How To Change The Key In Garageband

Affiliate iv. Software Instruments (MIDI)

As you know from the previous capacity, GarageBand's loops tin provide hours of fun and profit even if you lot don't have a lick of musical training. If you lot accept some semblance of musical chops, though, GarageBand can quickly accept yous to the side by side level of inventiveness. It can record your live keyboard performances, whether you're a painstaking, i-notation-at-a-fourth dimension plunker or a veteran of Carnegie Hall.

To generate the notes that GarageBand records, you lot can play either an external musical keyboard or an onscreen one. Either fashion, the cool part is that you can combine your own performances with GarageBand's other tools. For example, some people employ GarageBand'due south loops to create a rhythm section—a backup band—then they record a new solo on meridian. Other people ignore the loops altogether and play all of the parts themselves, one instrument at a time, using GarageBand every bit a multitrack "tape recorder."

Anything you lot record like this shows up in green GarageBand regions. If you made information technology through Affiliate one, you now know that these regions contain MIDI information (that is, notation information that y'all tin edit). If you played a wrong annotation, no biggie—but drag it onto a different pitch, or delete it altogether. If your rhythm wasn't perfect, so what? No homo's rhythm is perfect (at least compared to a computer's), not even that of rock star millionaires. GarageBand tin fix it for you.

How to Feed a Hungry GarageBand

To record a musical functioning in this way, y'all need some manner to feed GarageBand a stream of live musical data. You can practise so in whatsoever of several means:

• Use the onscreen, mouse-clicky keyboard . That is, click the keys of GarageBand'southward own, born, onscreen piano keyboard. Until Apple invents a 10-push mouse, however, this onscreen keyboard limits you to playing but 1 note at a fourth dimension. Unfortunately, it's very clunky; it's like playing a pianoforte with a bar of lather.

  But it's free, it's built-in, and it'south handy for inputting the occasional tiresome solo line or very brief musical office.

• Use your Mac'due south alphabet keyboard . A great new feature of GarageBand 2 turns your regular typing keyboard into a musical keyboard. Yous don't get much expressive capability, since pressing the letter keys harder or softer doesn't produce any difference in sound. Withal, at least you can play chords this way, and you can utilize your fingers instead of the mouse.

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

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

  That's the indicate of a MIDI controller ; information technology looks and feels like a synthesizer keyboard, just produces no sounds of its own. It makes music only when it'south plugged into, for case, a Mac running GarageBand.

  Apple sells (or, rather, resells) a MIDI controller for $100 called the One thousand-Audio Keystation 49e. If you can live with 49 keys, information technology'due south a very prissy keyboard. It draws its power directly from your USB jack, and then you don't need a power adapter, and it's velocity-sensitive , which means that its keys are touch-sensitive. The harder you play, the louder the piano sound, for example.

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

  Some synthesizers can connect directly 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 following pages explicate these musical input methods i by i.

Your Complimentary! Onscreen Digital Piano

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

Clicking the keys of this little keyboard with your mouse plays the instrument audio of whatsoever Software Instrument (dark-green) track is currently selected. (The corresponding instrument name appears at the top of the keyboard.)

The onscreen keyboard is a pretty bare-bones beast. For example, information technology lets you lot play simply i notation at a time.

Figure 4-1. You tin make this keyboard appear at whatever time by pressing -One thousand (or, if you're charging by the hour, choosing Window → Keyboard). Hide information technology by clicking its tiny upper-left Shut button. Tip: The keyboard at present comes in 3 sizes. You cycle among them by clicking the light-green Zoom button identified here, or by dragging the lower-right handle diagonally down and to the right.

But the onscreen keyboard likewise harbors two secrets that you lot might not detect on your own. Starting time, it actually has more keys than the 88 of a real piano—well over 10 octaves' worth of keys! To reveal the keyboard's full width, drag its lower-right ribbed resize handle. Or just scroll the keyboard by clicking the tiny greyness triangles on either stop.

2d, you can actually control how difficult you lot're "playing" the keys. No, non by mashing down harder on the mouse button. Instead, you control the force per unit area on the keys by controlling the position of your mouse when it clicks. Click college upwardly on the key to play softer; click lower down to play harder.

