Guitar Gear Forum

So if you've seen my other thread in this forum, you know I'm thinking about sending my homemade album tracks off to be professionally mastered. Towards that end, I've been going through and remixing my songs in order to remove my digital recording deck's built in mastering software from my mixes.

Welp, here's an additional blip. A while back, there was a possibility that a pro engineer & part-time producer down in Miami would maybe mix a few of my tracks for an EP release. It doesn't look now like that's going to happen. But when I thought it was, I had started transferring my recording deck's proprietary tracks into Garageband on my MacBook Pro so that I could send dude .wav files for mixing.

It was the first time I'd ever messed with Garageband.

Till today.

I just started ~ out of curiosity ~ messing around with actually (re)mixing one of my songs *in* Garageband. I had no idea how much more powerful a platform it is than what I've been using. But I (obviously) have no experience and therefore NO clue what I'm doing here. I only messed about with the compression and equalization on the individual parts.

So what I need is "GarageBand for Dummies," lol. Anybody willing to tutor me?

Honestly, I almost can't stand Garageband. Apple's usual 'control your every move' kinda thing, making it hard as hell to do things the way 'normal' musician-types want to do them. Same thing with their photo app and damn near all their other software.

So, in answer to your question, yea - I'm an occasional GB tinkerer. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be much help to your trying to become fluent in it, though - sorry, man

However, I'd suggest you check out Reaper if you're going to invest time in learning a new DAW, and I think there's a hell of a lot more of us here that do same. Best things are cheap ($60 if you register, but you can run the eval for at least 30 or 45 days before your conscience should be making you pony up) and interoperability between PC and Mac platforms.

Appreciated, mang. Unfortunately, GarageBand is what I've got, for the moment. Well, that and the old Zoom MRS 1608 desktop unit, which isn't nearly as flexible.

It's a simple download and install, if you have Internet access...

http://www.reaper.fm/download.php

I started with Garageband for a little while but then got my engineer friend to give me a crash course in Logic and haven't looked back since...

So, no help for the wicked (or n00bish), eh?

well Logic and Garageband are pretty similar so let me know what you're trying to do and maybe I could help

Thanks, mang. I'm not actually trying to do any particular task -- just trying to get good, natural sounding mixes of my tunes so I can send them off to have them mastered. Was hoping someone might be able to help me avoid n00bish pitfalls or common mistakes when jumping into GarageBand for the first time, gnome sane?

gotcha... the only advice I can give to help with that is take your time, there are lots of options and you don't need to use all lol.... now I'm not sure if Garageband has it BUT I find using a little bit of bitcrushing distortion on a bass actually helps give it some clarity in the mix... another tip my engineer buddy gave me is 9/10 times once you're using and EQ on something make sure and pull a narrow band between 400-430 about -3db on EVERYTHING.. you'd be amazed how it clears up your mix.. what to do is vary the actually frequency per track so 415Hz on your vocals, 420Hz on the reverb channel for your vocals... etc... drums as well...

Garageband is incredibly easy to use once you get used to it. I just start tinkering and when I want to do something I'm not sure how to do, I google it and find a tutorial. There are a bunch of Garageband/Logic tutorials on youtube.

Telephant wrote:Garageband is incredibly easy to use once you get used to it. I just start tinkering and when I want to do something I'm not sure how to do, I google it and find a tutorial. There are a bunch of Garageband/Logic tutorials on youtube.

Yeah man, GarageBand is awesome IMHO. Super easy learning curve and like Shea said, youtube some vids. You could also try Lynda.com which is great.

$30 a month and it gives you great, need to know tutorials AND exercise files so you can work right along with the vids. I am using it for Logic Pro and it is a God send.

JerEvil wrote:

Telephant wrote:Garageband is incredibly easy to use once you get used to it. I just start tinkering and when I want to do something I'm not sure how to do, I google it and find a tutorial. There are a bunch of Garageband/Logic tutorials on youtube.

Yeah man, GarageBand is awesome IMHO. Super easy learning curve and like Shea said, youtube some vids. You could also try Lynda.com which is great.

$30 a month and it gives you great, need to know tutorials AND exercise files so you can work right along with the vids. I am using it for Logic Pro and it is a God send.

Wow this sounds like something I need to spend some time with! Thanks for the heads up!

Telephant wrote:

JerEvil wrote:

Telephant wrote:Garageband is incredibly easy to use once you get used to it. I just start tinkering and when I want to do something I'm not sure how to do, I google it and find a tutorial. There are a bunch of Garageband/Logic tutorials on youtube.

Yeah man, GarageBand is awesome IMHO. Super easy learning curve and like Shea said, youtube some vids. You could also try Lynda.com which is great.

$30 a month and it gives you great, need to know tutorials AND exercise files so you can work right along with the vids. I am using it for Logic Pro and it is a God send.

Wow this sounds like something I need to spend some time with! Thanks for the heads up!

Yeah man. They have tutorials for EVERYTHING! Not even kidding.

This is great, gents! Many thanks!!!

I'm pretty good with GB too, having used it for years before switching to Logic X. Let me know if you've got any specific questions.

On Wednesday, I'm getting an iMac and a new interface. I don't really have any DAW experience at all except playing with Reaper a couple years ago. For starters, I think I'll go with with Garageband. I doubt I'll outgrow it, but if so I think it will transition well to Logic X. For now I'd just like to be able to participate in the drumjams with you guys and post clips and stuff like that. It might be interesting to see if I can combine music and video using my GoPro too.

i386 wrote:On Wednesday, I'm getting an iMac and a new interface. I don't really have any DAW experience at all except playing with Reaper a couple years ago. For starters, I think I'll go with with Garageband. I doubt I'll outgrow it, but if so I think it will transition well to Logic X. For now I'd just like to be able to participate in the drumjams with you guys and post clips and stuff like that. It might be interesting to see if I can combine music and video using my GoPro too.

I find the learning curve of Garageband to be pretty easy. That said if you have any questions don't be afraid to start a thread!

As far as the GoPro goes... Pretty sure Garageband does not allow you to edit video. However you should be able to share your audio from garageband with iMovie.

Telephant wrote:

i386 wrote:On Wednesday, I'm getting an iMac and a new interface. I don't really have any DAW experience at all except playing with Reaper a couple years ago. For starters, I think I'll go with with Garageband. I doubt I'll outgrow it, but if so I think it will transition well to Logic X. For now I'd just like to be able to participate in the drumjams with you guys and post clips and stuff like that. It might be interesting to see if I can combine music and video using my GoPro too.

I find the learning curve of Garageband to be pretty easy. That said if you have any questions don't be afraid to start a thread!

As far as the GoPro goes... Pretty sure Garageband does not allow you to edit video. However you should be able to share your audio from garageband with iMovie.

Shea said it before I could. Import from garageband to imovie. It's super easy and pretty fun too. The only problem I ever run into is not having enough or too little of either material to end the video at the same time the song is. Thats where all the work is but editing in imovie is fucking easy

It's starting to come together now...



I managed to get everything cabled up correctly. After spending some time with the interface manual, I was able to get the routing and mixing mostly figured out. It's overwhelming when there's so much to learn and you're starting from zero. I got some great gear now which I'm grateful for.