Garageband, Just received Garageband Options

Hi. Just received Garageband as a part of iLife.

The Grand Piano has string resonance and has been wonderfully sampled.

There's only a little midi latency. Though midi worked right away, with out changing any settings.

It's amazingly good stuff for beginners and children with a little talent will be able to make impressing things with it.

I wish it had been there when I was 15.

And it's really easy to make simple demos with it.

It's the kind of thing that has some restrictions (to keep it simple) that could evoke a lot of creativity.

[Ben Up the Tree]

I believe GarageBand to be one of the most powerful recoding tools in the market today, only because it puts pro recording tools into the hands of people who never would have picked them up before. As a singer/songwritter/guitarist this software allows me to record audio sketches of songs that I can not only flesh out, but bring to completion. In 30 minutes of using this software, I recorded a composition with 2 tracks of guitar and 2 tracks of vocals without any manual or any recording training and it sounded good.

Imagine what I can create in 2 months with an USB audio input and a condenser mic! This software may seem like child's play, but just like iMovie the results it creates are way above the presumed complexity level of the program. I hope Logic takes a hint and create a better interface, or apple take the hint and create advanced multitrack recording tools in Soundtrack.

Apple has hit a homerun with this software and I hope they continue this unexpected foray into audio.

[boze]

i agree with ben-

i remember Michelle Shock once saying something like, "Make music yourself- this is too important to leave it to professionals."

[kaboombahchuck]

I like GB, but the limitations are just too great for my tastes (I also have the expansion pack). However, it is a great tool for getting idias rapidly. Ironically, it took just as long to do a song in GB as it did doing it by hand in Metro. Both songs were 4 tracks. It took just as long to find the drum loop required in GB as it did to write a drum track in midi in Metro. I'm sure as time goes by I'll pretty much know what drum loops I like, shortining the search greatly. Using the midi sequencer in GB is practically useless, so the bass track was done in Metro much faster. The rythem guitar track took a bit longer in GB to do, because of the effects (GBs strongest point). Once again once I figgure out what effects I like best for sertain applications, things will go quicker. The vocal track took about the same amount of time. Mastering (if you want to call it that) was done quicker in GB (already having experiance with the effects sped things up a bit). However the mixing options in Metro far surpassed that of GB, giving a greater satisfaction of the end result.

I agree that it has been a long time coming for this program, and too wish I would have had it 15 years ago. Things would be alot different now.

[patrizio]

GB...sounds cool...i'm gonna try it!

[BusError]

I also received iLife this morming.

And GarageBand won't play with my EZBus at 48kHz ! Nor on my ADAT card at 48kHz !

All it supports is the blasted G4 tower speaker !

WTF ?!

Hmmm. It works perfectly with my Tascam U-428 firewire audio/midi interface...

[lepetitmartien]

Mixed opinion in the FR forums… works great for some, tediously for others with better computers…

investigations continue.

[BusError]

Did some more tests, after reducing the clock of the EZBus so the USB downgraded to 44.1. They DO have a built in limitation to 44.1 outputs, despite them (apple) whinning at us developpers so we support any kind of oupouts blah blah.

Overall they have very good instruments. The bass, guitar and a couple others a just amazing IMO.

Some of the loops are failry good, but it's still very, very limited, and nothing like Steve's Demo™ (in fact, I wonder how long it took to teach him to demo it like that, it LOOKED magic)

Anyway, even with the expansion pack, all you really get is a bunch of very good instruments. if you use Detour or Jack Tools (untested) you can probably make yourself some nice tracks to mix in another sequencer.
Some of the effetcs are good too, I particularly like the Flanger; espeocialy at low frequency. On the other hand the Overdrive has a wierd "snap" to it that I don't particularly like.

The recording sucks BTW, it managed to transpose stuff I played without asking me, overriding stuff that was there when it was not suposed to, etc. And you can't choose between "add" and "overide" when recording a loop, thats annoying when editing.

Also, there is no way to import any MIDI tracks. I tried importing even a simple one-channel track using the IAC driver as output/imput from say Metro to GB and all I get is a Colorful Spinning Pizza of Hell in GB when I stop the recording. damn!

So, all I could come up with so far are a few small mp3 ringtones for my mobile phone. Next I'll try to plug in a guitar to see how good the "amp" things are...

Been using GarageBand for around a week and its great for initial ideas and the kids. I'm sure that some would become frustrated with its lack of features but as a 'starting' point its pretty useful. If you like a GarageBand loop or sound and want to use elsewhere then take a look in the root.Library/Application Support/GarageBand/ - here you'll find the software's aif files.