Playing harder usually means playing louder, only non always. Depending on the Software Instrument you've picked, hitting a fundamental harder may change the nature of the audio, not the book. More on this topic in the box on Section 4.2.

For instructions on using the onscreen keyboard to tape, skip ahead to Section 4.five.

The Mac Keyboard as Pianoforte

It's nice that Apple provided a little onscreen keyboard and so that even the equipment-deprived can listen to GarageBand'south amazing audio collection. But you'll never get in to the Grammy Awards using naught simply that single-note, mouse-driven brandish.

Fortunately, a new characteristic chosen Musical Typing lets yous trigger notes by playing, rather than clicking. This feature turns your Mac keyboard into a pianoforte keyboard. It even lets you play polyphonically —that is, yous tin play more than than one notation at a time. (Six-note chords are the maximum.)

Note

The Mac's keyboard was never intended to exist chorded, all the same. Indeed, it'south been advisedly engineered to procedure only one keypress at a time, for word processing purposes. Therefore, playing chords using Musical Typing results in a subtle, mandatory rolling result, every bit each annotation sounds a few milliseconds later the preceding 1.

If the effect becomes noticeable, you tin ever clean upwardly the chords after recording, using GarageBand's quantizing feature (Section five.five).

The row beginning with the letter A represents the "white keys"; W, Due east, T, Y, U, O, and P in the height row are the "black keys" (sharps and flats). As shown in Figure four-two, having 1 row serve every bit "black keys" ways that some estimator keys produce no sound at all, because a existent piano doesn't have a black key adjacent to every white key. No wonder using Musical Typing takes some getting used to.

Tip

In GarageBand 1.0, the but way to perform using your Mac keyboard was to use the shareware plan MidiKeys (part of the "Missing CD" of this volume'south first edition). In general, the Musical Typing characteristic is a heck of a lot easier to set up up and utilise, but you still need MidiKeys if you want to play with both hands at once, using two unlike rows of keys.

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

Figure iv-ii. Top: The light gray lettering on the Musical Keyboard "keys" give you some indication equally to what notes yous'll hear when you press the keys on your Mac keyboard. Bottom: Here's a more familiar depiction of what notes you lot'll hear when you lot press the keys on the height two letter of the alphabet-key rows. The Tab key simulates a piano's sustain pedal—when it's pressed, notes continue to ring even subsequently you release the keys. The number keys dispense virtual pitch-bend and modern wheels.

Musical Typing

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

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

One time its keyboard appears (Figure 4-2), try playing a few "keys" on the A row of your Mac'due south keyboard. You'll see the Musical Typing piano keys alter color, you'll hear the respective notes play in GarageBand, and yous'll see a flickering "low-cal" in the time display (Figure 4-4). It tells yous that GarageBand is receiving MIDI musical data.

At this point, you tin utilise Musical Typing like information technology'due south a MIDI controller keyboard, including making GarageBand recordings (Section four.five).

Control of Key Velocity

There'south just one problem with using Musical Typing as you've read about it so far: y'all tin can't control the primal velocity (Section four.2) as you play. (Apple tree never designed the typing keyboard to be touch-sensitive, although the idea is intriguing. What would it do—brand the letters bolder the harder you hit the keys?)

The solution is to tap the C and 5 keys—repeatedly, if necessary—to simulate "softer" and "harder" key presses. This is not exactly a elementary task when y'all're using both hands in the eye of a Rachmaninoff concerto, but if you record one hand at a time, riding the C and V keys with the other hand, it's a manageable arrangement.

Of course, you may besides want to tape your runway with no velocity adjustments, and so accommodate the fundamental velocities later by editing the rails (Section five.6).

Tips and Tricks

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

• Shift the entire keyboard up or down an octave at a fourth dimension by tapping the 10 and Z keys, respectively.

• "Press the piano'southward sustain pedal" by pressing Tab. Press once to "stride on the pedal," press a second time to "release information technology."

• "Turn the modernistic wheel" by pressing 4 through 8; see Section 4.nine for details on the mod wheel. (Higher numbers trigger greater turns of the modulation cycle.) Printing 3 to plough off modulation altogether.

