The final piece of the iLife ’11 puzzle? GarageBand ’11, which according to Steve, features some great new features to help fix timing in your music, some more guitar amps and effects, piano and guitar lessons built-in and an in-program “How Did I Play?” feature.
The first new feature is GrooveMatching which is sort of an automatic spell checker for bad rhythm. Groove Matching allows you to lock a load of instruments together to a single rhythm at once, but a “human rhythm,” not a robotic one. It’s something like autotune, but for an entire band instead of a caterwauling singer.
Then there’s FlexTime, which allows you to double click on a region in your song to expand the waveform and fix mistakes… for example, a guitar missing a hit. Apple seems to be going to great lengths to help fix crappy playing in GarageBand ’11.
Not that they want to encourage people to sloppily learn a real instrument. That’s why Apple’s introducing guitar and piano lessons in this version of Garageband, with HD videos that play on the top of the screen with an instrumental representation on the bottom.
Finally, there’s How Did I Play, which will tell you in real-time how well you’re playing an instrument, and even allow you to play along with a chamber orchestra in Vienna. Every time you complete a performance, GarageBand keeps track of it.
Basically, GarageBand ’11 is all about teaching you to play music better… and if it fails, allowing you to fix it so no one can tell anyway.
