Impressions of GarageBand

monktus

monktus

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I finally got it and I think I was expecting a bit much. It's quite nice to use, very simple although a bit slow, even compared to proper multitrack s/w like Cubase SX. Admittedly I need to have more of a play with it but there are a few things that are annoying me: looping! How do you do it, if it's not there, why not?!; sequencing MIDI is a bit rudimentary, you seem to have to input at least one note with the soft keyboard to be able to creat more notes/edit existing ones, no pencil tool to add notes manually?; no quantize!. Effects seem reasonably good though, and there's a bitcrusher! What does everyone else think so far?
 
Well, from a learning guitarists' point of view, I think it's amazing.

Although I've worked with MIDI and digital audio for years (Digital Performer, Korg 05R/W and now a Roland xv5050 module, plus Radium 61 keyboard), I've only been playing guitar for about 3 years. Without others to practice with, I rarely put aside time from my 2 jobs to practice.

Anyway, I thought I'd check out Garage Band just to see if it would be good for quick lay down of musical ideas and just to have a "backup band" behinid my guitar practice, and man it's freakin' great.

I can lay down a great sounding drum loop, add a bass line either from the loops or my own fretless, and I can practice guitar chords and riffs for hours by just hitting play. My guitar playing has improved many fold since getting Garage Band only a few weeks ago.

It just makes it so easy to get a backup band going so I can try runs, riffs, and chords. Love it! Haven't turned on my XV5050 since getting Garage Band.

I love the drum loops, but I wish they had some fills thrown in there (though they may be there, I haven't looked at all of them).
John
http://homepage.mac.com/johnselvia/
 
You actually completely misunderstood me, I was talking about looping a chunk of work, not using Apple's audio loops. Thanks for your insight. RTF post.

I'm not planning to use GB for anything intensive, I was just noting some stuff that I thought it could do with. As ivanjs said, the loops are easy to use and sound good, and I'll most likely use it for the same for sort of stuff e.g. getting ideas down quickly.
 
hmm, I'll chime in. Looks mysteriously like Logic except really lite. Kind of like a Cubasis for Logic. No whistles or bells of the full blown apps but kind of functional like that cheesy program MOTU has shipped with every synth on the planet. Nice for some work but I'll stay with Digital Performer 4.1 for the heavy stuff. I love my music and I need power to do what I'm doing regularly.
 
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