• "Plough the pitch-curve cycle" by property down the 1 fundamental, or bend information technology upwardly by belongings down two. (Alas, y'all tin can't control how much you "turn the bike." Y'all always become a pitch bend of 20 units up or downward, on a scale of 0 to 127.)

  Tip

  Cheers to a bizarro issues in GarageBand 2.0.one, the pitch-curve keys don't piece of work when yous're playing certain key combinations, similar the notes C, D, and whatever other "white key" note. Version 2.0.2 fixed this glitch.

• While Musical Typing is quite useful for recording new tracks, it's also extremely handy when choosing an musical instrument sound for a track.

  Think about it: Normally, when the New Rail dialog box appears (Effigy 4-three), GarageBand offers no way for you to hear what each listed sound sounds like (unless you have an external MIDI keyboard). Well-nigh people air current up laboriously clicking a sound'due south proper noun, closing the dialog box, clicking the keys on the GarageBand onscreen keyboard, double-clicking the track proper name to reopen the Track Info dialog box, and and then repeating the whole ritual over and over.

Only with Musical Typing'south window open, you lot can click an instrument's name so 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 fool around here long enough, you'll find some surprising selections, including sound effects, exotic percussion instruments, and traditional instruments that take been processed in wild, sometimes musically inspiring ways.

Effigy 4-3. This dialog box appears when y'all choose Track → New Track. These instrument sounds all look delicious, but how are you supposed to know which i sounds exactly right for your slice? Elementary: Press a few keys on your MIDI controller (or, if you're using Musical Typing, the A row of your keyboard). Use your arrow keys to walk through the instrument list, and play a few more keys to hear the next sound.

MIDI Synths and Controllers

The all-time way to tape keyboard performances, though, is to bite the bullet, break the banking company, and buy an actual, external MIDI musical musical instrument. As noted earlier in this chapter, it might have any of these forms:

• A MIDI controller . Apple, for instance, sells an Thousand-Audio keyboard for $100. The only cable required is its USB cable, which connects to your Mac'due south USB port.

  That'south not the only controller worth considering, of course. If the idea of 49 keys strikes you equally a bit confining, the same company also makes a 61-primal model that Apple sells for $200. Online music stores like www.samash.com sell both of these models and many others, including a total 88-key model (the same number of keys every bit a real pianoforte) for $300. These more than expensive keyboards have semi-weighted keys that experience more similar a pianoforte than the leap-loaded plastic keys of the 49-primal 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 most require an adapter known every bit a MIDI interface , which costs nigh $40 at music stores.

• Another MIDI instrument . Keyboards aren't the only MIDI instruments. There are also such things as MIDI guitars, MIDI drum sets, and even MIDI gloves. They, too, generate streams of notation data that GarageBand tin can record and play back.

One time you've hooked up a MIDI instrument, create a Software Instrument track and try playing a few notes. Yous'll hear whatsoever sound you established for that track, and you'll see the little MIDI activity light blinking in GarageBand'due south time brandish (Figure four-4). Now you're ready to record.

Tip

An external instrument is likewise great when it's fourth dimension to choose a sound for a new track, because yous tin can walk through the various instrument names without e'er having to close the Track Info dialog box. Encounter Figure 4-3 for more than information.

Figure iv-4. The lilliputian blue blinky calorie-free lets you lot know that GarageBand is "hearing" your MIDI musical instrument as y'all play it.

Recording a MIDI Rail

Whether your keyboard is on the screen or on your desk-bound, virtual or physical, you use it to record in GarageBand the same way. Hither's the routine:

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

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

   If you don't already have a green track ready to record, choose Track → New Track to create one. In the New Track (Track Info) dialog box, click the Software Musical instrument tab, and and then choose the musical instrument audio you want (Figure iv-3). Click OK.

2. Turn on the metronome, if you like .

   A metronome is a steady crush clicker that's familiar to generations of musicians. By clicking abroad "one, 2, iii, 4! ane, 2, 3, 4!" it helps to continue you and GarageBand in sync.

   Use the Control → Metronome control, or the

   

   -U keystroke, to plow the metronome clicker on or off. (Run across the box on Department 4.5.)

