Hello
I want to get back into recording music, and rather than using my PC, I want to try using my iPad Mini. Garage Band seems a likely starting place. I've been trying to figure it out, but I'm not having fun yet.
I've looked here and mostly found people asking for tutorials, but no actual step by step information.
I have done a little YouTube looking, but haven't found anything too useful as there's so much, "tap this, slide that."
I am mostly interested in recording audio, such as voice and acoustic instruments. If there is another option, primarily based in audio multi-tracking rather than loops, samples, and virtual instruments, I'm all ears!
For now, I'm happy playing with the onboard mics until I decide this is a good direction for me to take. Then, I'd look into a audio interface. In a perfect world I'd love a simple small keyboard, with transport and encoders, and an audio interface.
Any suggestions gratefully received.
And finally,
Comments
I know how to create an audio track.
I'm intending to start a podcast about this, soon. I need to figure out how to generate video for Youtube though. I also need to mess around with the interface a bit more. I got to the place where you create an audio track, but I need to get it consistent.
Basically though, if you make a new song, there's a "create audio" button. Hit that and you get an audio track, then you just record like you think you would, by hitting the record button. I'm also not sure if you can add audio tracks, so far I can't see how, but I'm working on figuring it out one way or the other.
GarageBand user guide
The online GarageBand user guide has a very good section on using it with VoiceOver. I've used it to record some basic multitrack stuff, but I'm far from great at it.
That's one thing I wish we had more of, good resources for how to create content.
The problem with the user guide.
It makes it look like GB is set up for instruments. While that might largely be true, you can absolutely record at least one audio track with GB. But you won't find that in the Voiceover section, it's in the main manual. On the one hand, sure, read the whole manual, if you really want to get familiar with it. On the other hand, I'm not even sure if it's mentioned in the VO section, I didn't go through the whole thing looking for it, just the sections. The VO section seems to pretty muc hcover dealing with instruments.
The guide is great in a lot of ways, e.g. there's actually a whole set of keyboard shortcuts if you're using a Bluetooth keyboard, and hint, you probably want to if it's at all possible. The Voiceover section also covers the stuff it covers fairly well. It's pretty straightforward to work through, so far.
But I think some kind of tutorial needs to be made just for stuff like audio, aside from having examples to walk through for the rest of the stuff. Because I'm not sure just reading the guide gets you where you need to be.
About instruments
I've played around with GarageBand on iOS, less so with Mac. On iOS, you can actually play around with the instruments, like having a piano on screen where you can mess around with chords and the like. I didn't find any such option in the Mac version. Is it there, or do I have to use something LogicPro for something similar?
For those who may want or need it
So after a bit of digging I found the answer to my question in the post above. Note that I haven't tested this myself, as I have to clear some space on my Mac to make way for instrument libraries. But if someone can give it a try before I get around to it, post your findings please.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/08/09/how-to-play-music-using-your-macs-keyboard-with-garagebands-musical-typing
Musical typing works just fine.
Weirdly it's not in the iOS version, which is a bummer. But yeah, you hit cmd-k, you have to be in certain areas for it to work, the toggle I mean. If you're using a Bluetooth keyboard there will be some delay and you'll need to quantize. It's not great, but yeah, it will give you something to play with in a pinch, or let you experiment to see if it's worth picking up a midi controller or keyboard that can do midi over USB.
As I've always said, at…
As I've always said, at least we have something like a guide on ios/ipados, nothing on the mac for VO :(
Maybe they assume they don't need one?
Some of how GB works on iOS will be different because VO uses touch gestures, and so does GB. But for the Mac, is there a ton you need beyond basic VO skills and keyboard shortcuts?
I'm not saying they shouldn't have one, mind you. I went right to logic.band when I was getting started messing with it on Mac. I'm just trying to think if there could be any reasoning behind having one and not the other.
BTW the keyboard shortcuts seem fairly parallel between Mac and iOS. Mac has more I think, but the ones that iOS has match, or if they don't entirely, they do for the most part. So for example, to move, I think by bars/measures by default, on both it's dot/period to go forward, and comma to go back.
So looking at something like logic.band's getting started stuff for Mac might actually be a lot more helpful on iOS than you might think at first. I'll definitely be looking at it.
Ideally what I'd like to do is put up a blog or something so I can have links, and probably text write-ups of at least some of the stuff I cover. Then also do a podcast to walk people through actual examples. But I'm thinking of text because while podcasts are great to get live examples and to get started, it's hard to go back and find things in them if you just need a refresher on one or two things.
So I'm currently trying to figure out a blogging platform and podcast hosting and getting stuff set upp.