Garageband Help, Hints and Tips by Svend

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend

posted by jaggerdiggydog

Mar 18, 2013

Garageband Hints and Tips - Using the notepad for songwriting

Garageband has a great feature which is a little notepad where you can write things about the song you are working on...

Use it to brainstorm ideas....

Like...

- do a key change on 12 measure

- try a new drum beat

- use a tempo change on measure 4

etc....etc....

Give it a try!

hear my latest GB music...

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend

posted by jaggerdiggydog

Jan 9, 2013

Garageband Hints and Tips: Tighten up bass tracks in Garageband with VISUAL EQ

Garageband Hints and Tips: eq levels and solid bass and reducing muddy bass

When creating a song or piece of music with lot's of tracks, the overall mix can get muddy !

Look at each of your tracks and see if there is too much action / energy in the bass region when you don't really need it.

Use Visual EQ to lower bass energy so your tracks don't get muddied up with bass...

Adjust your bass track to emphasize the bass track EQ with Visual EQ

On recent project, I had 10 tracks... 2 were bass tracks... these I eq'ed for power

8 tracks had bass energy I did not want and was mudding up my song.

Visual EQ to the rescue!

NOTE: Click so that analyzer is on!!! So you can see the actual spectrum analyzer of tracks

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend

posted by jaggerdiggydog

Dec 5, 2012

Garageband Hints and Tips: when justifying and aligning tracks is not enough

the trick here is to go from measure view to time view...

zoom in really close...

slide track to left slighty to bring it into the groove with no delay

Give it a try!

hear my latest GB music...

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend

posted by jaggerdiggydog

Nov 23, 2012

Garageband Hints and Tips: To much reverb or delay

Here is a quick tip...

You're working on a song... and you have lot's of tracks going on...

and you lay on the reverb and delay and effects....

Here is something to try...

in the middle of the song... hit the STOP button ... and LISTEN!

listen to how much delay lingers on....

listen to how much reverb lingers on...

it may be too much... and this might muddy up your song...

and while listening to your song... you can't always hear it...

but when you stop song mid stream... you can really hear how much you have applied across all your tracks...

sometimes when my song is done... i save a copy... and remove all reverb and delay to see how it sounds...

Give it a try!

hear my latest GB music...

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend

posted by jaggerdiggydog

Nov 19, 2012

Garageband Hints and Tips - Recording Music

Here's something to try when recording your next piece of music...

Normally, when writing music, we listen to speakers in our studio.

Try writing your next piece of music wearing headphones the entire time.

When you are pretty much done writing and adjusting your song... then listen through your studio speakers/monitors.

I found this to produce a really nice sound that came alive!

Give it a try!

hear my latest GB music...

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend

http://www.camelaudio.com/AlchemyPlayer.php

posted by jaggerdiggydog

Oct 12, 2012

Garageband Hints and Tips: Camel Audio Alchemy Player

Garageband Hints and Tips: Camel Audio Alchemy Player

I just discovered an extremely cool FREE garageband Synth you can download and it comes with TONS of super cool sounds!!

BT says it is the best synth ever!!! Powerful words from a talented synth guy!!

Go to:

I downloaded this the other day and have had a blast playing these new exciting sounds!!

Give it a try!

hear my latest GB music...

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend

posted by jaggerdiggydog

Garageband Hints and Tips - Using Modulation

Here is a cool garageband tip...

Pick a cool sound that has a cool effect when you apply the modulation wheel on your keyboard.

Now record a new track with this sound.

Next... hit the record button again on this track and DO NOT play any notes, but just play with the modulation wheel...

Garageband will record these mod wheel changes and overlap them with the notes you played...

This gives you a chance to focus on the notes when recording, and then after, focus on just the modulation wheel...

This also works great for the PITCH WHEEL!

Sometimes it is tough to play a great line while also doing pitch bend!

Now you can play back a recorded keyboard part, while adding really cool pitch bend modulation!