   Tip

   On the General pane of GarageBand → Preferences, you can betoken whether or not you lot want the metronome to play during playback , or merely when yous'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 record recorder, it makes no difference how slowly yous record the office. You tin can record at sixty beats per infinitesimal, for instance, which is basically one annotation per 2d—and so play back the recording at a virtuosic "Flight of the Bumblebee" tempo (229 beats per minute, say). Your listeners volition never exist the wiser.

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

   So how do you observe a skilful tempo for recording? First, just noodle around on your keyboard. Find a speed that feels comfortable enough that the music maintains some momentum, but is still dull enough that you can make information technology through the part without a lot of mistakes.

   Then adjust the GarageBand tempo slider to match. Hit the Space bar to play the music yous've already got in place, if whatever, and adjust the Tempo control (Section 4.five) during the playback until it matches the foot-tapping in your head.

   Tip

   If yous haven't recorded whatsoever music, one way to hear the tempo as you dabble with the Tempo control is to turn the metronome on during playback, equally described in the preceding tip. Then play back your empty song, using the clicks equally your guide while you adjust the Tempo slider.

   In one case you lot've establish a good recording speed, stop playback.

4. Position the Playhead to the spot where y'all want to begin recording .

   If that's the get-go, great; just press the letter Z key or the Dwelling central. If information technology's in the heart of the piece, click in the crush ruler or use the keyboard shortcuts (Section ane.vi) to position the Playhead in that location. (Nearly often, though, yous'll want to put the Playhead a couple of measures before the recording is supposed to begin, as described in the side by side step.)

5. Set up upwardly your countoff .

   It'due south very difficult to begin playing with the correct feeling, volume, and tempo from a expressionless stop. That's why you always hear rock groups (and garage bands) beginning each other off with, "And a-one! And a-two!" That's also why about orchestras accept a usher, who gives one silent, preparatory shell of his baton before the players brainstorm.

   GarageBand tin "count y'all in" using either of two methods. First, information technology tin can play one mensurate total of beats, clicking "i, two, three, go!" at the proper tempo so you lot'll know when to come in. That'due south the purpose of the Control → Count In control. When this command has a checkmark, GarageBand will count you in with those clicks.

   If yous intend to begin playing in the middle of existing music, though, you may adopt to have the music itself guide you lot to your entrance. This is the 2d method. For example, you might decide to plant the Playhead a couple of measures earlier the spot where you desire to record. As long as doing so won't record over something that'due south already in your runway, this is a convenient fashion to briefly feel the feel or groove of the music earlier you begin playing.

6. Get prepare to play—easily on the keyboard—and then click the red, round Record push .

   Or just press the letter R primal on your Mac keyboard.

   Either way, you hear the countoff measure, if you've requested 1, and and then the "tape" begins to ringlet. Requite information technology your best, and try to stay in sync with the metronome, if you've turned it on.

7. When you come to the end of the section you hoped to tape—it might be the unabridged piece, or maybe only a role of information technology—tap the Space bar (or click the Play push button) to stop recording .

   On the screen, you'll see the new green region you recorded.

8. Play back your recording to see how you did .

   Rewind to the spot where y'all started recording. If y'all recorded nether tempo (that is, slower than you intend the playback to exist), heave the Tempo slider to a better setting. (Because yous recorded a stream of MIDI note information and did non tape bodily digital sound, y'all tin can conform the playback tempo at any fourth dimension without changing the pitch of the notes. You couldn't get an "Alvin and the Chipmunks" effect if you tried.)

   Tap the Space bar to hear your performance played back just as you recorded it.

Tip

Practise what the pros do—tape a section at a time. The odds of a good take are much greater when the segment is curt. Remember, too, that if your song contains repeating sections, you can reuse one perfect take by copying and pasting it to a different spot in the song.

Retakes

Even before you play back a new recording, you may know if information technology was a peachy performance, a proficient candidate but not necessarily your best effort, or a real stinker that must be deleted immediately. Maybe you lot messed upward a portion of the playing. Maybe you had trouble keeping upwardly with the metronome, or you felt as though it was belongings you dorsum.

