GarageBand 101: Mastering GarageBand

Reviewed by Daphne Kalfon

This is a very attractive, elegant tutorial in all. On the left-hand side of the tutorial window is a detailed table of contents – this column can be hidden if one wishes. In that case, the videos will just play one after the other in chronological order. Otherwise, if you want to be in control of which videos you view, you can leave the menu window open for that purpose.

The rest of the window is dedicated to what is being shown. As each video launches, its title appears along with the duration of the video. What I really like is how the GarageBand arrange window or whatever other window the trainer is talking about, appears front and center, and as the trainer talks, you can see the movements of his mouse pointer as he shows you what he is doing. This makes it extremely easy to follow and understand for when you try these things yourself later.

As well, below the main window, there is the movie play indicator, which you can click and drag on to fast forward or rewind through anything you want to see again.

I went through the tutorial myself, and I should say that I immediately thought of what a good companion this tutorial is to the book I reviewed some months ago called “Keep it Simple with GarageBand – Easy Music Projects for Beginners” by Keith Gemmell. What you learn during the tutorials, you can then apply in the tutorials laid out in the book.

The concepts covered

Connecting GarageBand – this chapter covers things like connecting a keyboard, configuring audio devices and managing your GarageBand projects.

Getting into GarageBand – the main arrange window, playback, regions, tracks, the track mixer, and how to import a MIDI or audio file.

Working with Tracks – track management, the track info pane and editing a generator preset.

Using Apple Loops – the loop browser, audio vs. MIDI loops, managing and organizing your loops, creating a loop, importing Apple Loops, and 3^rd party Apple loops.

Software Instruments – playing software synths, how to use the onscreen and musical keyboard options to enter notes, custom instrument settings.

Recording MIDI – the buffer, the metronome, timing and quantize, cycle recording.

Working with MIDI – editing, transposing, velocity, notation view, custom SFX instruments.

Recording Audio – setting up, the instrument tuner, recording guitar, bass and vocals, clipping, multiple track recording, enhancing tuning and timing, and following tempo and pitch.

Working with Regions – cut, copy, paste, transposing, joining, renaming, and unlocking the playhead.

Creating a Mix – setting levels, volume and pan, using control points.

Using Effects – gate, compressor, EQ, echo, revert, AU effects, autowah, auso filter, bass reduction, bit crusher, speech enhancer, track echo, treble reduction, tremolo, the voice transformer, custom effects presets, locking tracks.

Finishing – the master fader, adjusting overall sounds, transposing parts, Rewire and GarageBand, sending a song to iTunes, exporting a song to disk.

As I mentioned in the “weaknesses” section above, some of the audio terms and concepts introduced over the course of the videos are not fully explained, or explained enough to make sense to the new user, or even to a not-so-new user. It might have been helpful in that case to have at least a glossary of terms included with the video for easy reference.

Even after having used GarageBand for quite some time now, I definitely learned a thing or two as I watched these videos. I highly recommend this training package to anyone who is a new user to GarageBand as well as to those who would like to deepen their knowledge of GarageBand further, or as a valuable companion to any book about GarageBand.

Conclusion

http://www.macprovideo.com/browse/GarageBand provides a lot of information about the tutorial including a detailed description of each concept covered. As well, five sample videos taken from the tutorial are provided on the website so that you can have a good idea of what the tutorial looks like and its overall teaching style. In all there are 96 videos in the tutorial.

The trainer, Paul Garay, has his own website, which provides further info on home recording and lots more: http://www.insidehomerecording.com/