How To Change Instrument In Garageband

Chapter iv. Software Instruments (MIDI)

Equally you know from the previous chapters, GarageBand'south loops tin can provide hours of fun and profit even if you don't have a lick of musical grooming. If you accept some semblance of musical chops, though, GarageBand can quickly take you to the side by side level of inventiveness. It can tape your live keyboard performances, whether you're a painstaking, one-notation-at-a-fourth dimension plunker or a veteran of Carnegie Hall.

To generate the notes that GarageBand records, yous tin can play either an external musical keyboard or an onscreen one. Either fashion, the cool part is that yous tin combine your own performances with GarageBand's other tools. For example, some people use GarageBand's loops to create a rhythm department—a fill-in ring—and then they tape a new solo on peak. Other people ignore the loops altogether and play all of the parts themselves, one instrument at a time, using GarageBand as a multitrack "tape recorder."

Anything you tape like this shows upwards in dark-green GarageBand regions. If yous made it through Chapter ane, you at present know that these regions comprise MIDI information (that is, annotation data that you can edit). If you played a wrong note, no biggie—merely drag it onto a unlike pitch, or delete it altogether. If your rhythm wasn't perfect, so what? No human being being'south rhythm is perfect (at least compared to a computer's), not even that of stone star millionaires. GarageBand can set up it for you.

How to Feed a Hungry GarageBand

To record a musical operation in this style, you need some way to feed GarageBand a stream of alive musical data. You lot tin exercise and then in any of several ways:

• Use the onscreen, mouse-clicky keyboard . That is, click the keys of GarageBand's ain, built-in, onscreen piano keyboard. Until Apple tree invents a 10-button mouse, even so, this onscreen keyboard limits y'all to playing just one note at a time. Unfortunately, information technology's very clunky; information technology's like playing a piano with a bar of soap.

  Just it's free, information technology's born, and it's handy for inputting the occasional ho-hum solo line or very brief musical part.

• Use your Mac'due south alphabet keyboard . A bang-up new characteristic of GarageBand 2 turns your regular typing keyboard into a musical keyboard. You don't go much expressive adequacy, since pressing the letter keys harder or softer doesn't produce any difference in sound. Still, at to the lowest degree you lot can play chords this fashion, and you can utilise your fingers instead of the mouse.

• Connect a MIDI controller . MIDI (pronounced "middy"), you may recall from Chapter 1, stands for musical musical instrument digital interface . It'due south an electronic language that lets musical equipment and computers communicate over a cable.

  Considering your Mac is perfectly capable of playing any of hundreds of musical-instrument sounds (like the ones built into GarageBand), you don't actually demand an electronic keyboard that tin can produce sounds. All you really need is i that can trigger them.

  That's the point of a MIDI controller ; it looks and feels similar a synthesizer keyboard, simply produces no sounds of its own. It makes music only when it'south plugged into, for instance, a Mac running GarageBand.

  Apple sells (or, rather, resells) a MIDI controller for $100 chosen the Thousand-Audio Keystation 49e. If yous tin alive with 49 keys, information technology's a very nice keyboard. It draws its power straight from your USB jack, then you lot don't need a power adapter, and information technology'south velocity-sensitive , which means that its keys are touch-sensitive. The harder you play, the louder the piano sound, for case.

• Connect a MIDI synthesizer . If y'all already own a MIDI synth—an electronic keyboard that provides an assortment of sounds and has MIDI connectors on the back—there's no point in buying a MIDI controller. You lot can connect the keyboard directly to your Mac and utilize it the same way, and simply ignore the keyboard'due south own sound banks.

  Some synthesizers tin connect straight to your Mac with a USB cablevision. Most, however, require a MIDI interface , a box with nickel-sized MIDI In and Out connectors on one side, and a USB cable for your Mac on the other.

The post-obit pages explain these musical input methods i by one.

Your Complimentary! Onscreen Digital Piano

When yous burn up a new GarageBand document (on a Mac with no physical MIDI keyboard connected), the GarageBand keyboard appears automatically in a floating window. This onscreen piano is a gift from Apple to people who would like to record notes of their own (instead of just using loops), but don't own a physical MIDI keyboard (Figure 4-1).