The dazzler of a MIDI sequencer like GarageBand, though, is that you can keep your take, redo it, or trash it, instantly and guilt-gratis, having used upwards no tape or studio time.

Here'south how to keep after recording a MIDI operation:

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

  

  -Z to trigger the Edit → Undo control. The new light-green region disappears. Adapt the tempo, if necessary, and try recording over again.

  Note

  Before you get nuts deleting bad performances, though, call up that it's sometimes more time-efficient just to manually fix what was wrong with it, using the GarageBand runway editor. Meet the side by side chapter.

• Trash part of it . Use the Edit → Split up command (Section 3.7) to cutting the region into pieces, and so that you can preserve the adept parts but rerecord the bad ones.

• Go along it . If the whole thing was great, or by and large great, save your file (

  

  -S) and motility on to the next rails.

• Mark information technology "best so far." Press the letter Thou key to mute the rails you just recorded. Then create a new rails and repeat the entire process, hoping to do improve this fourth dimension.

Figure iv-v. Top: You've recorded this accept twice, with mixed results each time. Middle: Suppose the middle department of the second accept was the best performance. Chop off both ends. Bottom: Drag the remaining middle section upwards onto the first take; this obliterates the respective moments of the offset take. The result: A hybrid terminal rail containing the all-time portions of each recording.

Afterwards this 2d effort—or your third, quaternary, or fifth—you can compare your diverse takes by muting and un-muting them as they play dorsum. Y'all can too chop up these diverse regions and employ merely the best parts of each endeavour, yet another extremely common practice in professional recording studios (Figure 4-five).

Tip

One great way to create a new track for the next attempt is to duplicate the first 1 (choose Rails → Duplicate Rails). GarageBand creates a new, empty track simply beneath the first ane—with the same musical instrument sound and effects (reverb and so on) already selected.

Spot Recording (Dial In/Punch Out)

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

Almost people, though, current of air 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 and so commonplace, it'south a standard function of the studio ritual. Clever studio software tools can play dorsum the track right up until the problem section, seamlessly slip into Tape manner while the player replays it, and then turn off Tape style when it reaches the end of the trouble role, all without missing a shell. Recording engineers call this punching in and out .

Believe it or not, even humble GarageBand lets you lot dial in and punch out. Once you primary this technique, you lot'll be very grateful.

Here'southward how it goes:

1. Plow on cycling .

   Section 1.5 describes cycling in the context of playing a section of music over and over again. For recording, the steps are much the same (run across Figure 4-half dozen). In this case, though, the beginning and cease of the xanthous Cycle bar designate your dial-in and punch-out points—the function you're going to rerecord.

2. Prepare up your metronome and tempo. Turn on the Count In control (in the Command menu) .

   See Department 4.5 for details on setting upwards a recording. In this case, Count In is very important; it makes GarageBand play the 1 measure of music that precedes your dial-in signal. (You don't accept to position the Playhead for this exercise. Whenever Cycling is turned on, the Playhead e'er snaps to the beginning of the yellow stripe when playing or recording begins.)

3. Begin recording (by pressing the alphabetic character R key, for instance) .

   During the countoff mensurate, yous don't just hear metronome clicks—you lot as well hear the existing music in that preceding measure. GarageBand begins recording after the countoff, every bit the Playhead reaches the yellow wheel area.

   Equally you record, you lot'll also hear the one-time material—the role you're trying to rerecord. Don't worry, though; it will disappear afterward you supercede information technology. (If it bothers you lot, delete it manually before punching in.)

   GarageBand doesn't play by the stop 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 you nailed it on the beginning take, just stop playing.

   Figure four-6. Click the Cycle button—or press the alphabetic character C cardinal—to make the yellow "echo this much" bar appear at the pinnacle of the screen. Drag the ends of the yellow bar to identify the musical section you'll be loop-recording. (If you don't encounter the yellow bar, or if yous desire information technology to announced in a totally different section of the piece, drag through the lower department of the trounce ruler.)

4. Press the Space bar (or click the Play push 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 punch-in/punch-out routine is the just fashion to go if your goal is to rerecord precisely measured sections.

