This is how you toggle the metronome on and off, access the Piano Roll editor, quantize a region of notes, and manually adjust individual notes in the Piano.
For instance, you line up the “Ruler,” to the point you want to isolate, and then use the (Command + T) function. You can do this in two separate areas of your workspace, in the “Piano Roll Grid,” or in the regular workspace.
One can also edit the music using the Marquee line within the “Piano Roll Grid.” For example, when you zoom in on the audio file, you can highlight the part of it you want to eliminate down to the tiniest detail.
You simply highlight it by hovering the ‘+’ sign over the Audio Region, clicking and dragging over the part you want to delete and then hit the “delete” button your keyboard. This comes in handy for audio rather than MIDI recordings.
However, you have to make sure that you’re isolating just one track, whether it be a sample, an audio recording, or a software instrument track, etc. You can’t cut and edit more than one piece of music at once. It has to be just one.
In case you make a mistake, you can always hit the (Command + Z) function to go back to where you were before.
One of the great things about Garageband is that all of the commands used for day-to-day use on the computer are transferable to the software. It’s all fairly intuitive.
Many of the commands that you’ve grown accustomed to as a Mac user are all the same functions for Garageband.
You can zoom in and out on your MIDI region to see the audio file in more detail by separating your fingers or moving them closer together.
This is especially useful for when you’re trying to edit minute details, that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to see and thus, isolate.
You can also zoom in and out through the (Command – Left or Right arrow key).
Another incredibly useful editing tool in Garageband is the (Command + J) function, which allows the user to essentially combine or merge the tracks together.
This stops the user from having to copy and paste every little individual track. Instead, one can just merge all of the music together as one track, and then put it on a loop.
To do this, just select the two or more regions you want to combine and hit the (Command + J) function and it will all come together.
It’s a great way of saving time and energy during the editing process.
The cycle area on top of the workspace in Garageband is used for repeating the same bar of a recording over and over again. There are a few purposes for this, including practicing a part just before recording, multiple takes, and editing.
For instance, a user can loop the same part repeatedly to judge whether the proper changes have been made during editing.
In other words, if you’ve recorded vocals, and forgot the lyrics during one part and said “um,” or something like that, you can loop the same part over and over again, and figure out what needs to be eliminated down to the last millisecond, without having to press “Play” repeatedly.
You know that Cycle Mode is on when it’s displayed as a yellow trip in the top portion of the ruler. When it’s turned off, it’s no longer yellow.
There are two ways of turning it on and off:
You can press the Cycle button within the control bar, or simply press ‘C’ on your keyboard.
Changing at what point Cycle Mode starts and stops:
Select the top part of the ruler, then drag your cursor to the desired starting and stopping part of the recording.
Another way of editing the music is through the “Resize Pointer,” which is at the end of every piece of the “event,” as Garageband’s “Quick Help” section calls it.
Take the cursor and grab your recording, moving it from side to side, left to right. Using the “Snap To Grid” setting/function allows for the music to literally “snap” back to the line, and thus, stays more in time.
It’s a lot easier to edit music in Garageband when you have this option selected within the “Edit” menu on the toolbar on top. You can turn this function on and off, by hitting the (Command + G) function.
Essentially, as I mentioned above, what this does is it literally “snaps” the music right back to the lines on the grid, that way whenever you edit a piece of music, it falls back exactly on the beat.
If you want, you can turn this function off and see how difficult it is to edit music in Garageband. It becomes super annoying, however, there are moments where it’s worth your while to turn it off.
Once you’ve isolated the part you want, hit the (Command + C) function to copy it, and then the (Command + V) function to paste as many copies of it that you want.
Usually, after I’ve created a melody with the Steinway Grand Piano, I’ll open up a new “Software Instrument” track, and then copy and paste the music into a different instrument track.
This function allows you to fill out your mix, without coming up with an entirely different musical section. In many cases, you can create an entirely different piece of music, just by copy/pasting it onto a new Instrument track.
1) Select the Audio file you want to copy.
2) Hold down the “Option” key.
