Customer Reviews

GarageBand for Mac OS X

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When GarageBand was first introduced, I was totally jazzed about the
notion that I, a musically challenged person, could create some cool
music to use as background for my videos. I grabbed the iLife Suite,
installed GarageBand, and quickly discovered that this "simple" program
was beyond my abilities.

I didn't really understand the difference between a tempo and a time
signature. I told you - musically challenged. Victor Gavenda explains
it on pages 32 - 33. He goes on to talk about choosing a key and why
you might choose certain ones. After reading this, I am no longer
intimidated by the prospect of setting up a song.

He does a great job of covering all of the other elements of the
interface. I now know the difference between a track and a region, and
between Real Instrument Tracks and Software Instrument Tracks. Gavenda
explains the color coding for these and tells you how to add, delete,
select, mute or solo a track.

There is thorough info on music loops and Apple Loops in particular. He
explains that Apple Loops contain "metadata" that GarageBand reads and
sorts them into categories in the Loop Browser. If you want to use the
Button View to find loops, it uses the metadata there, too. Until I
read page 67, I didn't realize you could customize Button View. You can
move or change keywords on buttons and expand the Loop Browser to show
more buttons.

After reading the section on adding loops to your song, I now
understand why I couldn't see all of the loops I knew I had. I needed
to start out with a time signature of 4/4 if I was going to build a
composition mostly from loops. Given my musical skills, I have to build
mine entirely from loops.

There is a nice section on hardware for recording audio, and hardware
for software instruments. He tells you what you need to consider and
what features to look for. It is followed by a section on recording
software instruments and re-recording a section of a song.

In later chapters, he shows how to select, copy, move, resize, loop,
split and join regions. Until I read chapter 8, I didn't realize that
every item you put in the song is a region.) There are tips for adding
effects and doing advanced editing, too.

If this book can help a musical whiz (not) like myself, it can surely
help you.

This book is for the serious garageband user. Loaded with detailed info. Abundant illustrations.