When the parts y'all want to rerecord accept nicely sized "bookends" of silence before and after, though, in that location'south a more casual method bachelor. Simply play the piece from the beginning—and "ride" the letter R central on your keyboard. With each tap, y'all bound into and out of Record mode as the piece plays. This manual dial-in/dial-out method offers another way to tape over the bad sections and preserve the good ones.

Cumulative Recording

GarageBand'southward tricks for people with less-than-stellar musical power don't stop with the dull-tempo-recording trick and the ability to rerecord certain sections. The Cycle push described before is too the key to cumulative recording, in which you lot record one notation at a fourth dimension, or but a few, building up more than complexity to the passage as GarageBand loop-records the aforementioned department over and over (Effigy 4-vii).

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

Figure 4-seven. Using GarageBand'south Cycle characteristic, you can record the same section of music over and over, adding more than notes on each laissez passer. Here, you see the music from three successive loops through the same iii-measure section. With each repetition, you add more than notes to what y'all've already recorded.

When you want to perform your ain pulsate parts, yous'll probably be using a MIDI keyboard. It turns out that GarageBand's various drum sounds—bass drum, snare pulsate, tom-toms, and then on—are "mapped" to the various keys of the keyboard (come across Effigy 4-viii). Unless y'all have an extraordinarily unusual limb structure, you'll probably find it very difficult to play all the drums you desire in a single pass, since they're scattered all over the keyboard.

It'due south much easier to record drum parts in successive passes, equally GarageBand continues to record: the bass drum the first time, the snare on the adjacent pass, and so on.

Here's how to set up loop recording:

1. Plough on cycling .

   See step 1 of the preceding instructions. Figure 4-six explains how to adjust the yellow Wheel bar. The point here is to "highlight" the portion of music you lot want to tape.

2. Set up the recording .

   Conform the metronome, the Count In option, and the tempo, just as described in the previous pages. If y'all program to record in the middle of a slice, identify the Playhead to the left of the cycled region to give yourself a running start. (GarageBand volition be in playback-only mode until information technology reaches the yellow Cycle bar.)

   Click a track header to betoken which rails you lot desire to tape. If you intend to lay down a pulsate track, fool around with your keyboard to place which primal plays which drum sounds. (The bones setup for GarageBand's pulsate kit is shown in Figure 4-8.)

   Figure 4-8. Cumulative recording is specially useful for drum parts, considering information technology lets yous focus on merely one drum sound at a fourth dimension. This diagram illustrates how GarageBand'southward drums are mapped to the keys of your keyboard. (The different drum kits are all mapped identically, although what constitutes a snare or a low tom in the Jazz kit may not sound anything like the one in the Techno kit.) The bass drum (kick drum), snare, and ride cymbals are the foundation of most drum parts, so these may be the keys you desire to "ride" with three fingers equally you record.

3. Click the Record push button (or printing the letter R primal) .

   Each time GarageBand plays through the yellow-striped section, it will record any notes y'all play. Retrieve, GarageBand accumulates all the notes yous play, adding them to the piece fifty-fifty if y'all play them on different repetitions of the looped passage.

Tip

Information technology's OK to let a laissez passer or 2 go by without playing anything. Yous just haven't added annihilation to the recording in progress, so no harm done. In fact, you lot might desire to consider routinely sitting out a couple of repetitions between recording bursts.

Each fourth dimension GarageBand loops back to the get-go of the section, you'll notice that it'southward already playing back what yous laid down on previous passes. And when yous finally stop (tap the Infinite bar) and play back the new passage, yous'll discover that every note you played during the various repetitions plays back together.

Tip

Believe it or non, you tin cease the playback, listen, practice other work on your slice, and return much later to add nonetheless another layer of cumulative-recording notes—as long as you haven't disturbed the xanthous Cycle bar in the beat ruler. Once you motility that xanthous stripe or turn off cycling, GarageBand ends your take a chance to record additional material in that region. The next recording yous make there will wipe out whatsoever's at that place.

Modernistic Wheels and Other MIDI Fun

Many of GarageBand's built-in sounds are samples —brief recordings of actual instruments. That's why the grand piano sounds and so realistic: because information technology is a grand piano (a $50,000 Yamaha, to be exact).