Clicking the keys of this piffling keyboard with your mouse plays the musical instrument audio of whatsoever Software Musical instrument (green) rail is currently selected. (The respective instrument proper name appears at the peak of the keyboard.)

The onscreen keyboard is a pretty bare-basic beast. For case, it lets you play but one note at a fourth dimension.

Figure four-1. You lot tin can brand this keyboard announced at any time by pressing -One thousand (or, if y'all're charging by the hour, choosing Window → Keyboard). Hide it by clicking its tiny upper-left Shut push button. Tip: The keyboard now comes in iii sizes. Y'all cycle among them by clicking the green Zoom push identified here, or by dragging the lower-right handle diagonally down and to the correct.

Merely the onscreen keyboard also harbors two secrets that you might non notice on your own. Kickoff, it actually has more keys than the 88 of a existent piano—well over ten octaves' worth of keys! To reveal the keyboard's full width, drag its lower-correct ribbed resize handle. Or just curlicue the keyboard by clicking the tiny gray triangles on either finish.

Second, yous can actually command how hard yous're "playing" the keys. No, not by mashing down harder on the mouse button. Instead, you control the pressure on the keys by controlling the position of your mouse when information technology clicks. Click above on the key to play softer; click lower downward to play harder.

Playing harder usually means playing louder, but not e'er. Depending on the Software Musical instrument you lot've picked, hit a key harder may change the nature of the sound, non the volume. More on this topic in the box on Section 4.2.

For instructions on using the onscreen keyboard to record, skip alee to Section 4.5.

The Mac Keyboard as Pianoforte

Information technology's nice that Apple provided a niggling onscreen keyboard so that even the equipment-deprived can listen to GarageBand's astonishing audio drove. But you lot'll never make it to the Grammy Awards using zippo just that unmarried-annotation, mouse-driven brandish.

Fortunately, a new feature called Musical Typing lets you trigger notes by playing, rather than clicking. This characteristic turns your Mac keyboard into a piano keyboard. It even lets you play polyphonically —that is, you can play more than than ane note at a fourth dimension. (Six-note chords are the maximum.)

Note

The Mac's keyboard was never intended to be chorded, however. Indeed, information technology'southward been advisedly engineered to process only one keypress at a time, for word processing purposes. Therefore, playing chords using Musical Typing results in a subtle, mandatory rolling effect, as each note sounds a few milliseconds later the preceding 1.

If the event becomes noticeable, you can always clean upwardly the chords afterwards recording, using GarageBand's quantizing characteristic (Section 5.5).

The row beginning with the letter A represents the "white keys"; W, Due east, T, Y, U, O, and P in the summit row are the "black keys" (sharps and flats). Equally shown in Figure 4-ii, having one row serve as "blackness keys" means that some computer keys produce no audio at all, considering a real piano doesn't take a black central next to every white central. No wonder using Musical Typing takes some getting used to.

Tip

In GarageBand 1.0, the simply fashion to perform using your Mac keyboard was to apply the shareware plan MidiKeys (role of the "Missing CD" of this book's first edition). In general, the Musical Typing feature is a heck of a lot easier to set up and use, but you still need MidiKeys if you desire to play with both hands at in one case, using two unlike rows of keys.

Nonetheless, it's a powerful tool for scratching out GarageBand pieces when you're on a aeroplane, on a motorcoach, in bed, and anywhere else where lugging along an external keyboard would get you arrested, expelled, or divorced.

Effigy 4-2. Top: The calorie-free gray lettering on the Musical Keyboard "keys" give you lot some indication as to what notes you'll hear when you press the keys on your Mac keyboard. Bottom: Here'due south a more than familiar depiction of what notes you'll hear when you press the keys on the meridian ii letter-fundamental rows. The Tab key simulates a piano's sustain pedal—when information technology'south pressed, notes continue to ring even after you release the keys. The number keys manipulate virtual pitch-bend and mod wheels.

Musical Typing

To use Musical Typing, create a Software Musical instrument (greenish) rails in GarageBand. (One fashion is to choose Track → New; in the New Track dialog box, click Software Instrument. Choose an instrument from the right-side column, and so click OK.)

