A Garageband User Needs Help

Can anyone out there help Ember? I bet you can!

"Hi Svend,

I'm loving working with Garageband, but lately the program is SUPER slow. I have done all the optimization tips, cleared space on my hard drive (I keep loops and finished songs on my external HD) and I still find that when I click on the record button, it takes up to 3 minutes for it to engage. Do you have any tips for fixing this? I'm using the ILIFE update for Garageband and I have a Macbook that's less than a year old: 1.83 GHz Intel Core / 512 MB 667 MHz. Up until the two months, this program was working like a dream. 

I would love some feedback! Thanks,

Ember - email: ember@emberswift.com "

posted by jaggerdiggydog

Garageband Tip: Using many different speakers and headphones for mastering in Garageband!

You may have noticed like I have that your music sounds radically different when listened through different speakers and headphones. Make sure and listen to your music through various speaker systems and headphones. I have a high end stereo surround sound system I use, in addition to small USB speakers for near field monitoring as well as apple headphones and BOSE quiet comfort headphones and lastly listening through my AUDI A8 car stereo system!

Using all these various systems from simple low cost speakers to state-of-the-art stereo systems will let you make adjustments to your master recordings so you get "good" sound from all peoples systems. A typical issue/problem is to monitor your recording only with a state-of-the-art stereo system is you tend to crank up the bass because your system can handle it AND deliver it! But, when you listen through a small system it overloads small speaker systems. 

The opposite can also be true! If you monitor your masters on a small, bass deficient speakers, then you will tend to pump up the bass, and when you listen to your mix on a bigger, full bass system, the bass will be way too heavy.

Another issue is putting a lot of stereo panning effects into your tracks, which may sound great when listening through speakers, but will sound terrible when listening with headphones, which is much more common with all the millions of Apple iPods out there :) - so give your final mix a good listen with headphones too.

Enjoy! Create! Share!

- svend 

(posted by jaggerdiggydog)

Garageband Tips: Mastering Your Songs Using Apple's Garageband for CD & Online Distribution

Mastering is the art and science of creating a 2 channel stereo master that is used to create a commercial CD, or to upload to a site like Apple iTunes. This "master" is produced in such a way that it's sound quality is excellent on a variety of sound systems, from a car radio, to a state-of-the-art stereo system to an Apple iPod. Great bass (but not too heavy!), good balancing bewteen all instruments, and clean, sparkly highs.

Here is how to create great masters from within Apple Garageband.

When mastering... export your final multitrack song to itunes, then create a new garageband file and inport the stereo master. This is the file that you will "tweek" and master for final output!

Take 4-5 great commercial songs that you like the production and sound quality of, and import them  into garageband. Then look at the analyzer function of the visual EQ. look to see where the audio spectrum falls...

now compare this reference song with your composition to see where your audio spectrum falls

I like to use songs by steely dan and the doobie brothers which were really well produced

load both your stereo mix, and say, AJA by steely dan... and see how the spectrum compares!

I usually find that my bass is too heavy! so I have to adjust carefully to keep a full bass sound withone having a muddy bass.

Use a parametric EQ for adjusting small areas, since a parametric will let you fine tune exactly how much of the audio spectrum you are adjusting.

As to the reference songs you pick, make sure they are of similar style of music... and an artist who is known for great audio recordings... for instance, if you were writing a new age song, listen to some tunes by a respected new age artist and producer like will ackerman.

if you write a lot of different styles of music, select various great songs that match the different styles of your songs, and import them all into your Garageband "Mastering Master" as I call mine... you can then mute all songs except the one you are using as reference and then ofcoarse your composition.

Hope these help :)

- svend (SEO WEB HOSTING )

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GARAGEBAND TIPS: Cool Half Time and Syncopated Drum Loop Tip for Garageband

One of the tools in a composers tool box when writing music in
Garageband is to change drums so they are running in 1/2 time. Once
in a while you can find drum loops that have a half time version, but
this is rare. And the half time drum loop should "fit" with the full
time loop. Here's what you do... Create a track with your drum loop.
Create a duplicate track of the drum loop, and slide the loop
forwards or backwards creating a double time or syncopated loop!!
Give it a try and always experiment! - svend / www.svend007.com

GARAGEBAND TIPS: Put Your Garageband Music on CB Baby

CD Baby: sales and distribution for your music. CD Baby has helped
over 150,000 artists sell over $40 million in physical CDs, digital
downloads, and live sales since 1998.

For a simple $35 setup, CD Baby can get your music selling worldwide
on cdbaby.com, Apple iTunes, Yahoo Music, Best Buy, Rhapsody,
Napster, MSN Music and more.

CD Baby keeps only a 9% cut, paying 91% of all income directly to the
artist. (For physical CDs, we keep $4 per CD sold.)

Your CD will be available to over 2400 traditional retail CD stores
in the USA. You get paid full retail price for these sales.

CD Baby pays everyone every Monday night. Over $250,000 every week,
paid directly to our musician clients.

I am planning to get my CD up on CB Baby in December! - svend /

www.svend007.com

New Instrumental Song By Svend using Apples Garageband 3.0

I just finished a new instrumental called "Evictions and Edictions"
using Apple's great new version of Garageband 3.0 (yes, I meant to
spell Addictions wrong :) - hope you like the new song. I used many
of the new cool features in Garageband 3.0 like visual EQ, and 4
effects at a time and the new Apple compressor effect. -

www.svend007.com

GARAGEBAND TIPS: Musicians Need Search Engine Optimization for their Web Sites!

It occurred to me that musicians checking out this blog might be
interested in learning more about SEO (search engine optimization)
and how it can help them market their music better! Besides my love
of composing music and using garageband, my "day job" is web design,
logo design, and SEO including a very unique service called SEO WEB
HOSTING. SEO is all about results! And those results are to get your
web site to the TOP of the search engines! As proof of how I do this,
think abot how you found this site :) - you went to google let's say,
and put in "garageband tips" and my site comes up on the first page
of google! I can do this for YOUR web site for the terms you want to
be found for! go to www.svend.com to find out more! - svend -

www.svend007.com

GARAGEBAND TIPS: The Beauty of Apple's Garagebands Effects

One of my favorite techniques in Garageband is to adjust the effects like eq when the song is playing. Use this to experiment with how you might automate the effects over time as the song is playing, giving you real time feedback! www.svend007.com

GARAGEBAND TIPS: Using Multi Takes in Apple's Garageaband

A great new feature in Apple's Garageband is the multi take feature.
When you record a track, and the song is set to repeat after so many
measures, garageband will record multiple takes as you play. What I
like to do is duplicate the track, copy the file to the new track,
and then I can listen to take 1 in track 1 and listen to take two in
the copied track. Give it a try! Svend - www.svend007.com