GarageBand is already the best prosumer music creation and recording app out there. Today at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Apple showed off the newest feature for creating your own music: Drummer.
Holy crap, does this raise the bar for anyone using GarageBand out there.
I use GarageBand to mock up demos for the band I play in, and have done so for years. The software makes putting together a quick multi-track song super simple, and I’ve always enjoyed using sound loops–especially drum loops–to give my demos a more professional feel than I’ve ever been able to with a drum machine or synthesizer module.
I’m a guitar player that understands vocals, bass, and drum parts, so it’s usually pretty simple to drag GarageBand loops to the editing area and let the software make everything sync up easily. The Smart features of GarageBand have made it chimp simple for me to create an entire song without even touching an instrument besides my guitar.
Today’s demo of GarageBand’s newest feature, Drummer, however, has me chomping at the bit to check it out. This is some hot shit tech right here.
Xander Soren took the stage to demo the Drummer feature in GarageBand. He showed how you can simply click on a drummer file, and then customize the sound and feel of the drummer’s playing in real time with just a few clicks and drags. What would take quite a bit of time with drum loops is now seamless and simple. It’s possible that GarageBand is simply taking care of changing drum loops in the background, but what comes out of the speakers is pure magic.
This is impressive, folks: the only way to get this kind of subtlety out of a drum machine or drum loops is to have thousands of dollars worth of software and sound loops, or your own damn drummer. GarageBand’s new Drummer feature gives all of that to us for free. Free!
Ok, so you only get one drummer (Kyle) for free, but still. The complete set of 15 drummers can be purchased with one in-app purchase. While I haven’t seen the price of this purchase, yet, I’m sure it won’t be thousands of dollars.
What GarageBand has done here is nothing short of innovative: a fully responsive session drummer with personality, style, and variety is now sitting on your Mac, just waiting for your latest song idea. Wow. Each drummer gets their own custom kit with its own specific sound, just like a real drummer.
This will let anyone, from seasoned musician to raw novice, create professional-sounding drum tracks for songs in GarageBand for next to nothing.
I can’t wait to get my hands on this tech. GarageBand has always delivered higher-than-its-price value, but this new addition? Blows my mind.