At present open the Musical Typing window by choosing Window → Musical Typing, or by pressing Shift-c-K.

Once its keyboard appears (Effigy 4-2), try playing a few "keys" on the A row of your Mac's keyboard. You'll see the Musical Typing piano keys modify colour, you'll hear the corresponding notes play in GarageBand, and you lot'll see a flickering "light" in the fourth dimension display (Figure four-4). It tells you that GarageBand is receiving MIDI musical data.

At this point, yous tin use Musical Typing similar it's a MIDI controller keyboard, including making GarageBand recordings (Section 4.v).

Control of Key Velocity

There's only one problem with using Musical Typing as y'all've read almost information technology and so far: you can't control the key velocity (Section four.2) as you play. (Apple never designed the typing keyboard to be affect-sensitive, although the idea is intriguing. What would it exercise—make the letters bolder the harder you striking the keys?)

The solution is to tap the C and Five keys—repeatedly, if necessary—to simulate "softer" and "harder" central presses. This is non exactly a simple task when you're using both hands in the middle of a Rachmaninoff concerto, but if yous record one hand at a fourth dimension, riding the C and V keys with the other manus, it'due south a manageable arrangement.

Of course, you may too want to record your track with no velocity adjustments, then conform the key velocities later past editing the rails (Section v.6).

Tips and Tricks

Other than handling key velocity, Musical Typing does the best conceivable job of turning your Mac into a bona fide musical instrument. Here are some of its finer points:

• Shift the unabridged keyboard up or down an octave at a time by borer the X and Z keys, respectively.

• "Press the piano's sustain pedal" past pressing Tab. Press once to "step on the pedal," printing a second fourth dimension to "release it."

• "Turn the mod wheel" past pressing 4 through 8; run across Section four.9 for details on the mod wheel. (College numbers trigger greater turns of the modulation wheel.) Printing 3 to turn off modulation altogether.

• "Turn the pitch-curve bike" past property down the i key, or bend it up by holding down 2. (Alas, you can't control how much you "plow the wheel." You ever become a pitch bend of 20 units up or down, on a scale of 0 to 127.)

  Tip

  Cheers to a bizarro bug in GarageBand 2.0.1, the pitch-bend keys don't piece of work when yous're playing certain key combinations, similar the notes C, D, and any other "white central" note. Version 2.0.2 fixed this glitch.

• While Musical Typing is quite useful for recording new tracks, information technology's as well extremely handy when choosing an musical instrument audio for a rail.

  Think well-nigh it: Ordinarily, when the New Track dialog box appears (Figure four-3), GarageBand offers no mode for you to hear what each listed sound sounds similar (unless you have an external MIDI keyboard). Most people wind upward laboriously clicking a sound'south name, closing the dialog box, clicking the keys on the GarageBand onscreen keyboard, double-clicking the rails proper name to reopen the Runway Info dialog box, and then repeating the whole ritual over and over.

Merely with Musical Typing'due south window open, you tin click an instrument's name and and then play a few notes on your Mac's keyboard to hear what it sounds like—all without leaving the Track Info dialog box.

If you lot fool around hither long plenty, you'll find some surprising selections, including sound effects, exotic percussion instruments, and traditional instruments that have been processed in wild, sometimes musically inspiring ways.

Effigy four-iii. This dialog box appears when you cull Runway → New Track. These instrument sounds all wait delicious, only how are yous supposed to know which one sounds exactly right for your piece? Elementary: Printing a few keys on your MIDI controller (or, if you're using Musical Typing, the A row of your keyboard). Utilize your pointer keys to walk through the instrument list, and play a few more keys to hear the next sound.

MIDI Synths and Controllers

The best fashion to record keyboard performances, though, is to seize with teeth the bullet, break the bank, and purchase an actual, external MIDI musical musical instrument. As noted earlier in this chapter, information technology might take any of these forms:

• A MIDI controller . Apple tree, for example, sells an K-Audio keyboard for $100. The just cable required is its USB cablevision, which connects to your Mac's USB port.

