individual artist lessons. You can download all guitar and piano lessons for free with your purchase. Artist Lessons - songs taught by the original artists - are based on a single song and cost five dollars each.
Choose Recent to see a list of projects you've worked on recently.
In the New Project window is at the bottom of the project selector Details with a downward pointing triangle. Click it to change the project's tempo (how fast or slow it goes), key signature, time signature (the number of beats per measure, and the type of note the beat falls on - 4/4, for example, meaning four beats per measure). and that the quarter note gets the beat), and pop-up menus to choose the audio input and output to use with the application. These settings are almost entirely for people who want to use GarageBand for musical purposes. If you're not sure what they're doing or if you're using GarageBand to create a ringtone or background music for your movie, leave these settings alone and click Choose to open your project.
About those seven projects
I said I'd go into more detail about GarageBand's seven project types, and now seems like a good time to start. Let's do that in a musical context.
Imagine you have booked a local recording studio to record your five piece band. It wouldn't make much sense if you got there with your bandmates and the studio was set up for a symphony orchestra or a single voice-over artist. Obviously you want the studio to be configured for the type of audio you plan to record. And that's the idea behind GarageBand's projects.
When you Keyboard Collection select and press Choose Click, GarageBand creates a project that contains 15 preconfigured tracks, each with a different keyboard sound - from a Steinway grand piano to a classic electric piano to a synthesizer sound. Select Amp Collection, and 15 new tracks appear, each with a different amp and collection of effects. It ringtone project contains a single track and allows the Loops Browser from GarageBand (I'll explain that in a next lesson). It Hip-Hop project contains seven tracks, including a classic drum machine, grand piano, string ensemble, and some synthesizer instruments. electronics contains nine preconfigured tracks consisting mainly of synthesizers. songwriter contains six tracks designed for drums, vocals, guitar, bass, and piano. And the Empty Project is a project without tracks in which you can select the kind of track you want to create (Software Instrument, Digital Audio, guitar, or Drummer). For an overview of the interface, we select Empty Project.
The GarageBand interface
We need to select a certain track type, so let's select the first audio selection - the one with a microphone on a stand - and click Create. The GarageBand interface appears in all its glory. It contains the control bar and a number of panel options, including the Library panel and the Workspace panel.
The Control Bar
GarageBand's control bar is packed with features. Let's go through them.
The library, Quick Help, Smart Controls, and editors Buttons: These buttons at the left end of the control bar toggle various panels in the interface on and off. Default is the Library button enabled, which means it Library panel below is displayed. Press the button Quick Help, and a small window appears. Hover your cursor over a GarageBand element and an explanation about the element will appear in this window. click on Smart Controls, and the corresponding panel opens at the bottom of the GarageBand window (I'll explain this feature in a future lesson). click on editors to display the editing window of the selected track at the bottom of the window. (I will also explain this later.)
Play Controls: Just like in iTunes, you will find Play Controls on the GarageBand taskbar. These include rewind, fast forward, stop, and record buttons.
Display: The display tells you a lot about your project. You can switch roughly between two states - Beats & Project and time. (You switch displays by clicking on the first item in it, a note-and-metronome icon or a small clock icon.) In the Beats & Project In the display, you'll see bars, beats, splits, and ticks, as well as the project's tempo, key, and time signature. Choose it time display to see hours, minutes, seconds and frames. The view changes while the project is playing or when you move the playhead within the workspace.
The cycle, tuner, count in, and Metronome buttons: Switch the cycle button and you can select a section of your project to repeat. When you create a ringtone, you use this function to specify which part of a track should be included in the ringtone. GarageBand has a built-in tuner (the tuner) that can work with instruments you've plugged into your Mac's selected audio input or recorded through a microphone (including your Mac's built-in microphone). When you get the de count in button on and on Record click, you'll hear a measure of taps before the recording starts. This helps establish the tempo before you start playing. If you want to hear a tap that is the same as the tempo of your project as you record and play back the project, toggle the Metronome button.
Master Volume Control: As the name suggests, this slider lets you adjust the overall volume of the project.
Notepad, Apple Loops, and Media Browser buttons: These three buttons show the corresponding panels.
The Library panel
It library panel, which is on the far left side of the GarageBand window, is contextual, meaning the content changes depending on the type of track you select. For example, when you select an audio track, the panel displays a number of presets, including Drums and Percussion, voice, Studio Instruments, and Electric Guitar and Bass. Select a preset, and more specific settings will appear on the right. For example, select voice, and you will see some sub settings including Bright Vocal, Classic Vocal, and Telephone Vocal. For audio tracks, these settings control the GarageBand effects. So if you have the Bright Vocal setting for the voice preset, the EQ settings will boost the mid frequencies and GarageBand will add a bit of reverb and compression.
Select a software instrument, and you will see to the left of it library panel will see a list of instrument types. Select one of these types to play the various associated instrument sounds. This way you can choose different instrument sounds.
If you select a guitar track, leave it library panel to see different guitar and bass tones. Choose one - Clean Guitar, for example - and a subset of collections of effects appears on the right. As with audio tracks, these settings have to do with GarageBand's amp and stompbox effects.
If you're a Drummer track created, will Drum Kit be marked in the Library panel. You will then see a list of all installed drum kits on the right.
The Tracks panel
GarageBand is a multitrack Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) application. This means you can record a track, create a new track, record something on this track to accompany the first track you created, and layer layers of tracks on top of each other. It tracks panel provides a list of all your tracks. Within each track header are at least one mute and Solo knob. click on mute and you will not hear the track. click on Solo, and you only hear this track. (You can mute multiple tracks at once and play them individually.)
If you only see an instrument icon, the name of the track, and the mute and Solo buttons, then drag the right end of the tracks panel to the right. This expands the panel so that you can see the Volume and Pan controls for each track. Drag the volume slider to the right to increase the track's volume, or to the left to decrease it. Slide the Pan knob to the left and the track's sound moves to the left of the stereo field. Drag the knob to the right, and the sound will shift towards the right speaker.
If you Mix > Show Automation selected, the track headers will shift to display a pop-up menu below them. This menu allows you to plot the volume and pan automation (so that the volume increases or decreases at points you select) and you can adjust the Smart Controls of an instrument (I will go into this another time).
The Workspace panel
It Workspace panel shows the contents of your tracks. Software instrument tracks are green and contain dots and dashes that represent the notes played by GarageBand's virtual instruments (this is called MIDI data). audio and guitar tracks are yellow and represent audio waveforms. Double-click within one of these tracks to open the editing panel.
Inside the Workspace panel lets you select clips within tracks and split, trim, delete, or repeat them.
Note the ruler at the top of this panel. If you the Beats & Project display, the ruler shows the bar numbers and stroke divisions within each measure. If you the time view, you will see time divisions. You can increase or decrease the ruler by adjusting the Horizontal Zoom slider to the right of the ruler.
And more
I told you about the other panels that can be displayed - Smart Controls, editors, Notepad, loops, and Media Browser - but I've tested your patience enough for today. In subsequent lessons, we'll look at these and other features.
This is a freely translated article from our American sister site Macworld.com. Described terms, operations and settings may be region specific.
