Hanging out in the Garage
GarageBand arrived today. As I alluded to previously, I had a few problems getting iLife installed, owing to my partitioning scheme. With that all resolved, I spent some time this evening playing with GarageBand. Here’s a few thoughts and observations. (Note: I also have the JamPack installed)
- GarageBand is alot of fun to play with. It’s also a very powerful app.
- Mixing loops is much harder than it looks. If you watched Steve Jobs’ Keynote, you saw Steve piece together a tune in about 5 minutes that sounded pretty good. Steve already new what loops he wanted. For every loop that will sound great in your tune, there’s at least five more that don’t.
- The categories in the “loop browser” are only partially helpful. “Relaxed” and “Intense” are a bit subjective.
- Most of the loops have a descriptive name and a number. So while it only takes a minute to sample “Rock Steady Beat 01” through “Rock Steady Beat 04”, you’d better set aside some serious time to check out all 219 loops named “Club Dance Beat”. Again, the categories are somewhat helpful, but it can still be frustrating trying to find just the right loop. Over time, I’m sure the favorites feature will help.
- MIDI is a complicated subject. I bought a MIDI Controller keyboard on eBay, and tried it out with GarageBand. While it worked, for a long time the volume of the software instruments was very low. I need to research the features built into the controller a bit and learn how best to use it.
- There are two kinds of loops: samples and sequences (my terms; I don’t know if GB has names for them). The ‘sample’ loops are recordings of actual performances. Many of the Orchestral Strings loops are samples. Sequences, however, are pre-recorded MIDI instructions driving software instruments. Both kinds of loops and be transposed and tempo-adjusted.
- Sequence loops can be changed to other instruments.
- Multiple loops and even recordings can appear in a single track as long as they all use the same (software) instrument and the regions don’t overlap.
- To avoid making a loop-based song too monotonous I tried to use different loops that had the same instrument. This is much easier with sequence loops. Since these loops are playing software instruments, they all sound the same. You can play “Latin Nylon Guitar 01” followed directly by “Latin Nylon Guitar 05” (both sequence loops), and it will sound as though a single musician was playing a single lick. Sampled loops, on the other hand, can vary quite a bit. “Orchestral Strings 08” sounds like a different group of instruments than “Orchestral Strings 09”. This isn’t necessarily bad; but is important to understand.
- Between GB and JamPack, I have 529 bass loops, 352 guitar loops, and 800 drum loops.
- There are far too many loops of things I’ve never heard of (what’s a santoor?) and far too many sythesizer loops. Not nearly enough basics, like piano blues riffs and accoustic guitar struming.
- The software instruments selection is also a bit lopsided. Way too many synthesizers. Not enough real instruments. There are some nice combo-instruments, like full horn sections for horn-stab effects, but surprising no solo versions of alot of instruments. No trumpet, oboe, french horn, clarinet, tuba, etc. Several solo saxophones are present; they sound okay but not great.
- It’s possible to change keys during a song, sort of, but it’s a bit of a pain. For example, in order to do a 12-bar blues progression (I I I I / IV IV I I / V IV I I) with a base line, I had to break up the base line into individual sections (called regions), one for each chord change. Then to actually accomplish the chord changes, you transpose each region by a number of half-steps. You have to repeat this for every loop in your song, although you can multi-select regions and transpose a group at a time.
- The copy/paste feature works well, including multi-track copy/paste. However, pasting always pastes at the current insertion point. If you are listening to your song in loop mode as you edit, the insertion point is constantly on the move.
- It’s really a lot of fun.
That’s all for now; I’m sure I’ll have more later.
I put together my first song tonight; I’m not sure that it’s finished, but I’m going to post it here. It’s called Mirage, it’s under two minutes, and around 2 meg in size. If you enjoy it, please let me know (and if you don’t, well, let me know that too).
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nice song! I love the arrabian flavor!
KeyStation 61
I didn’t want to wait for the KeyStation 49e, so I bought the KeyStation Radium 61, which might be what you bought. The volume was low, so I upped the velocity on the controller, and it seemed to solve the problem for that. Now I really just want the JamPack for the extra instruments.