  That's not the only controller worth considering, of course. If the idea of 49 keys strikes you every bit a bit confining, the aforementioned company also makes a 61-key model that Apple tree sells for $200. Online music stores similar www.samash.com sell both of these models and many others, including a full 88-key model (the aforementioned number of keys as a real piano) for $300. These more than expensive keyboards have semi-weighted keys that feel more like a piano than the bound-loaded plastic keys of the 49-cardinal model.

• A MIDI keyboard . This category includes synthesizers, electric pianos, Clavinovas, and so on. Some connect directly to your Mac'due south USB port, but virtually require an adapter known as a MIDI interface , which costs about $xl at music stores.

• Some other MIDI musical instrument . Keyboards aren't the merely MIDI instruments. There are besides such things as MIDI guitars, MIDI pulsate sets, and fifty-fifty MIDI gloves. They, likewise, generate streams of note data that GarageBand tin record and play back.

Once yous've hooked upward a MIDI instrument, create a Software Musical instrument rails and try playing a few notes. You'll hear whatever audio you established for that track, and y'all'll encounter the little MIDI activity light blinking in GarageBand's time display (Figure iv-iv). Now you're ready to tape.

Tip

An external instrument is also great when it's time to cull a audio for a new track, because you tin can walk through the various instrument names without ever having to shut the Track Info dialog box. See Figure iv-3 for more data.

Figure 4-4. The fiddling bluish blinky light lets you lot know that GarageBand is "hearing" your MIDI instrument equally you play information technology.

Recording a MIDI Track

Whether your keyboard is on the screen or on your desk, virtual or concrete, you use it to tape in GarageBand the aforementioned fashion. Here'south the routine:

1. Click the track you desire to fill up with music .

   Remember, it must be a Software Instrument (greenish) track.

   If you don't already have a green rails ready to record, choose Rails → New Runway to create one. In the New Track (Track Info) dialog box, click the Software Instrument tab, and then choose the instrument sound y'all want (Figure iv-3). Click OK.

2. Plough on the metronome, if y'all like .

   A metronome is a steady beat clicker that's familiar to generations of musicians. By clicking away "ane, 2, 3, 4! 1, 2, iii, iv!" it helps to keep you and GarageBand in sync.

   Use the Control → Metronome command, or the

   

   -U keystroke, to plough the metronome clicker on or off. (See the box on Department 4.5.)

   Tip

   On the General pane of GarageBand → Preferences, y'all can indicate whether or not you want the metronome to play during playback , or merely when you're recording.

3. Choose a tempo for recording .

   This is a very important step. Because you're using a sequencer (recording software) instead of a tape recorder, it makes no deviation how slowly you record the part. You lot can tape at threescore beats per minute, for example, which is basically one note per second—and then play back the recording at a virtuosic "Flying of the Bumblebee" tempo (229 beats per minute, say). Your listeners will never exist the wiser.

   This isn't cheating; it's exploiting the features of your music software. It's a good bet, for example, that quite a few of the pop songs you lot hear on the radio were recorded using precisely this trick.

   And so how practice you find a good tempo for recording? Get-go, simply noodle effectually on your keyboard. Observe a speed that feels comfortable enough that the music maintains some momentum, but is withal slow enough that you can make it through the part without a lot of mistakes.

   Then accommodate the GarageBand tempo slider to match. Hit the Space bar to play the music you've already got in place, if whatsoever, and conform the Tempo control (Department four.v) during the playback until it matches the pes-tapping in your head.

   Tip

   If you oasis't recorded any music, 1 style to hear the tempo as you fiddle with the Tempo command is to turn the metronome on during playback, as described in the preceding tip. Then play back your empty song, using the clicks as your guide while yous accommodate the Tempo slider.

   In one case yous've found a good recording speed, finish playback.

4. Position the Playhead to the spot where you want to begin recording .

   If that's the start, bang-up; simply printing the letter Z central or the Home key. If information technology'southward in the eye of the piece, click in the vanquish ruler or utilize the keyboard shortcuts (Section 1.6) to position the Playhead at that place. (Most oft, though, you'll want to put the Playhead a couple of measures before the recording is supposed to begin, every bit described in the adjacent step.)

