Discover GarageBand’s powerful edit view

Discover the power of Apple’s iOS music app, whether beginner or pro

GarageBand is rightly praised for its beginner-friendly approach, but it has a lot in common with its heavyduty Mac sibling, Logic Pro X. Behind the Smart Guitars, Smart Strings, Smart Keys, and Smart Drums there’s a powerful editor that makes it easy to combine recordings, MIDI, and virtual drummer tracks. In many respects GarageBand is really Logic Lite, or perhaps more accurately a Logic that’s been designed for musicians rather than for sound engineers.

It has simpler versions of Logic’s most popular tools, such as a MIDI editor, pitch shifting, pitch correction, and quantizing. It includes essential effects such as compression and reverb without the complexity of the ones you’ll find in Logic. And it has Drummer, whose realistic, customizable drums are just fantastic. If this all sounds a little high-end, don’t worry: you’ll see how simple it really is! You don’t need any instruments or recording equipment to make songs in GarageBand: the built-in virtual MIDI instruments are very good, and you can always use the built-in mic to record vocals and acoustic guitars. For serious recording, though, it’s worth investing in gear such as the AmpliTube iRig for guitars, or a good microphone and USB interface for your vocals and acoustic instruments that plugs into Apple’s Camera Connection Kit, which adds a USB connection to any iOS device.

In this tutorial we’ll concentrate on the key features for recording and arranging a song. We’ll look at global settings and per-track parameters, looping recorded audio, and fixing timing mistakes in MIDI instruments. We’ll discover how to access the app’s excellent MIDI editor, and how to add fade-outs to your finished tracks. Finally, we’ll have some fun with the live special effects.