3) Drag the cursor to the left or right
4) While holding down the “Option” key, release the mouse and voila, you’ve just copied and pasted a new MIDI region.
Whenever you want to isolate an audio recording, it’s worth noting that it may be helpful to understand at what beats-per-minute the song is, that way you can trim music at a specific beat.
This is especially important whencreating music with samples (link here)
For instance, in a track that I made using the theme song written by Bear McCreary for The Walking Dead, I had to figure out the BPM of the track, that way I could make a different drum track for it.
If you don’t have the proper BPM set up, it’ll be almost impossible to make drums for the song, because nothing will line up, and will sound unsynchronized.
Then, when you try and add other melodies through software instruments and so on, synchronization will be almost impossible. So knowing the Beats Per Minute is essential.
The best way of doing this is just counting along to the song by hitting the table with your hand or bobbing your head along to the beat.
Then, grab a metronome – or use one online, on your phone, or in your DAW – and match the tempo of the song with how fast you were slapping the table.
I’d recommend using a real metronome because they’re better to use, you can read about the one I recommend here.
There are other ways of figuring out the BPM of a song, of course, but this is how I do it.
(Every person knows how to count the BPM intuitively because whenever you’re jamming along to a song by bobbing your head, you move along to the beat. I’ll write a more in-depth article on this topic later).
Moreover, you can check whether you’ve calculated it properly or not through the way the MIDI Region lines up in your DAW.
*There are other options available online, including songbpm.com, and beatsperminuteonline.com. The latter is superior for calculating the beats-per-minute because it’s manual and can be used for the most obscure of music. However, the former is more for commercially available songs.
I imagine this topic will be too much for the average DAW user, because frankly, most music producers, especially nowadays, don’t know how to read music. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s just the way it is.
1) You can access the Score Editor simply by double-clicking on your music or “Midi Region.”
2) And then go down into the Smart Controls, and click on the button that says “Score.”
In this section, you can edit the music through standard notation. I actually use this every once in a while, because I learned how to read music when I was a kid (although, I’m not nearly as good as I was as a kid).
I usually use it for creating bass lines. Sometimes, it’s harder to hear if your bass line is off-key, so you can either push it up a few octaves so you can hear it or, you can look at the standard notation to figure out if the music is off-key or not.
If you want to name your track, use the “Secondary Click” function (“right-click,” and that’ll bring up your options where you can see where it says, “Rename Track.”
You can do the very same thing to the actual MIDI Region.
This seems like an obvious one because it is. If you’re going to be making music in a DAW, naming each track region will save you a ton of time, running through each one, trying to figure out which one is the kick and which one is the snare.
By clicking on and dragging the “Track Headers,” Garageband users can actually easily move each software instrument track to and from wherever they want.
For instance, grouping the guitars together, or the kick and bassline. You don’t have to manually move the MIDI Region either; it will move with the Track Header.
Rather than dragging and dropping each note so it falls exactly on the grid-lines in the Piano Roll, which is normally what I would do, you can use the Time Quantize function down in the DAW’s Smart Controls.
For instance, if you’ve recorded music with a MIDI Keyboard, and some of the notes are offbeat, using the Time Quantizing function will bring each note to where it needs to be, rather than doing it all manually.
1) First things first, in the Software Instrument track, choose the option “Region,” rather than “Notes,” in the Smart Controls.
2) In your Smart Controls, underneath the setting, “Time Quantize,” select 1/8 Note, and keep your Quantizing strength at around ’75 to 100.’ This should suck in all of the notes accordingly. Library loader for mac.
Obviously, there are more Timing settings one can use, but this is as far as I’ve ever used the quantizing function.
Some people argue against the use of Time Quantizing, accusing the practice of robbing the music of its “soul.” The argument goes that there are idiosyncrasies and personality traits eliminated from the music through the quantization practice.
For instance, when playing a guitar riff, if something is slightly off-key or not in proper time, the inaccuracy and “incorrectness” of the note may precisely be, the exact thing that gives it its unique flavor.
