With all of the aspiring musicians here, I'm surprised I'm not seeing more talk about GarageBand on the mac. No musical knowledge required to start - it's essentially cut-and-paste music... but for those that *can* play an instrument, the world of doing collaborative projects with others around the world has endless possibilities. A couple of good places to start are: www.macjams.com www.icompositions.com In the past, I've usually just grabbed a track that captures my interest and will add a solo over it or something.
audacity used to work with my mac, but everytime i open it up now, it just doesnt work =/ garageband is alright though...hope to get protools someday soon
GarageBand is pretty cool for a free program (pre-installed on Macs). I actually use it for all of my recordings. The loop library is pretty large, the digtial instruments sound pretty darn good, and the processors (dynamic, time-based, EQ's, etc.) are pretty decent. It's not Logic, but it's not bad. You can certainly put out a good product with GarageBand. I have GarageBand and Audacity for Mac, and they're not even close. Audacity is more like a wav recorder, and GarageBand is like a dumbed-down version of Logic or ProTools.
Garageband is ok. it's a cool that it comes on the mac for free. i use it as a novelty thing when i feel like making a fun song. but i can't take that kind of music serious. i do sometimes use the beats as the drums for some of my demo tunes to show my band.......for what i do i use ProTools HD....
That's not what I meant. What I meant was, Audacity is like a wav recorder... and that's it. Okay, it has a built-in mp3 converter, but it still just records sound. GarageBand is a multitrack music-making program with built-in processors, EQ's, time-based effects, etc., and a whole library of loops and samples. Plus, there are a handful of digital instruments that can be played either through your computer's keyboard or a MIDI controller.
and thats not on audacity...? there are lots of effects, and its easily compatible with digital instrument programs. ive never used garageband though so i probably shouldnt be talking
For a program that comes with the mac, GB is surprisingly powerful. No, it isn't ProTools or Logic, but then it isn't supposed to be. I've done what I feel is some reasonably serious 'home studio' quality stuff with it, and at a mere fraction of the cost of what ProTools or Logic costs. For instance, I did all of the sax/flute/voice parts to this tune just using my mini, a Griffin iMic and a Shure SM57 on GB. I think it all just depends on what you do with it. For me it's all about the collaborative aspects. It's a lot easier for me to let other people write the backgrounds and rhythm tracks so I can play melodies, do background horn parts and solo over it.
Oh, incidentally, I found out yesterday that M-Audio just released a program called "Session" that's essentially trying to be GarageBand for the PC.
if your using it as a recording program thats awesome. it will get the job done up to certain extent. there are no buses. efx per track are highly limited. the efx are pretty shite for the most part. nothing i would use for the bands i work with. but i do use it. at home regularly on my laptop when i'm demoing something. i thought you were talking about making songs out of the loops on the program and considering that a "real creative endeavor"....i have a friend and he uses the ACID program and uses the loops and actually bosts about these "ditties" he comes up with on there (using pre-recorded material) as his own. there fun to listen to. in a novel sort of way. unless you are making the loops out of stuff you've recorded, then loop music for the most part is bullshit.
Yeah, I've had pretty decent luck with it as a recording program. The built in effects are 'okay' (I use the delay and reverb a bit), but yeah, I wish I had more flexibility with them. Probably the best way to do that would really be to use a separate effect processor. Nonono... the collaborative aspects of being able to add something to music that people have already started creating is the real appeal to me. It allows me to get a pretty decent sounding demo out quickly and painlessly. I found some samples useful, mostly drums and percussion stuff. The horns sound horribly fake, and the latin piano stuff was completely useless to me. Where I think this would REALLY shine is if they could somehow incorporate a sort of "Band-in-a-box" approach where I could punch in a series of chords and have the loops shift diatonically with what I've entered. The fact that it only transposes the loops up or down in half steps without any relation to the key limits the loop concept. But then again, they're not necessarily targeting the musician's market. Well, it's cut-and-paste music for the general populace and makes people be happy about their own 'creative' process without requiring them to have a lot of fundamental understanding about the way music works. From that standpoint, I can appreciate it. The downside to it, though, is that on some level, it also sort of commoditizes music to a degree where a lot of people feel that they don't need musicians any longer because what they have is 'good enough'.
analog is great. but digital is here to stay. and digital is quite awesome. not in things like amps....but reverbs, delays, flangers, chorus...etc.....recording devices as well are better in digital. analog tape is to exspensive and time consuming. digital allows you to do many takes and gives much easier editing capabilities.
