Dude, you know those teaching events they have in Apple Retail Stores - imagine them doing a Garage Band piece where they have a bunch of keyboards and people step up!
Some would choose guitar, others keyboard, and some would just rock out with the Apple Loops!
That has to attract customers (which become the loyal hoards). Jammin' in the Apple Store.
As for the "velocity-sensitive", I thought that was what it meant. I'd just always heard "touch sensitive" or whatnot.
Well actually there is a difference. Velocity sensitive is as explained above; the harder/faster you hit the key (hence velocity), the louder the note. (Or in the demo this was used to "bend" into a note when playing the software guitar instrument.)
True touch sensitive instruments don't measure how fast you play the note, they measure how hard the key is pressed, and can continue to do so while you hold down the key. So hit the note hard and let go, and the note plays loudly. Hit soflty aand it plays softly, so far it's similar, but hit the notes softly and keep the keys down, then slowly press harder and harder and the note gets louder and louder. Slowly take the pressure off and the note quiets. Of course this effect is most useful on instruments where there is a long sustain period like an organ or wind, brass, and string instruments.
If a salesman says it's touch sensitive, better make sure!
I have a question about GarageBand maybe someone knows the answer to.
After I record from my keyboard, can i tweak the notes in the program? The GarageBand pages on Apple's site seem to imply that you can "fix it". But does that mean I have to rerecord? And can I enter notes one by one via the computer? The site also shows an on screen keyboard. I'm right handed and I play the piano, except I'm now disabled and can't use my right hand to play anymore so you see I need to be able to edit!
Inputting midi notes thru a midi keyboard, into a midi based application(garageband, works equally with midi as it does live audio) will enable you to tweak the midi, shift note positions, quantize, change volume, even change what instrument is used.
Here's a line from right next to that picture that really surprised me:
Is it me, or are they saying you can actually edit MIDI? That would be fantastic (although somehow I don't really believe it).
When I tried it out it worked this way:
You double click your track in the upper window and it opens a more detailed view below. The notes are represented by lines at different levels. the length of the lines is, off course, proportional to the length of the note. They had a neat quick fix button to automatically adjust timing. This was demonstrated (by Steve or Expo demo-forgot?) with a simple drum pattern played on the keyboard. One hit of the button and all the slight variations in timing were zapped.
Editing the notes: If you clicked on the individual lines you could shorten or lengthen the notes. I guess you can delete, but I actually forgot to try that. The drop window in the same edit pane has parameters that can be adjusted, like pitch. I don't know how they measured it, by % perhaps, it was some large numbers. It wasn't obvious how much you had to change the pitch to go from C to D for instance. I guess thats were ears come in. There were other options in the drop down window that when selected resulted in my notes no longer being available to edit, the Apple guy didn't have a clue either.
If what I described requires Midi, well its got it to some degree. Otherwise sorry for ignorance.
PS. I just looked at Apples site and I didn't see any pictures of the part I just described. But, i did see the reverb etc options. WOW, all that for the cost of a single foot pedal effect box.
yeah, that's just like Reason, and pretty much any other midi sequencing app I've ever used.
With that, I think it should be noted, just because I sense a little confusion maybe?
"virtual instruments" are midi, granted they are high quality samples, they are still triggered by a midi controller, and they still work like midi, whereas general midi(the type you hear in QT music instruments, and millions of other like minded programs) takes one sample and stretches it across a keyboard(for the most part) to save space, higher quality samples, often take the full range of the instrument, at various different settings, and combine them to create a very good sounding instrument that can be triggered with a keyboard.
for a sense of scale, I've seen piano synthesis/sample dealies that take up about 1.2 GB just for this ONE piano
And in case there is any more confusion about MIDI, it stands for Musical Instrument Device Input
To the one who posed the question about inputting chord changes, I have no wisdom to offer. But I do appreciate you asking the question. It is exactly the question I had. I also appreciated the person who tried to answer it. I have a PC software title called Band In A Box (BIAB). It is awesome. All you have to do is input your chord progression, (instrument not required), and you get perfect accompaniment with the instruments you have chosen playing in the style you selected. You can lay down live tracks on top of that. It is a pretty neat piece of software. Does GB or even ST allow for that kind of ease of use? Another scenario I wouldn't mind is playing a chord progression or song through a midi KB, then having GB play back an appropriate accompaniment with user selected instruments and styles. Is this possible with GB. I have never used a loops program and so I have no idea how they work. I can see where they would be good for drums, but I have no idea how to go about making real music with them. I understand how loops are useful for rap, dance, and the like. I have no interest in such garbage. I am interested in more melodic forms of music such as soft rock, ballads, country, classical, and the like. How do I make such music with loops? I don't need help creating a song or coming up with musical themes. I just need accompaniment and/or full orchestration for songs I have already written. Is this what GB does or do I continue to use BIAB. Sorry if this question seems repetitive. Nothing in the keynote demo or on Apple's Website makes this clear. I am a composer in need of accompaniment, not a wannabe in need of talent. I can't figure out which category of person GB is designed for. Thanks for your insight.
