MacZealots.com

• Tutorials
• Reviews
• Articles
• Contribute
• About
• Home

iLife '05: GarageBand 2 Review

Making music on your Mac

---

04 February 2005 Matt Willmore Skip to comments 16 Comments ( Closed)

Celebrating its one year birthday, GarageBand gets a major upgrade that brings along many of the long requested features users have been clammoring for. Matt Willmore takes a look at what's new.

Apple sure knows how to put on one heck of a show. The star-studded debut of GarageBand (which I will refer to as GarageBand 1.0) was an impressive showing of what could be accomplished with a Mac, the iLife package, and an instrument (a guitar, a voice, or just a creative imagination). As a musician of 14 years, I was eager to get my hands on GarageBand and give it a whirl. In the end, I was very impressed. It had it's shortcomings, but most 1.0's do — few apps from Apple (or any other company) are exempt from this. Fortunately, Steve Jobs & Co. treated everyone to the release of iLife '05, which included GarageBand 2.0. With new features and a host of improvements, this new release is sure to deliver as promised. Right?

I'll cover the new major features of GarageBand 2.0, and finish by revisiting the long-lasting issue of speed and processor usasge. To start, let's cover 2.0's new features.

Note: Visit the MacZealots.com review of GarageBand 1.0 to see how well Ryan liked the 1.0 release.

Multi-Track Recording

When GarageBand 1.0 came out, a lot of musicians that I talked to were excited about using GarageBand to record tracks for their band. GarageBand's structure and ease of use worked very well for that, with one problem — only one track could be recorded at a time. A lot of non-musicians I discussed this with didn't see it as a major problem, but I did. In a string quartet, I would find it very hard to play against a recording. Classical music (and some modern music) has a tendency to change tempo, swell and collapse, and take 100 different directions during a piece. Trained musicians do this with nonverbal gestures and lots of eye contact. Therefore, it's near impossible for that same musician to record his or her part against a recorded track.

This is where GarageBand 2.0 comes in. With the ability to record up to eight analog tracks and one software (MIDI) track at once, now the entire band (or quartet, or a cappella group) can record to GarageBand at once. Keep in mind, however, that although GarageBand is equipped to handle multiple inputs, your Mac may not be.

The solution is to buy an audio interface to attach to your Mac. Several manufacturers make USB/USB2.0, FireWire, and PCI solutions to accomplish this. You can buy devices that handle anywhere from 1-10 inputs, and even more. Strangely, information from Apple on preferred interfaces are absent, but there is a large Mac music community out there that's willing to help. Sites like MacMusic.org and Apple's Garageband Discussion boards are two examples of sites that can help you find the hardware you need.

Realtime Notation

This is a feature that, when you think about it, is easy to implement. Instead of laying out MIDI patterns on a grid, GarageBand now gives you the option to view it as a score. This is a very cool feature that lets me visualize my music as I would on a sheet of paper. Moreover, I can change notes on the fly, even as the music is playing. I tried importing a MIDI file, and it worked perfectly. The only downside to this is its lack of flexibility for changes in the time signature or key. If you have a 2/4 measure in a 4/4 piece, or would like to use modulation, GarageBand won't be able to help you. However, this should not be a problem for the large majority of the users of GarageBand. People who need advanced notation control have a decent selection of products available to them.

Timing & Pitch Enhancement

This is a nice trick that Apple has included, and for the most part, it can help to correct minor flaws. By analyzing the waveform patterns and frequencies (for timing and pitch, respectively), GarageBand can figure out where the beat is, or what the note is supposed to be, and nudge the sound wave into that particular beat or pitch. It's a bit like Photoshop's retouch tool, but for sound. I found in my tests that for minor speed and pitch variances, GarageBand does a decent job of correcting it. However, we were easily able to come up with situations that GarageBand couldn't correct. We were also able to turn GarageBand against our music — by turn the tuning enhancement up too far (it ranges from “Off” to “Max”), it would distort correct notes and try to push them into the next note. In the end, a gentler application of the enhancers worked well for us.

Tempo & Key Change

Apple's promise of the ability to change the tempo and key of recorded instruments, without distortion, was the hardest promise to prove, in my opinion. The algorithms and intense math involved to accomplish this was something even GarageBand might not be able to handle. For the most part, however, it worked. In my case, I took a recorded guitar sample, which was laid down over a drum loop. I first dropped the tempo from 153 to 130. Just like that, it was like my guitarist slowed down with the drums. I dropped it again to 96, and the recording kept right up, without a distortion of sound. If you think about the science of slowing sound down, the pitch lowers as the playback speed decreases. What GarageBand is doing to maintain the original pitch is to lengthen the duration of each unique tone, thereby stretching the music. At lower speeds I noticed increasing distortion of the clarity of the note, but keep in mind that I was nearing one half of the original recording speed. A more applicable (and typical) use of the tempo change would be if you recorded an instrument, but decided on a slightly higher or lower tempo. This way, the original recording is still used, and it sounds like it was recorded that way the first time.

