Rock Harder With Garageband On Your Mac

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GarageBand10.0.2

Garageband has forever changed the way weekend headbangers create music on their Macs. Included with all new Macs and available in the Mac App store for free, it gives brand new as well as seasoned musicians a way to record all kinds of music, letting them connect real instruments, MIDI devices and microphones to the Mac for easy music sessions.

It also does some other cool things, which we’ll tell you about right now.

Drummer: The Killer New Feature

The latest version of Garageband, 10.0.2, offers an amazing new piece of kit called Drummer. This one deserves a standing ovation. For years, I’ve used Garageband to mock up demos for my disco band. (Yes, we do weddings.) Anyway, the software makes putting together a quick multi-track song super simple and I’ve always enjoyed making 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 who understands vocals, bass, and drum parts, so it’s usually pretty simple to drag Garageband loops to the editing area then 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 touching an instrument besides my guitar.

Garageband’s latest feature, though, way above what drum loops could ever do —  it’ll make you want to sway with a flickering lighter like a stoned fanboy in utter appreciation.

Drummer drummer, do your thing

So. Drummer offers several ways to make it sound as if Neal Peart is banging on his 360-degree drum kit from your humble home studio. Simply click on a drummer profile to customize the sound and feel of that virtual 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. Garageband is simply taking care of changing drum loops in the background, but what comes out of the speakers will be music to your ears.

You’d be playing a different tune (probably to the ca-ching of several thousand dollars) to get this kind of subtlety from a drum machine or drum loops —  or giving it up for your own damn drummer. Garageband’s new Drummer feature gives all of that to us for free. Free!

Ok, so the basic package comes equipped with one drummer (Kyle), but still. TK KYLE’S DRUMMING STYLE. But an entire troop of 18 timpanists will set struggling musicians back just $4.99. Heck, Apple just added three new ones (plus a seriously useful MP3 export function) just last month, FOR THE SAME IN-APP PURCHASE?

All of this to say: you’ve now got a fully responsive session drummer with personality, style, and variety sitting on your Mac, just waiting for your latest song idea.  Each drummer gets their own custom kit with its own specific sound, just like a real drummer.

Learn To Play Like A Pro

music lessons garageband

While the latest version of this fantastic (and free!) music production suite has lost some functionality like podcasting and Magic Garageband, it still has plenty to recommend it for those new to music or old vets alike.

One of these cool features is the Learn to Play function, which has some pretty good basic music tutorials baked right in, along with the capability to purchase videos from hit artists like Sting and Norah Jones, who teach you how to play some of their famous songs.

It’s a pretty heady set of music learning; here’s how to access it. Getting really good at your instrument will take more than watching a video or three, but this is a great start if you want to try your hand at the guitar or piano.

lesson store

Launch Garageband and you’ll usually get the New Project window, where you can select a keyboard, guitar, hip hop, or ringtone set up. Look to the left sidebar and click on where it says Learn to Play for the built-in lessons. Click one of the Lesson buttons across the top to choose from those for Guitar, Piano, or from specific Artist lessons. This will show you all the lessons you’ve downloaded from Apple. If you haven’t downloaded any, you’ll see the basic Intro to… lesson. Click on the Choose button in the lower right corner.

In the case of the piano lessons, you’ll be prompted to plug in a USB or MIDI keyboard so you can play along and get feedback on your progress. You can skip this if you’re playing on a real piano. The guitar chord trainer will also prompt you to connect a guitar so it can tell you if you’re playing the chords correctly.

If you want to download more lessons, click over on the Lesson Store icon in the left sidebar. There, you’ll be able to choose Guitar, Piano, or Artist lessons. Choosing the guitar or piano lessons will show you the different levels of lessons available, along with three featured artist buttons at the very top.

more artists

The Artist tab at the top will take you to a page with more than just those three featured lessons, with stuff like Glenn Tilbrook from Squeeze showing you how to play “Black Coffee In Bed,” Ben Folds teaching you how to play “Brick,” and Alex Lifeson appears to help you play “Tom Sawyer.”

Click on any one of the artist lessons to get a quick preview of the content, along with a lesson difficulty rating. Try not to rush ahead, students.

Rock Your Own Custom Ringtones

ringtones

Ringtones, right? It’s hard to be the coolest kid on the bus without your own custom ringtone.  Garageband makes whipping one up faster than you can hum the chorus to “Happy.” (Because, yes, that ear worm  is about to be so last week, people.)

