Garageband on iPad with iOS - a tutorial

[Music] so here we are with the iPad running iOS 10 and the new GarageBand and it's very very good piece of software you can record 32 tracks of either audio or inbuilt sounds on this indeed with the necessary and Siller ease you can actually record tracks at once on this and record an entire band but you need other bits of kit Here I am sat on my coffee table to demonstrate the fact that there are no hidden extras here this is just the iPad and nothing else so GarageBand I'm going to go and start a new song now it gives you two options at the tops tracks or live loops if you're a songwriter you're more likely to be using tracks if you're a DJ and maybe just playing with sounds and beats and riffs and stuff then live loops is for you so I'm going to start with tracks and I'm gonna find first the app called drummer now this is a human sounding drum machine that's built into GarageBand and it is immensely good and I shall demonstrate with a single touch of drummer and then the play button [Music] you have an instant drum rhythm you have various settings here as well you can make it sound more complicated or more simple louder or softer and even tinker with individual drum sounds to make your own beats so for example if I press play now and vary the hi-hat complexity you will hear it I'm gonna stick with the second setting I think that's pretty good you can also vary the fills there you go I'm going to minimize the fills I just want a little fill at the end maybe so there is my initial setting with the drums now I'm going to speed the tempo up in the corner is a little spanner symbol which enables you to change the tempo so I'm going to do that I'm gonna yeah one two eight there we go that's a bit faster than that also I'll just go back into the spanner see more I'm going to change the key that I'm going to recording now this is something that you need to do if you know that you're going to record a song in a certain key it is useful to set it here because it means that all the chords I'm about to show you on the other instruments our all calls are related to its parent key so I'm gonna change it to E minor don't worry from a musical theory point of view here because actually you can just get going and press chords and everything works very nicely it's very Apple very fluffy and very lovely and it works well so I'm going to now add a bass line using the internal bass guitar so there's a little button here that enables you to toggle between the instrument and the main window where you'll be adding tracks so I'm going to do that I'm going to add a bass here so I'm just going to tap on that and then I'm presented with what looks like a fretboard but instead of frets they've got chords written so I can go I can just create a baseline just by tapping those four different strings I don't need to know where to put my fingers if you are a bass player however you can go to notes and you are presented with a fretboard and then a rather neat little Bend function for that extra sort of human touch you know I'm going to go back to chords now we have an autoplay function which allows you to tap a chord and it'll play the bass line and it'll play it at the tempo that you've set okay so and the further round you go on auto play it becomes more complicated you know that's that's a little bit too complicated really for a bass line you want something simple and driving to go with those drums so I'm going to record a bass line so now if I go back to the main window I'm just gonna briefly go back to drummer because there is a button has appeared since I've recorded that bass and it's called follow so it'll allow you to follow with the kick and snare it'll allow you to follow the bass track that I've just done and if I click on that you can see that it comes up in my list it's the only track at the moment that you can make the drums follow any of the other tracks the rise of the machines this is very very good indeed so if I now press play the drums will lock in with the bass a bit more that bass drum is now following the bass guitar a lot better and now we have a very solid basis on which to put our other instruments so I'm going to add a guitar now let's have a look there we go so we have four sounds available we have the acoustic guitar a clean electric guitar hardrock distorted guitar and like a roots rock which is more of a sort of second clean sound ready so let's listen to the roots rock guitar [Music] you can strum a chord or you can pay individual notes [Applause] [Music] or you can set it to auto play again that seems quite complicated I'm gonna look at number to see what happens somewhat up at number three [Music] let's go with that one so I'm going to go back to the main window just to check that everything's the cursor is in the right place generally speaking you'll want to start from the beginning so that's this little button up here it's like the backwards arrow with a little line that takes the cursor back to the beginning now I don't necessarily have to click on the guitar to go back to the where I'll go to play because as soon as you press record the page will come up for you to play your chords in [Music] [Applause] okay it's quite loud at the moment so let's go back to the main