5. Ready upwardly your countoff .

   It'due south very difficult to begin playing with the correct feeling, volume, and tempo from a expressionless cease. That's why y'all ever hear rock groups (and garage bands) commencement each other off with, "And a-one! And a-two!" That'southward too why well-nigh orchestras accept a usher, who gives one silent, preparatory beat of his baton before the players brainstorm.

   GarageBand can "count you lot in" using either of two methods. Commencement, it tin can play one measure out full of beats, clicking "one, two, three, go!" at the proper tempo so you'll know when to come in. That's the purpose of the Control → Count In control. When this control has a checkmark, GarageBand will count you in with those clicks.

   If you intend to begin playing in the middle of existing music, though, you may prefer to have the music itself guide you to your entrance. This is the 2d method. For example, you might make up one's mind to plant the Playhead a couple of measures before the spot where you lot want to record. Every bit long as doing and then won't tape over something that's already in your rails, this is a convenient way to briefly experience the feel or groove of the music before you brainstorm playing.

6. Get set to play—easily on the keyboard—and then click the blood-red, circular Record button .

   Or merely press the letter R key on your Mac keyboard.

   Either way, you hear the countoff measure, if y'all've requested one, and then the "tape" begins to gyre. Requite information technology your best, and effort to stay in sync with the metronome, if you've turned it on.

7. When you come to the end of the department you hoped to record—it might be the entire slice, or perchance but a part of it—tap the Infinite bar (or click the Play button) to cease recording .

   On the screen, you'll encounter the new greenish region you recorded.

8. Play back your recording to come across how y'all did .

   Rewind to the spot where you started recording. If y'all recorded under tempo (that is, slower than yous intend the playback to be), boost the Tempo slider to a meliorate setting. (Considering you recorded a stream of MIDI notation information and did not record actual digital sound, you lot can adjust the playback tempo at any time without changing the pitch of the notes. You lot couldn't go an "Alvin and the Chipmunks" outcome if yous tried.)

   Tap the Space bar to hear your operation played back merely equally you recorded information technology.

Tip

Do what the pros practice—tape a section at a fourth dimension. The odds of a adept take are much greater when the segment is brusque. Remember, likewise, that if your song contains repeating sections, you can reuse one perfect take by copying and pasting it to a different spot in the vocal.

Retakes

Fifty-fifty before y'all play dorsum a new recording, you may know if it was a great performance, a good candidate but not necessarily your best try, or a existent stinker that must be deleted immediately. Perhaps you lot messed up a portion of the playing. Perhaps you had problem keeping upwards with the metronome, or you felt as though it was holding y'all back.

The dazzler of a MIDI sequencer like GarageBand, though, is that yous can keep your accept, redo information technology, or trash it, instantly and guilt-free, having used up no record or studio time.

Hither'due south how to proceed after recording a MIDI functioning:

• Trash the whole thing . If the whole matter stank, press

  

  -Z to trigger the Edit → Undo command. The new green region disappears. Adjust the tempo, if necessary, and try recording once again.

  Note

  Earlier you go basics deleting bad performances, though, think that information technology'due south sometimes more time-efficient only to manually set what was wrong with it, using the GarageBand rail editor. See the side by side chapter.

• Trash role of information technology . Use the Edit → Split command (Department three.seven) to cutting the region into pieces, so that you lot can preserve the good parts just rerecord the bad ones.

• Keep information technology . If the whole matter was great, or mostly great, salve your file (

  

  -S) and move on to the next runway.

• Mark it "best and then far." Printing the alphabetic character Grand key to mute the rail you lot just recorded. Then create a new rails and repeat the entire process, hoping to do ameliorate this fourth dimension.

Figure 4-5. Top: You've recorded this take twice, with mixed results each time. Middle: Suppose the middle department of the 2nd have was the best performance. Chop off both ends. Bottom: Drag the remaining middle section upward onto the first accept; this obliterates the corresponding moments of the first accept. The upshot: A hybrid final track containing the best portions of each recording.

After this second attempt—or your third, quaternary, or fifth—you can compare your various takes by muting and united nations-muting them as they play back. You can likewise chop up these diverse regions and apply only the best parts of each attempt, yet another extremely common practice in professional recording studios (Figure 4-5).