Also, Garageband has a cool feature when you double click on a recored track to see your notes... but what is really cool is when you select the drop down button to see modulation, or pitch, or sustain pedal, etc... AND you can tweek the curves to make corrections!

Give it a try!

hear my latest GB music...

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend

posted by jaggerdiggydog

Sep 11, 2012

Garageband Hints and Tips: Playing Apple Mainstage in Apple Garageband

here is what you do...

0) install SOUNDFLOWER on your Mac

1) get mainstage up and running and producing sound

2) got to mainstage preferences and select AUDIO button at top of pref's

3) select SOUNDFLOWER (2ch) for AUDIO OUTPUT

4) Click APPLY CHANGES button

5) close pref's

6) open GARAGEBAND

7) go to preferences and select AUDIO/MIDI button at top

8) for AUDIO INPUT, select SOUNDFLOWER (2ch)

9) create a new RECORDING TRACK in garageband (not a MIDI/instrument track)

10) show the info panel for this new track... and click BROWSE panel. Down below on this panel, you will see import source SOUNDFLOWER (2ch) and make SURE MONITOR is ON

you are done...

you should now hear the mainstage instrument in garageband and you can record it.

Give it a try!

hear my latest GB music...

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend

posted by jaggerdiggydog

Aug 3, 2012

GarageBand Hints and Tips QUICK TIP - Panning tracks and volume

Good morning!

It just came to me that it might be useful to send out posts that are just quick little garageband tips!

Here is the first GarageBand Hints and Tips QUICK TIP:

When you pan tracks from dead center, there volume will go down a little, so to restore that tracks volume in the mix, put it up just a little!

Give it a try!

hear my latest GB music...

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend

posted by jaggerdiggydog

May 23, 2012

Garageband Tips and Hints - adjusting filter setting on EQ

One of the coolest features in garage band is using the automation controls to change settings over time to create variation in your music over time, with one benefit being your song doesn't get boring to listen to over and over again.

Open up the VISUAL EQ...

Check the box for analyzer...

Now play music...

You will see a spectrum analysis of your music in real time... (this tells you a lot about what is going on with that instrument!)

Now grab your waveform in the visual EQ...

While the music is playing, move the waveform back and forth...

The effect is very cool!

(Apple... would be cool to be able to record these in real time!)

So, no go into track automation and simulate what you did in visual EQ.

Give it a try!

hear my latest GB music...

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend

posted by jaggerdiggydog

Mar 17, 2012

Garageband Hints and Tips: Garageband Previews

When saving garageband projects, go to preferences and have GB save a preview of each song you create.

This allows you to preview songs in the finder by just selecting them and then hitting the space bar!

Another cool thing is that you can drag a GB song from the finder into iTunes, and it will instantly import it! (much quicker then the GB export function!

Give it a try!

hear my latest GB music...

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend

posted by jaggerdiggydog

Mar 1, 2012

Garageband Hints and Tips: Garageband Aftertouch Instruments

One way to get really nice expression into your playing is with a synth that responds to aftertouch. Most, if not all garageband synths do not respond to aftertouch ;-(

But I have a few aftermarket Audio Unit synths that do! One cool one is DUNE!!

Try it out for some really nice expressive keyboard parts!

Give it a try!

hear my latest GB music...

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend

posted by jaggerdiggydog

Feb 29, 2012

Garageband Hints and Tips: Using Mainstage with Garageband

Apple's Mainstage is an awesome deal!!! For $29 bucks you get an incredible assortment of cool instruments and loops! Playing around with Apple's Mainstage is a blast!

Now since this is a blog for tips on Garageband, you might be wondering how you can use Apple's Mainstage with Garageband?!

The key is to get SOUNDFLOWER, which is a free mac audio plugin that let's you route audio from mainstage output to garageband input!!

This combination gives you incredible sound module for Garageband!!

Give it a try!

hear my latest GB music...