window and just quieten the guitar down a little bit in your mixer so you drag your page over and just drag the slider down slightly no it didn't catch the first note so I can go in if I double click on this edit your guitar part now comes up here and you can see that there's nothing showing at the beginningless the first note is that one there so I'd like to put a bottom east ring in here so I grab my pencil here and put a note in and then I can do things like dragging it about and varying the length and also the velocity which is the volume so maybe I want something a little bit louder at the beginning don't forget the mixes it's down in the mix here so I'm gonna click done now there's a note of appearing at the beginning which means that when I press play now you'll hear the note that was missing great fantastic so just before I move on to the keyboard sounds there are some very good string sounds here I'm a violinist and so I play my parts in but these are extremely good very very usable sounds and you tap on it once to pick Cecotto or drag across forbode you can decide we've got the the full range of stringed instruments here maybe I'll just gonna take the basses off because I've got a bass line anyway maybe the cellos off as well so I'm just left with first violin second violins violas there we go and you get a lower sound you brush up and a higher sound if you go from the top down and there's an autoplay function once again really good auto play one is pizza cart Oh than the others are Arco boat okay so unless let's go be number three and just see what happens don't forget you can tweak all of this afterwards in the Edit window just now with a guitar I put an extra note in so the computer is saying well here's something that might work feel free to tweak it if you like really really good interaction I like it's good a little bit high in the mix for me so I'm just going to turn that down a bit and bring the guitar up very slightly there we go it is worth tweaking the mix as you go because there are it just makes it a bit more difficult to hear what you're doing if something's really overpowering anyway now I'm going to get a keyboard sound now the keyboards on this includes something a synth called alchemy which is really expensive sounding and it actually it appears on all the pro software the Apple produced such as Logic Pro so I'm going to go on the keyboard and it's coming there we go it's opened up on alchemy if it doesn't open up on alchemy there are various main menus so keyboards brings up all the classic hammered organs pianos electric pianos then the alchemy synth gives you a subsection of leads and pads and all that sort of things so I'm going to go for pads first analog silk on what else sound like like it so you have the same auto function here nice but I am going to use the onboard keyboard this time and you can input your own notes or chords and I'm going to do that here just so you can see that you can play notes in as well [Music] now there's a little iffy bit in the middle there so I'm just going to go to edit and I'm going to play back then you'll see my keyboard chords that are showing up here that one now I play the name iron instead of B minor so I'm just gonna throw those a box over those three notes you may need to open this to to fully see this so it's this chord there we go so now actually that second chord is okay now that's timing the timing of that chord is also off so there are two ways of doing this either you can go and do what's quantized in fact that's what I'm going to do or you could drag them to the bar line so I'm going to quantize this instead and show you about track settings so we've got the little mixer window here which brings up a load of options for your things like effects there are 10 effects built into this and you can use any four of them simultaneously plus another three which are global so I'm going to go to track settings and quantization I want the straight rhythm and I want it to quantize to the nearest eighth note now those alchemy stabs are going to be in place that'll do for me okay so there's a little bit about the keyboards you've got also things like the Hammond organ now the Hammond only sounds really good if he constantly adjusting it like the speed of the roads rotary speaker that sort of thing but luckily the iPad and GarageBand will record all of those movements as well as well as the notes so you have also other things like percussion and the chorus which is all which are all features of the original Hammond so I'm going to play just a very simple top line with this [Music] [Music] okay M is slightly incongruous with that alchemy synth but the idea is there let's take it down in the mix [Music] now if I want to listen to that Hammond on its own I'm just going to click the headphone symbol on that track you'll notice that the other tracks go gray you can hear all my settings that I made on the fly was stored and they play back if you want to change the rotary speaker you go to edit with the Hammond as we had before we have the notes here at the bottom there's also rotation so it allows you to actually change that it doesn't go into the drawbars into those harmonic sliders because it's just we are talking about a free pro and this is free for iOS 10 