Rock hair? Check. Leather pants? Check. Air guitar skills? Check. Move over Rover and let the music nerds at CNET.com.au show you how to set up a simple home recording environment with GarageBand.
Setting up your own digital recording environment used to be a fairly specialised area only a short time ago. Hardware was expensive, software was difficult to learn for beginners or hobbyists, and recording instruments into a digital format cumbersome. With recent software, hardware, and plug and play technology, the job is much, much simpler.
In this tutorial we'll use Apple's GarageBand to record a variety of instruments for you to mix and export. This piece of software comes free with every new Mac (at the time of writing) and gives users an easy introduction to digital music production. The downside for Windows owners is that GarageBand only works on Mac OS X.
If you're using Windows, some alternatives to GarageBand with comparable features include:
What gear will you need?
Your gear will vary depending on what type of music you would like to play and record. There are three ways to import music to GarageBand. Out of the box GarageBand comes with hundreds of loops for guitar, piano, drums and bass. Apple sell Jam Packs which can increase the amount of loops you can use. Secondly, you can input real instruments such as a guitar, bass, or microphone via USB or audio interface. Lastly, you can create software instruments using a MIDI keyboard or Mac keyboard, though we've found using a computer keyboard is clumsy for this task.
For this tutorial we'll focus on recording real instruments and presume a band is recording basic rock 'n' roll instruments such as drums, keyboard, bass, guitar, and vocals.
To do this you'll need the following gear:
- Mac running OS X Leopard with GarageBand. The better the Mac specifications, the faster GarageBand will run. For older Macs it might be required to purchase an audio interface to prevent latency when recording.
- Your favourite instrument(s). Electric instruments can be recorded directly into the computer but acoustic instruments will need a microphone.
- Guitar/bass cables to connect to a computer or external audio interface
- Microphone cable to connect to a computer or external audio interface
- USB MIDI controller for keyboard/drum recording (optional)
- Audio interface (optional, but preferred if recording multiple instruments)
- A good set of speakers or headphones. (Optional, but preferred to hear your masterpiece in full glory.)
Hardware set-up
For hobbyist recording, there are two ways you can set up your Mac to start recording your digital masterpiece. One is to input real instruments via USB and line-level inputs directly into your Mac. This is fine for most newer Macs and those who only want to use one instrument at a time. If you own an older Mac and switch often between instruments then the second option is to plug all your instruments into one audio interface.
Here is a visual comparison of the two set-ups:
directly into the Mac
via an audio interface
If you're going to connect instruments directly into your computer then you'll need the correct cables. For guitars, MIDI keyboards, and microphones Griffin Technology provides instrument to USB cables at a reasonable price.
If you're after a slightly more professional set up via an audio interface then there's quite a few different devices out there. Cheap audio interfaces are available for less than AU$100, but we recommend devices a little bit more expensive that will do the basics plus have a few more bells and whistles that will allow you to do more advanced capturing and exporting once your skills become more advanced. M-Audio's Fast Track Pro is one of those devices which works well with GarageBand.
Setting up your recording environment
Whichever set up you choose, connect the relevant cables to your Mac. If you have PC speakers or headphones, make sure they are connected but volume is set low, you don't want to blow out your eardrums just yet.
For direct input recording, such as electric guitars and MIDI players, the environment isn't that important. However, if you're going to record instruments or vocals through a microphone then it's best to have a quiet, preferably insulated environment to minimise the chance of outside noises being captured in the recording process.
Getting started with GarageBand
Now that you have all the hardware set up, it's time to fire up GarageBand. Open the application and click on "Create New Music Project". This will open up a dialogue box that looks like the figure below. Pick a name for your song or recording session and a tempo, key, and signature. Don't worry if you don't quite know all of these details yet as you can change them later. Click on "Create".
This will open up the GarageBand interface. If this is the first time you've played with GarageBand it's worth spending some time getting used to the way the application works. While we'll cover the basics in this article, this is a large topic so if you want to know every feature and functionality then Apple's support website is a great resource. For a quick overview see the visual map below:
By default there will be a track called "Grand Piano" on the screen when first starting GarageBand. If you have a USB MIDI keyboard plugged in then click on Window -> Keyboard, otherwise you can use the Mac's keyboard as a musical keyboard by clicking on Window -> Musical Typing. This will prompt a keyboard on the screen and will allow you to start playing and hearing sounds from the USB MIDI keyboard.
To play a different type of software instrument, simply double click on the Grand Piano icon and pick another instrument. Out of the box there's more than 100 or so instruments to choose from with the possibility of thousands of different sounds. If that isn't enough, there are Jam Packs available from Apple for around AU$150 per pack.
Once you have the sound, riff, or melody you like it's time to record. Before rushing to press the record button allow for a count in by clicking on Control -> Count In. Now, press the big red button to start recording your software instrument. At this stage, it's not important to play perfectly, one of the benefits of GarageBand is you can create loops or riffs and mix your work later.
Congratulations, you can now record software instrument sounds on your Mac.
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