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend

posted by jaggerdiggydog

Feb 23, 2012

Garageband Hints and Tips: Transposing song section in Garageband

There is a bug in Garageband that affects transposing, but the fix is easy...

Say you create a 4 bar recording of piano...

you then pull the right side of 4 bar section to repeat it over and over...

say you do this for 16 bars...

you now have a piano piece that is 16 bars long...

say you want to transpose song after 8 bars using the global pitch adjustment

you would simply move the pitch bar up a semitone, and you're done...

problem is... sometimes the pitch does not go up as it should (or down as the case may be)

the fix, is to take the 4 bar piano part, and pull it out to 8 bars...

then duplicate this bar and move it across to the right to create your 16 bars...

now the song with change pitch correctly at 8 bars, because the pitch change is at the boundary of a loop section!

hope this makes sense!

Give it a try!

hear my latest GB music...

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend

posted by jaggerdiggydog

Feb 22, 2012

Garageband Hints and Tips: Expanding on Earlier Tip of recording MIDI track and REAL track!

Garageband Hints and Tips: Expanding on Earlier Tip of recording MIDI track and REAL track!

here is the tip again for reference:

Garageband Hints and Tips: Recording Keyboards to Garageband

One of the normal set-ups in Garageband is a MIDI keyboard hooked up to your mac and this MIDI keyboard triggers the built in instruments.

Works great, and give you all kinds of cool editing choices after you have recorded your music.

Sometimes your controller keyboard has awesome patches in it and you want to record these to Garageband. Not a problem... simply hook up the outputs of your keyboard and input these into your mac and record to a REAL AUDIO track in Garageband.

What I like to do is ARM 2 TRACKS in Garageband and record a MIDI track simultaneously with your audio track!!! This offers up some cool possibilities!! It will allow you to layer up your real track with an instrument tract... or create a cool duplicate track to vary your song structure... etc...etc...

OK! now onto my new garageband hint and tip!

a cool variation of the above trick is to record an instrument track in garageband. Tweek it, correct timing, make it perfect!

Now, use MIDI IO plugin to output MIDI to your external keyboard that has it's own cool internal sounds.

Now set up a garageband track to record your external keyboard! Hit record and GB outputs your perfect MIDI track to your keyboard which then gets recorded back to GB!!

Way cool!

Give it a try!

hear my latest GB music...

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend

posted by jaggerdiggydog

Garageband Hints and Tips: Too Much Bass

I have noticed when i create songs in Garageband that the bass is sometimes heavy and boomy. The key to creating a tight bass track is to adjust the VISUAL EQ for all other tracks and tone down the bass. Then you can focus your efforts on getting a great bass sound from your bass track, and bass from other tracks won't be bleeding into your main bass track!

Give it a try!

hear my latest GB music...

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend

posted by jaggerdiggydog

Garageband Hints and Tips: Recording Keyboards to Garageband

One of the normal set-ups in Garageband is a MIDI keyboard hooked up to your mac and this MIDI keyboard triggers the built in instruments.

Works great, and give you all kinds of cool editing choices after you have recorded your music.

Give it a try!

hear my latest GB music...

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend

Feb 21, 2012

Garageband Hints and Tips: Getting songs from iTunes into Garageband

It used to be easy to get songs from itunes to garageband. You would just drag a song from itunes to a Garageband empty track. Easy. The new way to get songs from itunes to garageband is almost as easy. Select the song in itunes. Use the menu command "SHOW IN FINDER" to see the song on your desktop. Now drag that song right into garageband empty track and you're done!! Almost as easy!

Give it a try!

hear my latest GB music...

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend

Oct 27, 2011

Garageband Hints and Tips: when recording live keyboards to Garageband

when recording a live keyboard track into Garageband (ie, it is not a MIDI track) ARM a midi instrument track, so you get a "copy" of the notes you are recording in live! This will give you an exact duplicate that you can use in part of your song to add more interest to the song, or to do a cool delay effect, or to double up your track!

Give it a try!

Hope all you GB users are creating great music!

Svend