users 0 pounds and 0 pence so I'm just going to go and there we go so now we're going to add some actual sounds from the mic we mustn't forget the mic here because this allows the human outside world to interact with the digital nature of this recording so I'm going to select another track yeah you have world instruments and things always feel free to play with it your leisure and that's a good thing with this you discover things just by accident and that's the fun of it audio recorder voice there we go it now brings up something called lead vocals so it's already putting effects ready for when you play it back and I'm going to record something you have a range of effects here I'm actually going to take the reverb or Fats vocal Hall that's a mockery verb that it automatically puts on it I'm just gonna have the tone in the middle because I'm going to do some backing vocals so here we go I'm just going to record a couple of bars [Music] now I'm going to record the same part again by adding another track I'll show you why in a minute and a third one I'm going to take the level down of those other two so it's an put me off notice I've taken one headphone off in order to to do this when you're recording with the mic you must wear headphones otherwise the sound from the iPad will go through the mic as well as he vocal and it'll be impossible to mix so one will go on that notice is something called pitch control here and that's like an auto-tuned very useful [Music] now I'm going to listen to those three vocal tracks on their own so I'm gonna click the headphone symbol on all three just take the level down of that third one there when you record three of something not only does it give it that thicker sound but it actually has a corrective feature built into its very nature which is that any slight tuning err inaccuracies in one part will be masked by the other two tracks so it's quite clever though if you go into the mixer we can now have those three backing vocals so that they're spread across your left and right headphone so let's go to this track here you have a track pan control I'm gonna set that all the way to the left this one stays in the middle and this one I'm gonna move to the right and then have an essence of that yeah so master effects is a reverb control a basic griever which you could apply to these tracks which just makes it sit a bit nicer in your mix maybe I could hear the reverb there maybe it's just have a bit more just - just so you can hear it you never want to overcook reverb but if we're I just bring that back into context now under solo that lets get rid of the effects bar to bring all these up here there we go [Music] yeah alright now let's say I wanted to cut and paste those tracks onto the second half of my song it's only an eight bar song at the moment if I click one hold it it's a bit like shift on a computer when you're selecting more than one thing and then I'll double click on that I'm going to copy those three parts and then I'm going to move my cursor notice how there's a little measure at the top which tells you where you are but essentially I want to get it on that bar line there we go and then I just go to paste so I need to now show you a bit about the effects that are built into this this device so I'm going to use the one of the vocals as a guinea pig to show you in fact I use the middle one because it's in the middle of my mix so headphones that means I only listening you can hear the auto-tune kicking in there so I've got track volume track pan a solo and a mute button then I've got something called plugins and EQ I have basic thing called a compressor what a compressor does is it takes the loud portions of the signal and squashes them towards the quietest parts of the signal and then you bump everything up so you've got a nice sort of Undine amick sound which you'd want for lead vocals so that your vocals come out over the mix that's what a compressor is really for you have basic bass and treble you also have a slightly finer control EQ if you go into plugins and EQ a new page opens with all of these things showing the blue on the Rights means they're switched on the grayed out means are off so I'm going to switch that enhance tuning off I just want to hear it without any plugins at all at the moment so this is with no plugins as you prefer it like that at the moment but let's look at the visual EQ let's switch that on brings up a rather colorful little bar here we've got treble mid and bass so if I want to bring up my ultra top-end treble to hear the clarity of my voice I can do something like this Oh bear in mind that that is the mic that's built into this and it's totally usable so I need to actually do that on my other track so I'm going to bring up that visual EQ switch off my other tracks here and I'm going to do the same operation on my other two channels so that I can have all my vocals nice and present in the mix the more treble you have on your backing vocals that lower they can be in the mix and they're still contributing to the overall vibe of what you're trying to do here so [Music] and there we go they sit in nicely now there is a feature called multi tape recording and I'm going to show you that in conjunction with this this is the iRig stop it's a way of getting a