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The Keyboards and Sampler can be set to follow a particular key and scale, which turns the traditional keyboard into a simplified layout that contains no out-of-mode notes. You can choose how many keys’ range is displayed, activate a double-manual mode, and there’s a built-in arpeggiator for fast runs. You can set the keyboard so swiping your finger from side to side on the screen plays a glissando, or actually moves the keyboard so you can reach higher or lower notes without reaching for the octave-shift keys. For some keyboard types (mainly the synths), swiping from side to side can bend pitch up and down; if you play a chord with the screen set to this mode, you can actually do bends and vibrato on individual notes while leaving the others alone, without reaching for the pitch or mod wheels! And in the “oh, that’s just impossible... isn’t it?” department: all of the Drum and Keyboard instruments are velocity-sensitive! Apple wired the sounds’ dynamic response to the iPad’s built-in accelerometer, so it knows how hard you’re tapping the screen! Suddenly the joke about “hitting the screen harder isn’t going to make it play louder, dude” falls completely flat... and you find yourself adding dynamic nuance to your parts in a very natural way. Get Smart Smart Instruments offer the ability to play chords or chord elements with a single finger, in interfaces organized and labeled by key. The interface is different for each instrument. For the Smart Guitar and Smart Bass, you can strum chords or play basslines in a variety of rhythm styles, or play single notes on a virtual neck (including string bends!). The Smart Keyboard lets you play individual notes in appropriate chords, or full chords in rhythm, or sometimes chords with figured bass in different keys. And the Smart Drums have a grid with two axes (Loud to Quiet, Simple to Complex) where you can drop individual drums like kick and snare, or randomize new parts with a button press. All of these instruments, Smart and otherwise, have great samples behind them and sound way better than you’d expect for five dollars. I could play many of them live with no regrets at all... and I’ve done it a few times in concerts since getting them. There’s no excuse for creating thin, wimpy, unprofessional backing tracks any more, or for uninspired sounds while working up songwriting ideas or demos. Recording audio The Audio Recorder is really intended for vocals, although any acoustic instrument can be brought into GarageBand this way. There’s a big VU meter for monitoring your levels, and once a track is recorded dry, you can select effects for playback from a menu of eight choices. Each choice has two tweakable parameters, and may include compression, chorus, reverb, phasing, pitch shifting, or filtering; while they have sound-effectsy names like Telephone, Bullhorn, or Robot, you can actually get musical rather than jokey results with the right settings. The Guitar Amp offers an impressive selection of amp head emulations, evocative of Marshall, VOX, Mesa, Orange, Fender, and other well-known styles, with menus of presets to get you in the ballpark for various sounds. A set of virtual stompboxes can be added as well, with ten pedal types and up to four pedals in the chain. There are companies that sell apps to do nothing but what this Instrument does, and specialize in very precise and realistic emulations, but for many folks the Guitar
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Amp will do a great job for capturing greatsounding guitar tracks with no extras needed. Mixing and exporting GarageBand’s Song structure is based around an 8-track mixer, with built-in reverb and delay buses and global song key and tempo control. Each track can have its own level, pan, and reverb and delay send amounts, can be

muted or soloed, or be edited with a variety of processes familiar to anyone who’s used a DAW before. In addition to creating tracks using Touch Instruments or recording audio, GarageBand lets you build up tracks by dragging and dropping Apple Loops from a sortable browser dropdown. Hundreds of loops come bundled with GarageBand; there’s nowhere near the glut of choices one has with the Mac version, but there’s still a nice selection of drums, string instruments (classical and rock), percussion (classical and Latin), keyboards, winds, and even vocals. Audio sources are recorded in mono, but the added effects are generally stereo; this applies to Apple Loops and Touch Instruments as well. Each region of audio can be copied, split, cut, pasted, looped, or shortened; entire tracks can be duplicated or deleted. GarageBand can organize recorded tracks as Sections, which can be reordered, repeated, etc., to build up larger song structures from smaller chunks. Note that you can’t apply Section boundaries to audio you’ve already recorded; you must create a new Section before you record audio into it. (By default, a newly recorded Song has one Section that includes all of the tracks you create on your first pass.) If you’re recording a Section at the end of what you’ve recorded already, GarageBand can automatically set the new Section’s length based on what you play next. GarageBand can share mixed-down Songs via email, or to iTunes when you sync your iPad to your computer.

Recording - November 2011

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