Yeah, that's one of the things I'm a bit unclear on. How "static" is this going to be? I certainly could have endless fun doing loops, stacking instruments, changing nistruments, etc. But at some point, I'm going to want to chnge a chord, introduce a bridge, etc.
I'm sure I'll figure it all out next week.
I want to be able to do 3-minute, self-contained songs...with chord changes and whatnot. Not just dance-ready, repetitive loops that go forever.
Even though, for practice and simply playing and having fun again is more than worth the $49 price. I'm just hoping it does what I'm hoping it does (acoustic/voice/bass/percussion/keyboard 3-minute demo recordings and so forth). A true computer-based multitrack demo studio?
I think what you want is possible to some degree from what I saw. You can add loops at any point in the performance and mix and match. In other words it doesn't have to be the same drum beat fro the entire piece. Since you can edit to some degree, the whole thing gives you quite a bit of freedom to build on the provided loops. I guess there comes a point, however, when what you want is notes as you hear them in your head, thats whne you need a keyboard etc to enter them yourself.
Nonetheless, the amount of different things that can be pasted together with the provided loops is quite large.
Yeah, I'm pretty certain it's not going to have band-in-a-box functionality.
Even if you can change chords in the middle of a composition (and I'm not at all convinced you can), there's still the problem of the color of the chord. If your loop sample is minor it's gonna stay minor. At least, that will be true of the blue (Apple-provided real instrument loop samples) and purple (recording of yourself from line-in). It will be interesting to see to what extent you can edit the notes of the green (MIDI) loop samples to change chord color. I'm guessing you can't, at least if they're Apple-provided. But if you can, that would be one way to go.
This is especially important for jazz, where the specific color of the chord can really matter. Even a regular dom. 7th chord won't do the trick if you need something like 7#9#5 to play an altered scale.
Of course you can input your own sections with a MIDI keyboard - if nothing else you could input the whole set of changes, but add the drum loops, and then set it to repeat. You can probably even transpose the whole thing up and down, but I doubt you can tell it to change the minor to a m7-5, unless you can do it manually.
I'll be interested in seeing if you can create your own loop sections that act like the Apple-provided ones. Then maybe you could input a 4-bar section of a chord, and then change notes to change the color, and piece it together into a set of changes. It wouldn't be as easy as band-in-a-box, but it would probably sound a lot better.
Mac Voyer (voyeur?) it sounds like you're in the same boat as me, but from what I saw in the demo at the keynote, it's entirely possible to create music without using the loops.
When GarageBand arrives here on the 16th, the only loops I know I'll absolutely need are the drum loops since I just don't have the space for a drum kit in my apartment. I play keys, I have a bass player and a guitar player (and a drummer too, but since GarageBand doesn't seem to allow recording more than one track at a time it would be impossible to record live drums unless it was just with a room microphone. No chance of mic'ing each drum and recording separate tracks).
I suppose that would be possible, but you'd still have to record each instrument separately I think. i.e. you'd mic the drum kit however you needed to, run those mics into a separate mixer and the mixer into GarageBand (Tascam and other companies make FireWire and USB options for this) and record through GarageBand. THEN you could go back and record your bass track, your guitars, etc. You'd be limited in what you could do to the drums after they're recorded into GarageBand since you won't be able to tinker with the sound of individual drum tracks, only the entire kit as one track.
I may be wrong, though. Does anyone know for certain if it's possible to arm and record more than one track at the same time in GarageBand?
I've been up and down the "Record" page for GB a dozen times and it doesn't clarify whether or not you can record multiple tracks at the same time (there is a 64 track limit, I remember that from the keynote). However, some of the "accessories" can send >1 track at a time so maybe you just need the proper mixer? After all, they do say you can use it to record live performances, and there aren't too many solo bands out there.
I called the Apple store to see if someone could shed some light on this for me. They could not. They did say that it would work just like ST. Unfortunately, I do not know anything about how ST works either. Perhaps someone else could call in and maybe get lucky enough to talk to someone with musical and product knowledge. Otherwise, I will just have to wait for a little over a week for others to report in.
By the way, I know my name is spelled wrong. It was a mistake when I first became a member. One day I will have a mod correct it for me. But for now, it is one of the things that keeps me humble.
I called the Apple store to see if someone could shed some light on this for me. They could not. They did say that it would work just like ST. Unfortunately, I do not know anything about how ST works either. Perhaps someone else could call in and maybe get lucky enough to talk to someone with musical and product knowledge. Otherwise, I will just have to wait for a little over a week for others to report in.