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

For case:

• Sustain pedal . If you have a sustain or damper pedal, you can ride it with your foot just as yous would on a pianoforte. (It's designed to concord a notation or a chord even afterward your hands accept released the keys.) Almost any MIDI keyboard—including the $100 M-Audio Keystation—has a jack on the back for a sustain pedal, which costs about $15 from online music stores similar www.samash.com.

• Primal velocity . As noted earlier in this chapter, a number of GarageBand sounds respond to central velocity (that is, how hard y'all strike the keys). Almost of the instrument sounds only play louder equally you hit the keys harder, only some actually change in character. Acoustic guitars characteristic a little fingerboard slide; clavichords become more of a "wah" audio; Wah Horns likewise "wah" more than; and many of the synthesizer keyboard sounds sound "rounder" as you hit the keys harder.

  Figure 4-9. On the M-Sound MIDI controller keyboards that Apple sells, two control wheels liven upward the MIDI proceedings. The pitch-bend cycle actually bends the annotation'due south pitch. Just plough the wheel either before or after hit the note, depending on the outcome you want. The modulation wheel, meanwhile, either produces audio-changing effects or does nothing, depending on the GarageBand sound you'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, take one or ii command wheels that also affect GarageBand'due south sounds (Figure 4-9).

  For example, a pitch-bend bike makes a note'southward pitch slide up or down while you're still pressing the key. It's an essential tool for anyone who wants to make contumely or current of air instruments sound more realistic, since those instruments are capable of sliding seamlessly from pitch to pitch—something a keyboard, with its series of fixed-pitch keys, can't normally do.

  You can use the pitch-bend wheel in either of two ways. Beginning, turn the bike downward, for example, and hold it (it's bound-loaded). Then, play the key yous want—and simultaneously release the primal. What you hear is a slide up to the desired note.

  Second, you tin can strike the key start and and so turn the wheel, or even jerk the wheel up and down. The sound winds upward wiggling or angle away from the original note, which is a mutual technique when you lot'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. Information technology's on the GarageBand Examples CD described on Section 1.v.

  The pitch-curve wheel affects all GarageBand sounds.

• Your keyboard may also accept a mod wheel , brusk for modulation wheel. It's an all-purpose control wheel that produces unlike effects in different sounds. Here are some of the furnishings information technology has on GarageBand's built-in sounds:

Tabular array 4-one.

Musical instrument Name	Mod-Bicycle Effect
Bass instruments	Brightens the audio
Choir sounds	Vibrato
Drum kits	No effect
Guitars	Vibrato
Nigh horns	Vibrato
Funk horns	"Fall-off" (slide down) at end of note
Mallets	Vibrato
Most organs	No effect
Vocoder Synth Organ	Searing baloney
Most pianos	No issue
Strings	Vibrato
About Synth Nuts	Vibrato
Star Sweeper	"Sweeps" the sound'south phase
Synth Leads	Vibrato
Most Synth Pads	No effect or vibrato
Angelic Organ	"Clicks" through the sound
Aquatic Sunbeam	"Sweeps" the sound's phase
Electric Slumber	"Sweeps" the sound's phase
Liquid Oxygen	"Clicks" through the sound
Tranquil Horizon	"Sweeps" the sound'south stage
Woodwinds	Vibrato

Note

Vibrato is the gentle wavering of pitch that'southward feature of most professional person instrumental soloists and singers. (Existent-world pianos and pulsate sets can't produce vibrato, which is why GarageBand'south respective sounds don't react to the mod wheel.)

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

Woodwinds, contumely, and timpani playing styles are similarly afflicted—for example, turning the modernistic wheel halfway makes the oboe play with vibrato, the horns swell into a crescendo, and the timpani (kettledrums) play with a thunderous ringlet.

Learning to employ your mod bicycle can add a great bargain of dazzler, realism, and grace to your GarageBand recordings. Remember that you don't have to turn it all the style up; you tin turn the bicycle only function way for a more subtle effect. Recollect, likewise, that the mod cycle is usually nigh effective when you turn it later on the annotation has begun sounding. It's the contrast of the mod wheel (versus the unaffected note) that produces the best effect.

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

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