Publishing this has – again – been much delayed. Soon after launch I spent a few weeks playing with the original version of Garageband for iPad, just to see what it had to offer. In no way is this a detailed review, just a look at what I think of the software from a number of quick looks.
I’m not a user of Garageband on the Mac. I don’t really ‘get’ that program, maybe because I’m a user of pro apps that give far greater tools for editing and recording, but also as it seemed squarely at those with little musical know how who maybe wanted to learn some instrument basics or wanted to feel like a musician using built in loops and smart sequencers. That approach is instantly available to you in the iPad counterpart. Various ‘smart instruments’ that allow you to play instruments in whatever key and tempo you like, applying basic chord structures that are accessible in various picking, strumming and synth styles by pressing just one area of the screen. As with the mac software this is a lot fun for those who want to feel like they’re making music without actually having the background in actual musicality to do so.
But I do have that background. I play guitar, although I may not have the chance to do so as much as I’d like to these days! I have skills in basic keyboard, I’m good at rhythm and I studied music composition. I want more than computer generated smart music. To my surprise this is one area that the iPad version of Garageband comes into its own. It has an eight track sequencer that, whilst allowing you to build up a track with the smart instruments, also allows you to turn off the smart elements and play in the instruments live. It’s seriously impressive. You’re presented with a drum kit of your choice and play with your fingers with fluency – something you cannot do on the Mac. Likewise, being presented with a guitar and bass neck and a dizzying array of pianos, keyboards, synths and even a sampler that records the sound to sample from the iPad’s built in microphone.
Then the killer. Should you want, you can choose to record audio directly down as a track instead of using a generated instrument sound. At this point I let loose. Out came the guitar. I started to build up a track. I made my first discovery, when recording a drum part I could overlay and drop in extra drums into a loop. Using that and the basic quantise facility I built up a nice rock kit on a two bar loop. Added echo. Looped out infinitely. Added a nice generated bass. Then grunge-esque chords played in live from my guitar, plugged into my Boss GT-5 and outputted on a tiny desktop speaker next to the iPad. I wanted to add in some extra crashes and drum fills and found that I could still drop in and record over the infinite loop that had been generated, turning those sections into non-ghosted loops.
Then discovery number two. The synth and audio tracks couldn’t be overdubbed or handle a drop in. Bad news as I wanted to fix an error and add a solo. Making changes I split the chords and bass tracks easily with a splice tool (which amusingly see’s you having to physically splice across the track – lovely touch) and moved them with the drag of a finger over to a later point in the track so that I had space for a solo. As carefully as I could I dropped in a lingering break on the chords and a crash back in after the solo. It wasn’t perfect as it literally wiped what I’d previously recorded from the second I hit the record button, whereas an overdub would’ve been preferred. Maybe this is something the Garageband team at Apple are working towards?
Within an hour I had a track. Singlehandedly I WAS STILLWATER! OK, so minus vocals and with a mess at the end that I couldn’t fix. But for a first stab at programming a track, this was pretty darn neat. have a listen: (apologies for the noise you can hear – was too lazy to setup my audio balancer to tape the audio)
A few days later, Robyn’s Every Heartbeat came on the radio. Remembering what a great track that is, I whipped out the iPad and fired up Garageband with the intention of seeing if I could recreate the song. I matched the tempo by tapping along to the beat using its tempo setter – smart feature. Added a simple Hip-Hop Drum Machine beat. Some simple synth strings. Then a nice pinging synth sound slowed down by playing several octaves too low, giving quite a punching bass. Looped it all out and called in a mate to add some vocals. He freaked when he saw what I’d put together in ten minutes and used the remaining four track to record some vox and harmonies, just for kicks. Again, heres a video so you can listen to what we achieved in half an hour. The video shows the playback in the first half and then shows me adding in some extra synth I was dying to add in for the second half – sadly i had run out of tracks to add these and a few other things in.
Suffice to say the ability to easily have physical-esque instruments on screen in front of you, ready to play via touch as if it was real is incredibly powerful when combined with the basic sequencer. Obviously, there’s no going in and editing those recordings, deleting and altering the programming behind what you were playing is only ever going to be a pro tool option – this is not that, although you do have a very basic undo function. But a musician could very easily demo material with this and it’s portability muse make it an essential tool. Imagine a band on the road trying to kill a few hours waiting in a dressing room flicking between checking their emails, tweets and demoing song ideas on this. For a smart musician, they may even be able to make a lonely eight tracks work enough to give them the advantage of making master recordings with Garageband for iPad.
Aside from bugs – it did hang and crash a few times – there are a few basic additions that could make this even more of a game changer. Perhaps giving more tracks, ten would be enough, but doubling to 16 would be incredible. Either that or having the ability to mix eight down to one, IE a basic bouncing feature. Aside form those minor gripes, here is a piece of software that has fired up my musical intrigue again. Not that I’m aiming for rock star stardom, instead giving me the ability to create pleasing covers and new songs that will make me and maybe a few friends smile.
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