Tip

One great way to create a new rails for the next attempt is to duplicate the showtime one (cull Track → Duplicate Rails). GarageBand creates a new, empty track just beneath the first one—with the same instrument sound and effects (reverb and so on) already selected.

Spot Recording (Punch In/Punch Out)

If you lot're able to record an entire song perfectly the first time, with no mistakes—well, congratulations. Sony Records is standing by.

Most people, though, wind up wishing they could redo at least part of the recording. Usually, you played near of it fine, but botched a few parts here and there.

In the professional recording business, patching over the muffed parts is so commonplace, it'south a standard office of the studio ritual. Clever studio software tools tin can play back the rails right up until the trouble section, seamlessly slip into Record mode while the histrion replays it, and then plow off Record fashion when information technology reaches the end of the problem part, all without missing a vanquish. Recording engineers telephone call this punching in and out .

Believe it or non, even apprehensive GarageBand lets you dial in and punch out. In one case you master this technique, you lot'll be very grateful.

Here's how it goes:

1. Plow on cycling .

   Section one.5 describes cycling in the context of playing a department of music over and over once again. For recording, the steps are much the same (run across Effigy 4-six). In this case, though, the get-go and end of the yellow Cycle bar designate your dial-in and dial-out points—the function you're going to rerecord.

2. Set your metronome and tempo. Turn on the Count In command (in the Control menu) .

   Run into Section 4.v for details on setting up a recording. In this example, Count In is very important; information technology makes GarageBand play the one measure of music that precedes your dial-in point. (Yous don't have to position the Playhead for this do. Whenever Cycling is turned on, the Playhead always snaps to the kickoff of the yellow stripe when playing or recording begins.)

3. Begin recording (by pressing the letter R key, for example) .

   During the countoff measure out, yous don't just hear metronome clicks—you lot too hear the existing music in that preceding measure out. GarageBand begins recording after the countoff, as the Playhead reaches the yellow cycle area.

   As yous record, y'all'll also hear the old material—the part yous're trying to rerecord. Don't worry, though; it volition disappear after you replace it. (If it bothers y'all, delete it manually before punching in.)

   GarageBand doesn't play past the end of the yellow bar. Instead, it loops back to the beginning of the yellow bar and keeps right on recording. (This loop-record feature is the key to cumulative recording , described next.) If yous nailed it on the first take, but stop playing.

   Figure 4-6. Click the Cycle button—or press the alphabetic character C primal—to make the yellow "repeat this much" bar announced at the top of the screen. Drag the ends of the yellowish bar to identify the musical section you lot'll exist loop-recording. (If you don't run into the xanthous bar, or if y'all desire it to appear in a totally different department of the piece, elevate through the lower section of the beat ruler.)

4. Printing the Space bar (or click the Play button) to stop recording .

   When you play back the slice, GarageBand flows seamlessly from your original have to the newly recorded "patch" section.

Tip

This dial-in/punch-out routine is the only style to go if your goal is to rerecord precisely measured sections.

When the parts you desire to rerecord accept nicely sized "bookends" of silence before and after, though, there's a more casual method available. Just play the piece from the beginning—and "ride" the letter of the alphabet R key on your keyboard. With each tap, you jump into and out of Tape style as the slice plays. This manual dial-in/punch-out method offers some other fashion to record over the bad sections and preserve the good ones.

Cumulative Recording

GarageBand'south tricks for people with less-than-stellar musical ability don't stop with the wearisome-tempo-recording trick and the ability to rerecord certain sections. The Cycle button described earlier is also the fundamental to cumulative recording, in which you record one note at a time, or just a few, building up more complexity to the passage as GarageBand loop-records the same section over and over (Figure 4-vii).

This play a joke on is especially useful for laying down drum parts. In real life, drummers are surrounded by dissimilar kinds of drums; they're constantly reaching out and twisting to hit the different instruments at unlike times.

Figure 4-seven. Using GarageBand's Cycle feature, you lot can tape the same section of music over and over, adding more notes on each pass. Hither, you meet the music from three successive loops through the same three-mensurate section. With each repetition, you add together more notes to what you lot've already recorded.

