ANYONE CAN PLAY GUITAR: GARAGEBAND BASICS

Every Mac comes with GarageBand. It’s free – and it’s brilliant

We love GarageBand. That’s not just because it’s free. It’s because it’s very useful, very easy to use and delivers some of the best features of its big sister, Logic Pro X – and it works really well with the iOS app, which you can use as a virtual keyboard, drum kit or guitar or record when you’re out and about. You can then open the project on your Mac.

Like many music apps, GarageBand works with multitrack audio. A track could be a small bit of music repeating as a loop; notes you played on a MIDI keyboard or created by hand in the editing window; or a recording of someone playing an instrument or singing. Each component of the song gets its own track, so for example you might have a track for the drum machine, another for the bass, a couple of tracks for synthesisers and one for the

lead vocal. Or you might record multiple tracks of the same thing – a backing vocal, perhaps, or an acoustic guitar – to get a bigger sound.

First, let’s discover how you can make music in GarageBand without actually having to play a musical instrument.