guitar into your iPad these are this about fifty pounds you can get a cheaper one which is just a little barrel without the volume control and the switch this is actually designed more for live use but you can use it in a studio setting as well the cheaper version is about twenty twenty-five pounds or something very useful if you're a guitarist and you want to use this as a songwriting tool so I'm going to close the all the pages down at the moment there we go including the mixer bar and I'm going to add another track so before I do that I'm just gonna unplug the iPad there we go plug the my input input and then I need to take this special lead which has four contacts on it rather than three it's a special iPad iPod lead and an iPhone you can get this on an iPhone a GarageBand with pretty much the same functionality but the menus are a little bit buried so an iPad is best for this really so I'm going to pick up my base and I'm going to record a bass line that goes with this in place of the original bass sound we just had but I get to switch what's called multi take on which means that I can keep playing through that sequence and it will loop until I get a sound that I'm happy with so go back to the beginning I'm going to add an amp bass amp there we go okay there's a little jack plug at the top which spits sets my monitor to on [Music] there it is so um I'm now going to record something and I need to do a multi take on it so to do that I need to go back to my main window select the mixer button and then go to track settings and there's recording and then multi take recording and I'm going to switch that on so now I'm going to record that baseline and see what happens I'm actually going to get rid of this other base as well or I could just mute it why not do that I'll just mute it in case I want to keep it so that means that you won't hear the bass so I got to put my own bass on now so let's find my original track you have to select that as well before you record or it will think you're recording the bass guitar through software again so make sure that the track that you're going to play on is selected and I'm just going to double check that I've got my monitor on yeah okay here we go [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so that was hits 1 2 & 3 I purposefully may take 3 the best one because actually with a baseline you want to try and keep it simple and punchy and groovy with those drums so if I go back to my main window under my bass track here you will see the little number 3 3 tapes so if I double click on this in the middle is takes you go on that you can then select which take you want it I won't take 3 but I could I could use take 2 instead notice that the display in the bottom changes slightly to show that take as a graphical representation so I'm going to use number 3 you can delete the unused tents this has got a hundred and seven gigabytes of memory on it so I'm not really too worried about that but if you're running low on memory even clear any unused tapes audio is very memory intensive so when you really fill it up you will know about it so I'm going to listen to that bass line [Music] [Applause] now I missed out a note on the beginning of that D cordon in bar fall now I can get a bit creative here and actually use a note from my original tape okay so I'm going to edit a note in that is the missing one can you see that we get the bottom it's missing that note that's missing two notes okay so so I need those two notes to go there so I'm going to go split with the scissors and then I'm going to go spit here with the scissors and they're going to go here and split with the scissors then I'm going to lose that bit I'm going to copy that bit and paste it where the cursor is there we go now just gonna have a little listen to that [Music] and there are fixed my baseline so the basic editing features on this are mega useful so there there is a representation of what you might do when writing a song on GarageBand now I could put some guitar and this as well it's pretty much the same operation you just plug an amp in and you can set your guitar up with your guitar amp so anyway now we've finished with this go to my songs and then it sets it saves the song automatically when you leave the application I'm gonna go to select I'm gonna get select that single thing you can see they're all wobbling about of it and then I'm going to go to the arrow at the top and you can share it with wow I mean you probably share it with a Mars space program fairly soon but you can put it on Facebook SoundCloud YouTube whatever you want to do you can send it to iTunes you can open it in anything else it's all very very nice you can put it on I iCloud drive you can do anything with it so anyway there is a version of GarageBand for you have fun

Channel: Dan Baker

Views: 590,751

Keywords: Garageband tutorial, Garageband iOS10 tutorial, Garageband iOS 10 tutorial, Garageband on iPad, Dan Baker, Rapper's Delight, IK multimedia, iPad pro, Recording a song, Recording workshop, Alchemy synth, Logic Pro, Garageband to Logic Pro, Sugarhill Gang, Bernard Edwards, Nile Rogers, Music producing, Music mixing, Black Cat, Cute cat

Id: s9YeAecNSKk

Length: 31min 28sec (1888 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 22 2017