The Blues Scale, probably one of the most used scales in guitar playing, is the epitome of this. The Blues Scale isn’t classically “correct,” due to its flattened fifth in relation to the minor pentatonic scale, or flattened third in relation to the major pentatonic.
This is another one that I just came across. Rather than manually selecting, say, for example, the “Mute” button on a bunch of tracks, and having to go through each one individually, there is a way of hitting all of them at once.
For instance, if I want to hit the “Mute” button on 10 of my 20 Software Instrument tracks, I’ll hover my cursor over the “Mute” button, and then click the track-pad and hold it while I drag the cursor down the screen. This will hit every “Mute” button on the way down.
It’s the same practice for turning them off.
That’s all for now. I hope this helped you out. Be a trooper and share it on social media.
Why record with GarageBand?: If you’re looking to make new music without having to work with a lot of complicated features and hassle, you have come to the right place. Whether it is a full blown sound track or just a little rhythm you’re working with on the road, with GarageBand you can put together your very own beats from scratch in a few easy steps. In this article, we will learn around tracks, let’s start:
When you open up GarageBand and choose a brand new project, the first thing it’ll ask you to do is to choose a type of track – Software instrument track, Audio track (that lets you record using a microphone or connect a guitar or bass) and the drummer track. For the purpose of this tutorial, we’ll be working with software instrument to create a basic track.
Watch this tutorial to understand the basics:
– Select the software instrument and hit CREATE.
– This will open up the track creating workspace, here you’ll see a panel on the left called library, and a panel on the bottom. For now, Close the library panel and the smart controls by clicking on the library button in the extreme top left, and the third icon from the top left, to increase your workspace.
– Now Let’s begin with the classic Electronic piano- Click on the record button, (the red dot at the top window). First you’ll hear a 1, 2, 3, 4 after which you can start playing on your MIDI controller.
– Once you’ve played your beat, click on the record button again to stop recording. You can check out what you’re recording sounds like by clicking on the play button next to the record button.
After recording a beat, it’s time to edit it to make your notes sound more coherent and less separated. Remember that you’ll have to repeat these steps for all the beats that you add to your track.
– Click on the fourth icon (a little scissors icon) from the top left to open the editor’s panel. You can also hover over the icons to figure out the keyboard shortcuts for those commands, to save time in the future. E is the shortcut for the editor’s panel.
– Select all your notes on the editor’s panel by dragging the cursor over them and extend the notes by dragging the edge of any one of them.
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– You can also zoom in to make sure that none of your beats are ahead or lagging behind the beat. To fix that you can click on the small button on the left, under the ‘Time Quantize’, which is gonna quantize your notes to the grid.
-To change up the voicing on your chord progressions – select the note that you wish to work with, and transpose it up or down on octave. The keyboard shortcut for this is: shift+cmd+up/down arrow
– You can also open the smart controls, by clicking on the third icon at the top left and try different combinations of these controls, by adjusting the knobs to change the sound of the electric piano to get a slightly psychedelic sound if that’s what you’re after.
– To fix the tempo of the track you can simply adjust it from the tempo option in the top window to make sure your track is not dragging or ageing.
– To adjust the volume of any track, use the slider on the left panel right under the name of the instrument
– The pan control next to the volume slider is used to pan the sound to the left or right hand speaker exclusively.
– Go to the plus button above the classic electric piano option to create another track.
– When the track type window pops up, click on the Software instrument and select create.
– To pick an instrument other than the electric piano, you can choose one from the library panel on the left. For example, click on the synthesizer option and choose the bass from there to select the synth bass that you want to work with, for example – the agile synth bass.
– Record another beat by clicking on the record button and playing the beat on your midi controller. Once again, you will need to quantize the notes.
-Repeat this to add as many software instrument beats as you want to and quantize them.
Once you’re done with your basic beats, you can layer up some of these with drum sounds to make it sound fuller and punchier. For that:
– Create a new instrument track and record and quantize a drum beat.
– Once you’ve found the perfect drum background you can record just a one bar pattern and loop it to fit the length of your track. To loop a note, hover your cursor over the edge of the note and then drag the loop button till the end of the track
– Select the drum note.