Your Song
This was my first song to here from GarageBand, interesting.
I really don`t know what to make of it. All music sounds good, it would appear that there are endsless combinations.
A nice toy but I am looking to do origioal stuff, guitar and vocals all by there self to start and then later try adding things, that is where my interests are, I think it will do that well.
I turned up the volume on yours and it put out a pretty ok sound, I quess I am up for enhancing real stuff, or real stuff left pure.
Everybody is not a real musician though, so our interests and capabilitys would be different.
Tom
The song
that songs pretty good, and it was nice to find a review with some negative feedback, because I know that no program was perfect, and most reviews claim that garageband is.
Very nice tune. I wondered what experience you have with other music software.
Other software
Johnny- None, really. While I have a lot of background in music, I haven’t really kept up with it in the last 15 years. I’ve been meaning to devote some time to it again; but I can’t even find time to call a piano tuner. GarageBand inspired me to go ahead and make time, especially since I’ve always been interested in composing music and recording each of the parts myself. I’ve been playing with GarageBand some more, and intend to post some more comments, as well as some features I’ve discovered, later tonight. Thanks for the comments.
nice tune
i’ve just picked up garageband myself and have barely had time to scratch the surface… i am frustrated by its resource hogging, but figure (after doing some prelim research) that turning off effects will probably help. i like your song, mirage. i’m wondering which parts are loops and which parts are original recordings (as opposed to garageband installed items)? or loops of original recordings? thanks!
Mirage
dugh-
Thanks for the compliment. Mirage was my first GB project, and was built entirely from loops (except for 4 beats). I wanted to see what was possible with loops. I only recorded the 4 cymbal taps you hear right at the beginning, because I couldn’t find a loop like that. I’ve done a bit of a remix, which I haven’t posted yet, which removes that recorded bit. I had intended to record a lead part overtop of the existing loops, using my MIDI keyboard, but I haven’t been able to find a software instrument to fit (my biggest complain about GB). I wanted an oboe or english horn sound, but none is provided. I’m also thinking of replacing the piano loop with one recorded by hand, since the chord progression doesn’t fit as well in the second half of the song.
I’ve also started another project, to try and build a complete song out of only (midi) recorded performances. There’s some cool tools “hidden” in there, and making a custom loop isn’t too hard, once you get the hang of it. The one thing I’d like to do, which I haven’t figured out yet, is to save a recorded loop for use in other projects. I’ll keep poking around; and I’ll be posting a bunch of new GB stuff here shortly.
From France
That sounds great super ! I really enjoyed the song. I wish the app could be translated into French soon.
Even if I don’t know a single word among all this specialized vocabulary.
Can’t wait to try…
Definitely sounds like it was made from loops, but a nice little composition. About a year ago, I got the feeling I wanted to try recording some music. My last experience with digital/MIDI recording was with an Apple II and Casio CZ101 in college, so cutting-edge I ain’t. I couldn’t find any simple, affordable application to do what I wanted: record original voice/instrument tracks, mix them with pre-recorded loops, and output to MP3. A year-later… kaboom … GarageBand. Can’t wait to start messing with it (not that I need another hobby). Anyway, I look forward to your next GB session tapes. -mm
Free Stuff
Thanks for your comments on GB. UPS sez mine’s due to arrive tomorrow. Also found those free loops and if you check that you want more emails, you get a link to some free instruments from this guy:
http://www.bitshiftaudio.com/products/bbb/free_bee.html. Appears to be on the level.
From Japan
I really enjoyed your first tune with GarageBand.
Wow! You got all the advice I ever seek out!
I loved your Mirage song by the way. I am a Singer/Songwriter here in Hollywood who has a very hard time finding a band to work with. I decided to go SOLO from now on. And was looking into Garageband to make a decent demo to show to a producer of how I want the final product to sound. I’ve decided after reading your advice -and other people’s comments here- to go ahead and buy Garageband and M-Audio’s Radium 61 keyboard (I am tired of waiting for the Keystation 49e to come out. Apple keeps telling me “Next week, next week”). I just want to say thanks for this site. It helps me out a lot! –Micha