When yous want to perform your own drum parts, you'll probably be using a MIDI keyboard. Information technology turns out that GarageBand'due south various drum sounds—bass pulsate, snare drum, tom-toms, and then on—are "mapped" to the various keys of the keyboard (see Figure 4-viii). Unless you have an extraordinarily unusual limb construction, yous'll probably find it very difficult to play all the drums you want in a single pass, since they're scattered all over the keyboard.

Information technology'southward much easier to record drum parts in successive passes, as GarageBand continues to tape: the bass drum the first time, the snare on the next pass, and so on.

Here's how to gear up loop recording:

1. Plow on cycling .

   See stride 1 of the preceding instructions. Figure 4-6 explains how to adjust the yellow Cycle bar. The point here is to "highlight" the portion of music you want to record.

2. Prepare the recording .

   Adjust the metronome, the Count In pick, and the tempo, just as described in the previous pages. If yous plan to tape in the center of a slice, place the Playhead to the left of the cycled region to give yourself a running start. (GarageBand will exist in playback-just style until information technology reaches the yellowish Bike bar.)

   Click a rails header to indicate which track you want to record. If yous intend to lay down a drum runway, fool around with your keyboard to identify which cardinal plays which drum sounds. (The basic setup for GarageBand's drum kit is shown in Figure 4-viii.)

   Figure 4-viii. Cumulative recording is especially useful for drum parts, because it lets y'all focus on only one pulsate sound at a time. This diagram illustrates how GarageBand's drums are mapped to the keys of your keyboard. (The dissimilar pulsate kits are all mapped identically, although what constitutes a snare or a low tom in the Jazz kit may non audio anything like the one in the Techno kit.) The bass pulsate (kick drum), snare, and ride cymbals are the foundation of most pulsate parts, so these may be the keys you want to "ride" with three fingers equally you tape.

3. Click the Record button (or press the alphabetic character R fundamental) .

   Each time GarageBand plays through the yellow-striped department, it will record any notes you play. Think, GarageBand accumulates all the notes you play, adding them to the piece even if you play them on different repetitions of the looped passage.

Tip

Information technology'southward OK to let a pass or two go by without playing annihilation. You just haven't added annihilation to the recording in progress, and then no harm done. In fact, you might want to consider routinely sitting out a couple of repetitions between recording bursts.

Each time GarageBand loops dorsum to the beginning of the section, you'll notice that it'southward already playing dorsum what you laid down on previous passes. And when you finally stop (tap the Space bar) and play back the new passage, you'll observe that every notation you played during the various repetitions plays back together.

Tip

Believe it or not, you can stop the playback, mind, do other work on your slice, and return much later to add yet another layer of cumulative-recording notes—every bit long as you haven't disturbed the yellowish Cycle bar in the trounce ruler. One time you move that yellow stripe or turn off cycling, GarageBand ends your chance to record additional textile in that region. The side by side recording you brand there volition wipe out whatever'south in that location.

Mod Wheels and Other MIDI Fun

Many of GarageBand'southward built-in sounds are samples —cursory recordings of actual instruments. That's why the grand pianoforte sounds so realistic: considering it is a chiliad piano (a $50,000 Yamaha, to exist exact).

But behind the scenes, GarageBand's sounds have been programmed to respond to various impulses beyond just pressing the keys. They can change their sounds depending on what other MIDI data GarageBand receives from your keyboard.

For example:

• Sustain pedal . If you lot have a sustain or damper pedal, y'all can ride information technology with your human foot just equally y'all would on a pianoforte. (It'south designed to concur a note or a chord even after your hands accept released the keys.) Almost whatsoever MIDI keyboard—including the $100 M-Audio Keystation—has a jack on the back for a sustain pedal, which costs near $xv from online music stores like www.samash.com.

• Key velocity . Every bit noted before in this chapter, a number of GarageBand sounds respond to central velocity (that is, how hard you strike the keys). Most of the instrument sounds but play louder as you hitting the keys harder, but some really change in character. Acoustic guitars feature a little fingerboard slide; clavichords get more of a "wah" sound; Wah Horns besides "wah" more; and many of the synthesizer keyboard sounds sound "rounder" as you lot hit the keys harder.

