Garageband users - Talk to me

[Jim of Seattle]

Have you created a bunch of stuff using Garageband? If so, I want to hear from you. What do you like about it? Hate about it? Any and all comments regarding your experience with it are welcome, whether experienced musicians or complete music n00bs. Thanks in advance.

[fodroy]

i started using it early this summer. i did everything from here and here using garage band.

pros
-it's very easy to use.
-it has an instrument tuner (which kicks ass because both of my guitar tuners are broken).

cons
-you can't change tempo.
-the thing you use to create your own beats is pretty dumb.
-it's probably not very good if you want to do remixes and stuff, but then i wouldn't know. i don't do remixes.

i don't think it's fully featured compared to other recording programs. it's nice to do simple stuff though.

[Jim of Seattle]

Thanks, much appreciated. Anyone else?

[blue]

i hear it has an excellent piano roll feature.

[bwell]

Everything I have submitted under The BeWells name has been done in GarageBand. Overall, it is a great program for doing simple, quick work or for those new to recording. It still provides enough flexibility to usually accomplish the results needed as projects get more complex, however, the limitations are definitely there and will be quickly encountered. In most cases, there are ways to work around these limitations, but it can be far from ideal and efficient. Here are some of things that I have noticed in the year or so I've been using it.

On the positive side:
- included with the system
- general ease of use
- has a little bit of everything so I can usually find something in the ballpark for sounds and effects
- basic guitar/bass amp simulation
- can record 8 tracks simultaneously (this was limited to stereo in the iLife '04 version)
- provides decent basic features for working with loops (there may be some limitations here as well, but I have thus far only used loops for percussion)

On the negative side:
- no tempo changes as mentioned
- no bus processing or routing options
- no MIDI output, I'd love to do more external synth work but it only does sequencing within the application itself (guess I could use the link features and sequence with another app) using the built-in software instruments (or whatever workable plugin instruments may have been added)...and then it's a rather limited sequencer at best (using it in conjunction with something like Reason looks much better for that sort of thing...but I've only played around with that and not actually used it for a song)
- only handles AU plugins (last I checked no VST, etc.)
- limited bit rates at 16-bit/44.1kHz (not that I need anything better at this stage)
- can only select inputs from a single interface device (for example I cannot simultaneously record mic input from my M-Audio firewire device and the processed guitar signal via usb from a Line 6 PodXT...I'd love to have an easy way to record both the dry and processed guitar signal in one pass instead of recording dry and then running that signal back through to capture processed sound)
- editing tracks can get tedious...editing points for volume and panning can be set and then moved as needed (no curves though...only straight connect-the-dots like editing), however I haven't found a nice way to make global changes to those settings (short of selecting all the points to be changed...at least a click and drag can be used to highlight everything) and then those points don't necessarily move with the audio wave/file if you shift things around (cannot seem to lock/sync the envelope with the audio)
- the expanded view of a track is nice, but those edit points mentioned above cannot be seen/edited in that window and must be done instead in the smaller compressed (height-wise...no vertical scaling) track view above which gives a limited range/resolution for making volume and panning changes
- there are only two user-selectable effects per track (basic gate, compression, eq, echo, and reverb are always available for each track...but certainly not as good as some of the available plugins) which can be rather limiting since there are basically no live routing/bus options (you can always commit a track with effects and then use that saved track in a new track with additional effects)
- there is only one user-selectable master track effect
- effect routing/ordering cannot be specified (and I have no clue if they are actually processed in the order they are shown...I've seen some oddities with using a user-selected compressor/limiter effect then have things go out of whack when trying to apply slight eq which comes later in the list)...generally this tends to make mixing a pain due to the lack of fine control

I'm sure there are others, but these are the things that bug me every time I go to record or mix a song. Once I feel I have learned enough of the recording and mixing process, I will likely make the move up to Logic. Until then I can still get things done with GarageBand and for the time being I haven't found the above issues to be too big of a hurdle.

[Dan-O from Five-O]

Have you created a bunch of stuff using Garageband?

Jim does MS have you on a project or something? Are they thinking about having something like GB on thier next version of Windows? Are you allowed to answer my questions honestly?

[Jim of Seattle]

This has nothing to do with my job. But if it did, I suppose I wouldn't be able to tell you anyway. But it doesn't. My job at MS is in Services. As fun as it would be, I'm not on any product group. I don't help make software, I help people who use it. Or at least, I help those peoples' bosses.

[Freddielove]

I used Garage Band for live instrumentation and vocals for these songs

http://www.somesongs.com/artist_info.php?select=1138

and for the Song Fight Orchestra songs as well.

The backbone of the songs was created in Reason 2.5 with the other tracks layered on using the Rewire function to rout it into Garage Band.

I think using it this way I got the most out of the program.


I think Bwell covered the gamut there. I would say the biggest drawback is the limit on the effects. And it can be a processor hog as well.

I am now using Logic 7, having felt like I learned a lot in a year of recording with Garage Band. For that I think it has worked well.

[j$]

cons
-you can't change tempo.

