With the departure of GarageBand 3 ( , the version included in iLife ’ 06 ) , iLife ’s music sketchpad covering centralize most of its try at incorporating podcasting capabilities . With the liberation of GarageBand ’ 08 , Apple teddy its focus back to musicians , as most of the platform ’s major new features — Magic GarageBand , multi - take recording , arrangement , broader automation capableness , and Visual EQ — nicely augment the euphony - making mental process .
Modestly magical
During his recent presentation of GarageBand , Steve Jobs spent the bulk of his time showing off Magic GarageBand , a dissimilar , template - driven view of the programme that places a five - piece virtual band at your disposal . To direct that striation to bring , you take one of nine styles — vapors , rock , jazz , country , reggae , funk , Latin , roots rock and roll , and slow bluing — take to hear to a musical snipping or the entire tune , and click the Play push . The sounds of a very polished banding then emerge from your Mac . If you come home on the Audition push , you may then pick out one of the tool — bass , guitar , drums , keyboard , and pass legal document — and choose a different instrument to play that instrumental part ( horns or fiddle for the lead legal document , for model ) . Doing so causes not only the speech sound of the instrumental role to transfer , but also the part it plays . you may then export the tune to the received GarageBand view , where you may further edit it .
Musicians seeking a professional back - up band will find Magic GarageBand ’s repertoire too special . Although it play variations of nine musical styles , you ’re still lodge with just those nine melody , and instrumentalist look for greater kind will quickly grow banal of the repetition . But musicians competent enough to get hackneyed of Magic GarageBand probably are n’t its audience . Rather , it act as as a template — one from which you’re able to view its melody , snippets , or part in the standard GarageBand interface — permit non - instrumentalist to get more out of the program and , hopefully , become intrigued enough by the program ’s other “ magic ” powers to explore further .
Designed for musicians
Those musicians who ’ve antecedently enjoyed GarageBand as a melodic sketchpad and rehearsal tool will find more to care in the current interpretation . Apple has introduced multi - take transcription , a feature that let you cringle - record multiple takes , as you might do when recording several pass of a solo ( you could memorialize almost ceaselessly , as multi - take recording is limited only by your Mac ’s hard movement space ) . you’re able to then select the take you want by selecting the track ’s yellow Take marker and take a take from the menu that appears . you may combine takes by splitting the lead and choosing one take from one part and another take from a later part of the solo . Apple has also ganged together families of loops that can be selected the same path . For good example , drag the Basic Drum loop 01 track into GarageBand ’s main window and you ’ll find that by clicking on the bulge - up menu button , you’re able to choose Basic Drum loop 01 ‚ from a menu containing loops 01 through 06 . This is a handy room to audition related to loops and works for both Software Instrument and Real Instrument tracks .
The Arrangements feature lets you label incision ( Verse or Chorus , for example ) and copy or move them — sections mark off — around your project . This is an easy manner to record a poesy once and ingeminate it multiple times . It could habituate some refinement , however . For good example , if you ask to adjust the end of a section — cut off a couple of stray notes , for example — you might want to do by all tracks under the arrangement bar as a unit and drag on the cake to shorten all the racecourse underneath it by the same amount . It does n’t do that . rather you have to shorten each raceway and then adjust the arrangement taproom so it draw up with the ends of the track . In poor : Arrangements are really good only for moving and copy material , not edit it .
you could also automate a greater sort of elements , admit effect parameters — the speed and profundity of a chorus burden , for example — as well as reverb and echo amount and the sea captain track ’s tempo . alas you ca n’t do this in real time with some kind of practical dominance — a knob or Pseudemys scripta , for instance . or else you have to draw in the automation cut by inserting command point along a line and dragging points up or down to exchange the province of that argument – for object lesson – sum up spot that speed up and slow down that chorus burden .
GarageBand ’ 08 also allows you to apply a corking issue of force to your tracks and those effects are more configurable now . In the previous version you could put on Compressor , EQ , Echo , and Reverb effects as well as two selectable effects such as Chorus , Distortion , and Flanger or any AudioUnits effect you installed . The current version offers four selectable effects . Plus , the Compressor and new Track Reverb effect are configurable , allowing you to adjust the doorstep of the compressor or the clip and color of the reverb effect . Previously , these just offer amount sliders from 0 to 100 .
Additionally , the stock EQ effect has been replaced by the Visual EQ result , one that let you see oftenness represented by a blue cake within four bands — Bass , Low - Mid , High - Mid , and double . you could drag the bar around to change the EQ within these set and listen to the results in real prison term . It ’s a terrific way to get quick feedback on how your registration affect the audio .
The program also introduces support for 24 - bit recording and export , annotation publish for Software Instrument tracks , and the ability to normalize tracks on exportation ( balancing the bulk ) . pro and near - pros who have the gear to take reward of 24 - bit sound — which represents sound more realistically — will appreciate this lineament .
The program ’s notation printing process is all right for simple scads , but it certainly wo n’t take the lieu of a dedicated notational system program such as Sibelius’Sibelius 5 , MakeMusic’sFinale 2008or Finale Allegro , or even the annotation features in such digital sound workstation as Mark of the Unicorn’sDigital Performeror Apple ’s ownLogic Proand Logic Express . Unlike these applications , GarageBand mark just the selected Software Instrument ( MIDI ) track rather than a accumulation of track on multiple staves and it does n’t support lyrics .
The option to normalise track on export — mean that you increase the overall intensity of your file to the point where the loudest parts are tug just below distortion and other parts are increased in intercourse to the loudest parts — is welcome , but in my test file , normalizing was n’t enough . When processing a podcast I take the quiet region louder and the loud parts exactly where they were . you could achieve these solvent with a compressor burden applied to the passkey track , but I ’ve find it easier to practice GigaVox Media ’s detached utility , The Levelator .
Macworld’s buying advice
Magic GarageBand is the flashiest , but sure not the rich new feature in GarageBand ’ 08 . Multi - take transcription , arrangements , expand result , and automation make this variant a more adequate to shaft for player . While I constitute small kinks in some of these features , overall they ’re quite useful . Though not specifically mean for podcasters , those raise podcasts profit from such new GarageBand lineament as enhanced and expanded effects and automation . If I were a overzealous GarageBand sports fan ( oh wait , I am ) I ’d suggest that these improvements are enough to justify iLife ’ 08 ’s $ 79 price .
[ Christopher Breen is a musician and senior editor forMacworld . ]