Take the latest copy of Garageband, iTunes 7.5 or later, and a Mac that runs OS X, and some music. Oh, and an iPhone, of course. You can use music that you create with loops and Drummer, record yourself all fancy-like, or even just import an MP3 track to Garageband to make your ringtone.

Once you’ve performed some mobile Mozart magic, click on the Cycle button in the Transport control area (it looks like an oval made out of arrows). SCREENSHOT TK? Then, click on the little icon to the left of the LCD-style panel. It will have a musical note, a clock, a tuner, or a metronome icon there. Set it to Time, the little clock icon. This will make the display show minutes and seconds, rather than bars and beats.

Click in the area just above the music you’re using. Adjust the cycle (loop) area to cover the part of the song you want as your ringtone. You can change the length of the song by dragging either end left or right. Grab it from the middle to move it around. If you can’t find the bright yellow loop/cycle section, go to the very beginning of your music: it defaults to the first measure.

Adjust the cycle area to a maximum 40 seconds for ringtones, or 30 seconds for other iOS alert sounds, like for Text Tones, New Mail, and the like. Save the project and name it whatever you want to call your ringtone.

Head up to the Share menu and choose Send to iTunes. Sync your new ringtone to your iPhone as usual.

Now you can rock your thrash metal band’s latest single when your Aunt Tillie calls from home to tell you that you forgot the lunch she packed for you.

Looping Beats For Fun and Profit

loopy

Garageband is a full recording studio for your Mac. It allows musicians to connect microphones, guitars, basses, and other instruments for a fully analog recording session. It has MIDI playback and recording capabilities as well, allowing anyone with a MIDI capable keyboard to record right along with those instruments.

One of the less-trumpeted features, however, is the Loops section. Garageband comes with pre-recorded MIDI and sampled audio that fit together in various ways. Without knowing to play a single instrument, you can create amazing sounding music with Garageband, simply using Loops.

The first step is to bring up the Garageband Loops browser. Start Garageband and select New Project in the start window. If you’re already in Garageband with another project open, select New Project from the File menu to get this window. Click on Loops, and then on the Choose button in the lower right. Name your file something you’ll remember, and file it somewhere where you can find it again. Desktop, anyone?

The familiar Garageband window will open. This time, however, the Loop browser will show up in the right hand pane. Note the different filter buttons at the top of this browser pane. Click on a musical style, like Rock/Blues, Urban, or World from the left column of filters, or click on the type of instrumentation in the column just to the right, filtering the list to only show Loops containing specific instruments, like Guitars, Piano, Synths, Bass, etc. The next two columns to the right are filters for tone and mood, filtering for loops Apple has categorized as Relaxed, Grooving, Melodic, Dissonant, etc.

loop listClick the buttons to filter the list of available Garageband Loops. For our example here, click on Electronic in the filter list. If you see the Column browser, or the Jingles, Stingers, or Sound Effects browser, click on the little musical notation item in the tab buttons in the upper left of the Loops pane.

Click on Beats in the second column, and click on any of the beats to listen to them. I chose Club Dance Beat for my song. Once you find one you like, click and drag the Beat’s name over to the Tracks window. A new track will appear, and a big green Plus button will show up. Drag your beat loop over to the far left, to start on the first measure. Drop the beat there. Hover the mouse over the upper right corner of the resulting green rectangle and you’ll see the extend cursor; it looks like a round arrow. Click and drag the corner, and Garageband will extend out the Loop, with visual cues as to the beginning and end of each loop section.

Now, in the Filter list, click on Beats to reset the buttons. Click on Synths, and repeat the above process. Mix and match as you will, but create a new track for each new sound. It will make things easier to edit later. Once you find a synth track you like, filter to Bass loops, and bring a nice grooving bassline over. I was able to create the six track loop-based snippet in the screenshot above in about five minutes.

If you want to hear the whole thing put together, click the Play triangle at the bottom. You can also set the Cycle/Loop button so Garageband only plays the section you’re working on, over and over. You know, to help you  get into the groove of your masterpiece.

If nothing else, I find this sort of creative activity calming, soothing, and a great way to make a couple of hours disappear. Your mileage may vary, but give it a shot and share your music with the world.

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