Am I understanding this correctly - does this mean that every song that you produce has to be at the same tempo? Or you can't change tempo within a song?

If it's the former, then what the hell are you all using it for? If it's the latter, then I guess not THAT many cheap sequencers have that option anyway. Mine doesn't (and I wish it did).

Also can it do half-bar fills? I am trying to break out of 4/4 and I would love to try some software that let me sequence in less rigid timelines ...

j$

[Mostess]

I used GarageBand for the drums, organ, flutes, and bass in our "One Less." It's a pretty snazzy program, but it seemed inflexible. It helped me do some looping in a standard time signature, enter some piano-roll stuff to play instrument samples (I used the computer keyboard to play single-note lines and changed the dynamics afterward).

I found it tricky to overdub piano-roll stuff within a track. I found the application of effects to be unintuitive, but only because it doesn't call them "effects" but treats them like any other properties of the track.

In general it spends too much time making pretty icons and nice pictures of instruments and wooden background windows and stuff for my taste. It's much slower to start up than any other Mac application I have (except Photoshop).

I ended up exporting the instrument tracks to WAV files, transferring them to my PC, then loading them into Adobe Audition, which is still my favorite recording/mixing program. I probably won't use GarageBand again, except maybe to diddle with counterpoint ideas at work.

[Caravan Ray]

If you look at this lot;
http://www.songfight.org/artistpage.php ... rtkey=date

Everything from "Dont Break My Heart George Lucas" and later was done on GarageBand2. Everything prior to that was on Cakewalk ver 7.

I'm very happy with GB. I'm not much of a techno head and I just like things to be simple. GB is very simple. It seems to have been made with the user in mind. It's very easy to use simply. If you want to get fancy - it may take a bit of fiddling about.

Someone with no musical skill can sit down with it and make something musical in ten minutes - but it is still good enough for musicians to use. I think it will be quite a while before I grow out of it.

I think my early efforts with GB show too much reliance on the AppleLoops - and it all sounds a bit fake. As I've learned to use it better though - I think I'm improving.

Like Fodroy said - I found the rhythm programming to suck a bit - but now I'm getting used to it I quite like it.

Re the timing thing - yes that sucks - but I dont change tempos in the middle of a song often. If you want to do it you can - just duplicate the song - change the tempo in the second copy - record the different tempo bit - then cut and paste them back together. Fiddly - so if you really want to do it often - don't use GB - every now and again - it's no great hassle.

Pre GB - I had a lot of trouble just getting my stuff audible - I had mic hiss and clipping and booming bass and all sorts of shit. Now with GB - I just plug in, use pre-set equaliser setting and off I shoot. Easy.

The only thing that really bugs me is that I can't merge tracks easily - I have to export to iTunes and then drag back in again

[Caravan Ray]

I used GarageBand for the drums, organ, flutes, and bass in our "One Less." It's a pretty snazzy program, but it seemed inflexible. It helped me do some looping in a standard time signature, enter some piano-roll stuff to play instrument samples (I used the computer keyboard to play single-note lines and changed the dynamics afterward).

I found it tricky to overdub piano-roll stuff within a track. I found the application of effects to be unintuitive, but only because it doesn't call them "effects" but treats them like any other properties of the track.

In general it spends too much time making pretty icons and nice pictures of instruments and wooden background windows and stuff for my taste. It's much slower to start up than any other Mac application I have (except Photoshop).

I ended up exporting the instrument tracks to WAV files, transferring them to my PC, then loading them into Adobe Audition, which is still my favorite recording/mixing program. I probably won't use GarageBand again, except maybe to diddle with counterpoint ideas at work.

I guess I don't notice the inflexibility as much because I don't play a keyboard or use midi or stuff like that - I only use guitars and occaisionally play with the drum noises on the computer.

i love the pre-set vocal settings - cause I've got no idea about equalising vocals and that stuff.

[fodroy]

cons
-you can't change tempo.

Am I understanding this correctly - does this mean that every song that you produce has to be at the same tempo? Or you can't change tempo within a song?

If it's the former, then what the hell are you all using it for? If it's the latter, then I guess not THAT many cheap sequencers have that option anyway. Mine doesn't (and I wish it did).

Also can it do half-bar fills? I am trying to break out of 4/4 and I would love to try some software that let me sequence in less rigid timelines ...

j$

it's within the song. you can change the tempo to whatever you want, but whatever you change it to will be for the entire song.

as far as time goes. you can do 2/2, 2/4/, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 7/4, 6/8, 7/8, 9/8, 12/8

[spinlock]

Hey, I've been having trouble with garageband. I'm normally a linux user, so the mac stuff doesn't come to me easily. Crazy drag and drop for everything. Tsch.

How do you GarageBand users finish up your tracks? At the moment, all I can do is export to iTunes, and convert to mp3 - and that takes a chunk of volume and all the life left in it away.

What I'd really like to do is export all the instruments seperately to audacity and do a bit of tweaking there (Can you vary the volume on an audio track in garageband?)

Any tips or descriptions of how you work with Garageband would be much appreciated. Particularly mix and mastering. Thanks!