Unlike the tempo change, the key change alters the frequency of the recorded track, in single note intervals (A, B, C, etc.). This way, if you recorded a track in C, but decided that you want it in E, it's easy to change over. (Musicians will be quick to point out that I didn't actually change the key, but just the pitch of each note, retaining the intervals.) I moved the key of my guitar piece up one interval, then three, then down six. All changes were accurately reflected in GarageBand, with one stipulation — GarageBand would not play the track in the altered interval until I stopped and restarted playback of the track. In other words, it wouldn't do it on the fly. A simple stop/start of the playback was all it took for the new pitch to take hold.

Naturally, I thought: what if we did both? Could we alter the key AND the pitch? The answer is, simply, yes. By changing the key of the guitar track, and then the interval on top of that, it behaved precisely as you would expect — the track slowed, and the pitch rose. Simply amazing.

Built-In Pitch Tuner

Several people were quick to notice the tuning helper in the playback position window. Now, you can tune your instrument or voice before beginning. This is a simple yet effective addition to the application, and one greatly appreciated. (If you ever get really bored, you can use your computer's microphone and check the acoustic accuracy of your whistle.)

While I appreciate the inclusion of the tuner, one of my colleagues reminded me that a tuner is purely scientific, and will only tell you how close your note is to a particular frequency. At the end of the day, tuning is about listening to the instrument and tuning by feeling and experience. I use a $4,000 Peterson Strobe Center 5000-II in class, and I experience the same thing that my colleague does. Does GarageBand's tuner work? Absolutely. Should you solely rely on the tuner? No.

Saving Live Instruments as Loops

This was a feature that I'm sure Apple saw a lot of customers doing in various roundabout ways. In GarageBand 1, there was no direct path between recorded tracks and using them as loops. To accomplish this, we use the Soundtrack Loop Utility, which would "ready" an AIFF file from GarageBand for use as a loop. Now, Apple has added an option to the Edit menu which simply states, "Add to Loop Library...". When you click on it, you get a setup extremely similar to the one you'd see in the Soundtrack Loop Utility. This should save homemade loop makers a lot of time and effort.

Application Speed & Processor Usage

One of my biggest hopes (or is it a pipe dreams) for GarageBand 2.0 was that, despite all the new features, it might be more responsive, or at least give a tiny bit of my processor back. My 1.0 GHz 17" PowerBook had never met its match until GarageBand came along, and I was hoping 2.0 might be more forgiving. As it turns out, it's not. GarageBand 2.0 is just as demanding, and has the same requirements as GarageBand 1.0: 600 MHz G3 or better to run the program, and a G4 or better for software instruments. Sorry folks, no break this time around.

Conclusion

GarageBand 1.0 took us all by surprise. We used, tested, pushed, and discovered what the app was capable of. A lot, as it turned out. When GarageBand 2.0 was released at Macworld this January, the new touted features were even better. As you can see, they generally work well. If GarageBand were a separate package, I may be hesitate to upgrade from 1.0, unless I had a healthy need for one of the new features. However, as a bundle, and for $79 retail, it's a steal. The iLife '05 package is a knockout combination, and GarageBand 2.0 hold its weight. If you haven't bought it yet, be sure to pick a copy up — I think you'll be pleased.

Matt Willmore is a founding partner of MacZealots.com. Matt is also a Resident Assistant at Owen Hall and does Mac support at ECN, and is active in PUMUG. He can be reached at .

Hosted by (mt) Media Temple™. Powered by Movable Type. Developed in partnership with Second Gear LLC.
© Copyright 2003-2010 MacZealots.com, All Rights Reserved. ISSN: 1936-024X
Valid XHTML | CSS XML Site Map | Back to Top
Last modified: 01 September 2007.

Second Gear LLC > Mac OS X Development and Developers > iPhone Development and Developers > Ruby on Rails Development and Developers

Wedding Photographer, Lafayette, Indiana - Wedding Photography, West Lafayette, IN & Purdue University Apostrophe Studios Ryan J. Bonnell Winamac, Indiana 46996 Lafayatte, Indiana Orchid Society