– Open the smart controls panel and click on the EQ option.
– In this window, go to the top right hand corner and grab the high cut filter and drag it down depending on how mellow you want the drum sound to be.
You can also add loops and audio from the apple loop library to your track without recording them. To do so:
– Open the loop library by clicking on the second loop icon on the top right, start.
– Here you’ll find thousands of pre recorded loops and audios categorised on the basis of different genres, moods and instrument.
– Click on different loops to check out what it sounds like and once you find a loop that you like, you can simply drag and drop it to your workspace where it says ‘Drag apple loops here’.
– You can add as many pre recorded loops as you want. You can also use the smart controls on these loops to do a little mixing and work with the EQ to make sure the loops go with your original beat.
Once you’re done recording and editing, it’s time to arrange the track. Usually you would want to work with an intro, a drop and an outro. Drag and move around the beats to place them wherever they are needed in the arrangement.
– It’s better to start with the electric piano and the bass and the lead part, and have them loop over a few times.
– Add the snare and 808 clap sounds midway through the buildup to add to the sense of building.
– Now place the drop beats after the buildup, and have the bass and lead part going throughout the drop and maybe throughout the outro as well.
– To bring back a beat after a break, you can click on alt and drag it to a new region to copy the beat.
The answer to all your whys is simple and straight, Not every editing app in the market keeps up with everything new the creative brains bring in. Talk about transitions, there are literally 2000 and you need to find them all in an app and at one place, if you sign up and pay for one editing app. You cannot just dive in and buy anything random, be specific, know what you need exactly and then invest smartly. Sometimes, what you think is good for you or is popular on the market, might not be the right choice for you.
Technology is blooming. A little more than a decade ago, if you wanted to make music, you would have to rent a studio, expensive equipment, and get professional training to manoeuvre the equipment. Needless to say, it wasn’t easy on the pockets. Then tech giants did their thing and gave you audio stations on your desks, laptops, iPads, and even your phones. A decade later, anyone can mix sound professionally without the studio and co. With the boom of the digital audio workstations, with different options offering different features on different budgets, it has become extremely important to choose just the right DAW for your specific needs, to maximize utility.
With great options comes great confusion, and it can be quite a task to find your soulmate DAW. Here are a few tips to guide you find your best suit:
The best way to start is research. Always research. Talk to as many people as you can who already do the type of work you’re looking to pursue. Read reviews and take feedback from current users of applications that you’re considering. Having said that, know that you are not bound to take up anyone’s suggestion. Something that works for one person might not exactly be favourable by some other. Allow yourself to have preferences, and always prioritise the features that are essential for you.
If you’re just starting out in the music industry, and unsure of what to expect from DAWs, don’t directly go investing in expensive and heavy plans. It’s wise to test the waters first with the most inexpensive, or if possible- then free, software. Start out with a set idea of what you expect from your ideal DAW and make a list of features, then look for the most inexpensive/ free software that offers most/all of those features. For example if you’re just starting out and are relatively untrained you might want to look out for applications like GarageBand that offer free lessons along with regular features, but if you’re a trained and experienced person and want to dive straight into hard-core work, then you may look for applications that offer more plugins, as opposed to prioritizing a more friendly user interface.
Just looking at a list of features is not enough to give you an idea of how compatible you are with an application. The workflow and the design of these apps are as important as the primary features. So before you invest in software, try to get an idea of how well the program suits you. Most paid software offer a limited period free trial or demo. Try and make full use of it, and check out first hand how user-friendly the interface is, and how well the app is compatible with your needs and way of working. If you can’t lay your hand on a free trial/ Demo, try reaching out to someone who already uses the application and looks if it could be possible for you to have a trial run with them. Your best options will allow you to work swiftly and efficiently with limited or no help from the user instructions manual. If it feels natural and intuitive, go ahead and subscribe!
If you are absolutely unsure of where to start, here are a few recommendations you could try out-
Here is a list of Alternatives of GarageBand.
Please write to us for any queries or questions. Thank-you for reading.