By the way, I know my name is spelled wrong. It was a mistake when I first became a member. One day I will have a mod correct it for me. But for now, it is one of the things that keeps me humble.
They aren't going to know much more than we do. They won't get their hands on it until the 16th maybe the 14th at the earliest. Once they do get their hands on it they will most likely have answers to most of your questions.
Yeah, basically all they can tell you know is "it's just like soundtrack" because that's probably all they've been told.
About doing multiple tracks on one track, it would most likely be possible, though given the option I would prefer to do multiple tracks on multiple tracks, I recorded a short album once, 6 tracks, I played bass on 5, and did the drum programming on the 6th(hip hop stuff) we used a roland v-studio, but some of the tracks were broken, so I had to plug in tp the V-drums, then drums and bass went in thru 1 track, the result was that the bass ended up buried in the mix, when it really shouldn't have been, and there was no way to change that later without making the drums louder too \
64 tracks is a lot, at BEST you'd have 6-8 mics for drums
plus 2-3 vocal mics
maybe 2-3 mics on guitar amps
and 1-3 people playing DI
and then you still have lots of room to spare.
I was under teh impression that it was only 24 tracks? 64 though...daamn that's really a lot, doesn't the 64 track version of pro tools(no different than the 24 track version, just with more tracks) cost like $1000 more?
I may be wrong on the 64 tracks piece. Here's a quote from GB's loop page
Quote:
GarageBand creates a new track for each loop you add the timeline. You can keep finding and adding more loops to your composition virtually forever. Until you think it?s time to add effects, that is.
Comments
Some would choose guitar, others keyboard, and some would just rock out with the Apple Loops!
That has to attract customers (which become the loyal hoards). Jammin' in the Apple Store.
I love Apple.
that'd be so neat.
Originally posted by pscates
As for the "velocity-sensitive", I thought that was what it meant. I'd just always heard "touch sensitive" or whatnot.
Well actually there is a difference. Velocity sensitive is as explained above; the harder/faster you hit the key (hence velocity), the louder the note. (Or in the demo this was used to "bend" into a note when playing the software guitar instrument.)
True touch sensitive instruments don't measure how fast you play the note, they measure how hard the key is pressed, and can continue to do so while you hold down the key. So hit the note hard and let go, and the note plays loudly. Hit soflty aand it plays softly, so far it's similar, but hit the notes softly and keep the keys down, then slowly press harder and harder and the note gets louder and louder. Slowly take the pressure off and the note quiets. Of course this effect is most useful on instruments where there is a long sustain period like an organ or wind, brass, and string instruments.
If a salesman says it's touch sensitive, better make sure!
After I record from my keyboard, can i tweak the notes in the program? The GarageBand pages on Apple's site seem to imply that you can "fix it". But does that mean I have to rerecord? And can I enter notes one by one via the computer? The site also shows an on screen keyboard. I'm right handed and I play the piano, except I'm now disabled and can't use my right hand to play anymore so you see I need to be able to edit!
TIA to anyone who knows!
BK
Originally posted by BRussell
Here's a line from right next to that picture that really surprised me:
Is it me, or are they saying you can actually edit MIDI? That would be fantastic (although somehow I don't really believe it).
When I tried it out it worked this way:
You double click your track in the upper window and it opens a more detailed view below. The notes are represented by lines at different levels. the length of the lines is, off course, proportional to the length of the note. They had a neat quick fix button to automatically adjust timing. This was demonstrated (by Steve or Expo demo-forgot?) with a simple drum pattern played on the keyboard. One hit of the button and all the slight variations in timing were zapped.
Editing the notes: If you clicked on the individual lines you could shorten or lengthen the notes. I guess you can delete, but I actually forgot to try that. The drop window in the same edit pane has parameters that can be adjusted, like pitch. I don't know how they measured it, by % perhaps, it was some large numbers. It wasn't obvious how much you had to change the pitch to go from C to D for instance. I guess thats were ears come in. There were other options in the drop down window that when selected resulted in my notes no longer being available to edit, the Apple guy didn't have a clue either.
If what I described requires Midi, well its got it to some degree. Otherwise sorry for ignorance.
PS. I just looked at Apples site and I didn't see any pictures of the part I just described. But, i did see the reverb etc options. WOW, all that for the cost of a single foot pedal effect box.
With that, I think it should be noted, just because I sense a little confusion maybe?
"virtual instruments" are midi, granted they are high quality samples, they are still triggered by a midi controller, and they still work like midi, whereas general midi(the type you hear in QT music instruments, and millions of other like minded programs) takes one sample and stretches it across a keyboard(for the most part) to save space, higher quality samples, often take the full range of the instrument, at various different settings, and combine them to create a very good sounding instrument that can be triggered with a keyboard.
for a sense of scale, I've seen piano synthesis/sample dealies that take up about 1.2 GB just for this ONE piano
And in case there is any more confusion about MIDI, it stands for Musical Instrument Device Input
I'm sure I'll figure it all out next week.