  Figure 4-9. On the M-Sound MIDI controller keyboards that Apple sells, two control wheels liven upwards the MIDI proceedings. The pitch-curve wheel actually bends the note'due south pitch. Just plow the bicycle either before or subsequently striking the note, depending on the event you want. The modulation wheel, meanwhile, either produces sound-changing effects or does nothing, depending on the GarageBand sound you lot've selected.

  Using the correct technical language, you would say that these instruments are velocity-sensitive.

• Pitch and modern wheels . Some keyboards, including that $100 M-Audio controller that Apple sells, have one or two control wheels that also affect GarageBand's sounds (Figure iv-9).

  For example, a pitch-curve wheel makes a note's pitch slide up or down while y'all're nevertheless pressing the primal. It'south an essential tool for anyone who wants to make brass or wind instruments audio more realistic, since those instruments are capable of sliding seamlessly from pitch to pitch—something a keyboard, with its serial of stock-still-pitch keys, can't ordinarily practise.

  Yous tin can use the pitch-bend wheel in either of two means. First, turn the wheel downward, for example, and hold it (it's spring-loaded). Then, play the primal you want—and simultaneously release the primal. What you hear is a slide up to the desired note.

  Second, you can strike the central showtime and then turn the wheel, or even wiggle the bicycle up and downward. The audio winds up wiggling or bending away from the original note, which is a common technique when you're trying to simulate, for example, the bending notes of a blues harmonica.

  Tip

  You can hear these effects in the sample file called 04-Control Wheels. It's on the GarageBand Examples CD described on Section one.5.

  The pitch-curve wheel affects all GarageBand sounds.

• Your keyboard may also take a modern wheel , short for modulation bicycle. It's an all-purpose control wheel that produces unlike effects in unlike sounds. Hither are some of the effects it has on GarageBand's built-in sounds:

Table 4-1.

Musical instrument Proper name	Modernistic-Cycle Effect
Bass instruments	Brightens the sound
Choir sounds	Vibrato
Drum kits	No upshot
Guitars	Vibrato
Most horns	Vibrato
Funk horns	"Fall-off" (slide down) at terminate of note
Mallets	Vibrato
Nearly organs	No outcome
Vocoder Synth Organ	Searing distortion
Nearly pianos	No effect
Strings	Vibrato
Well-nigh Synth Basics	Vibrato
Star Sweeper	"Sweeps" the sound's phase
Synth Leads	Vibrato
About Synth Pads	No issue or vibrato
Angelic Organ	"Clicks" through the audio
Aquatic Sunbeam	"Sweeps" the sound'due south stage
Electrical Slumber	"Sweeps" the sound's phase
Liquid Oxygen	"Clicks" through the sound
Tranquil Horizon	"Sweeps" the audio's phase
Woodwinds	Vibrato

Note

Vibrato is the gentle wavering of pitch that'due south characteristic of most professional instrumental soloists and singers. (Real-globe pianos and drum sets can't produce vibrato, which is why GarageBand's corresponding sounds don't react to the modern wheel.)

If you lot've bought the Symphony Orchestra Jam Pack, you'll find an even more amazing range of effects lurking in the modern bike. The violins and other stringed instruments, for example, play normally (legato) when the cycle is at rest. But as y'all turn the wheel more and more, the articulation (playing style) changes from staccato (curt notes), to tremolo (rapid, back-and-forth bow strokes), to rapid half-step trills, then whole-step trills, and finally—at the top of the modern bike's rotation—pizzicato (plucked strings).

Woodwinds, brass, and timpani playing styles are similarly affected—for example, turning the modern wheel halfway makes the oboe play with vibrato, the horns swell into a crescendo, and the timpani (kettledrums) play with a thunderous roll.

Learning to apply your mod cycle can add a peachy deal of beauty, realism, and grace to your GarageBand recordings. Remember that y'all don't have to turn information technology all the way up; you lot can plough the wheel only office manner for a more subtle consequence. Call up, too, that the mod bicycle is usually most effective when you plow information technology after the note has begun sounding. It's the contrast of the modernistic wheel (versus the unaffected note) that produces the all-time upshot.

Source: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/garageband-2-the/0596100353/ch04.html

Share this post