I want to be able to do 3-minute, self-contained songs...with chord changes and whatnot. Not just dance-ready, repetitive loops that go forever.
Even though, for practice and simply playing and having fun again is more than worth the $49 price. I'm just hoping it does what I'm hoping it does (acoustic/voice/bass/percussion/keyboard 3-minute demo recordings and so forth). A true computer-based multitrack demo studio?
I think what you want is possible to some degree from what I saw. You can add loops at any point in the performance and mix and match. In other words it doesn't have to be the same drum beat fro the entire piece. Since you can edit to some degree, the whole thing gives you quite a bit of freedom to build on the provided loops. I guess there comes a point, however, when what you want is notes as you hear them in your head, thats whne you need a keyboard etc to enter them yourself.
Nonetheless, the amount of different things that can be pasted together with the provided loops is quite large.
Even if you can change chords in the middle of a composition (and I'm not at all convinced you can), there's still the problem of the color of the chord. If your loop sample is minor it's gonna stay minor. At least, that will be true of the blue (Apple-provided real instrument loop samples) and purple (recording of yourself from line-in). It will be interesting to see to what extent you can edit the notes of the green (MIDI) loop samples to change chord color. I'm guessing you can't, at least if they're Apple-provided. But if you can, that would be one way to go.
This is especially important for jazz, where the specific color of the chord can really matter. Even a regular dom. 7th chord won't do the trick if you need something like 7#9#5 to play an altered scale.
Of course you can input your own sections with a MIDI keyboard - if nothing else you could input the whole set of changes, but add the drum loops, and then set it to repeat. You can probably even transpose the whole thing up and down, but I doubt you can tell it to change the minor to a m7-5, unless you can do it manually.
I'll be interested in seeing if you can create your own loop sections that act like the Apple-provided ones. Then maybe you could input a 4-bar section of a chord, and then change notes to change the color, and piece it together into a set of changes. It wouldn't be as easy as band-in-a-box, but it would probably sound a lot better.
When GarageBand arrives here on the 16th, the only loops I know I'll absolutely need are the drum loops since I just don't have the space for a drum kit in my apartment. I play keys, I have a bass player and a guitar player (and a drummer too, but since GarageBand doesn't seem to allow recording more than one track at a time it would be impossible to record live drums unless it was just with a room microphone. No chance of mic'ing each drum and recording separate tracks).
Originally posted by mlnjr
No chance of mic'ing each drum and recording separate tracks).
Can one plug all the mics into a mixing board and then plug the output into GB as one stream?
I may be wrong, though. Does anyone know for certain if it's possible to arm and record more than one track at the same time in GarageBand?
By the way, I know my name is spelled wrong. It was a mistake when I first became a member. One day I will have a mod correct it for me. But for now, it is one of the things that keeps me humble.
Originally posted by Mac Voyer
I called the Apple store to see if someone could shed some light on this for me. They could not. They did say that it would work just like ST. Unfortunately, I do not know anything about how ST works either. Perhaps someone else could call in and maybe get lucky enough to talk to someone with musical and product knowledge. Otherwise, I will just have to wait for a little over a week for others to report in.
By the way, I know my name is spelled wrong. It was a mistake when I first became a member. One day I will have a mod correct it for me. But for now, it is one of the things that keeps me humble.
They aren't going to know much more than we do. They won't get their hands on it until the 16th maybe the 14th at the earliest. Once they do get their hands on it they will most likely have answers to most of your questions.
About doing multiple tracks on one track, it would most likely be possible, though given the option I would prefer to do multiple tracks on multiple tracks, I recorded a short album once, 6 tracks, I played bass on 5, and did the drum programming on the 6th(hip hop stuff) we used a roland v-studio, but some of the tracks were broken, so I had to plug in tp the V-drums, then drums and bass went in thru 1 track, the result was that the bass ended up buried in the mix, when it really shouldn't have been, and there was no way to change that later without making the drums louder too
64 tracks is a lot, at BEST you'd have 6-8 mics for drums
plus 2-3 vocal mics
maybe 2-3 mics on guitar amps
and 1-3 people playing DI
and then you still have lots of room to spare.
I was under teh impression that it was only 24 tracks? 64 though...daamn that's really a lot, doesn't the 64 track version of pro tools(no different than the 24 track version, just with more tracks) cost like $1000 more?
GarageBand creates a new track for each loop you add the timeline. You can keep finding and adding more loops to your composition virtually forever. Until you think it?s time to add effects, that is.