This is the transcript of the 'Apple GarageBand Introduction' video.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to GarageBand for iPad. In this video, we'll guide you through the basics of using this powerful music making app. When you first open GarageBand, you'll see that it opens to the space where you will save your project into. This is handy because it allows you to quickly find the previous projects or songs that you have been working on.
To create a new project, simply tap the plus button or select Create Song if it is available to you. GarageBand will move to a screen called the Sound Browser. This is where you can choose between creating your own sounds by using different instruments with tracks, or experimenting with pre-recorded passages of music in the Live Loops section. You can toggle between the two sections at the top of the screen.
The track section is where you can choose a touch instrument to play. There are a wide range of touch instruments or features available to you, such as the keyboard, drums, an amplifier where you can plug your guitar or bass into, an audio recorder, string instruments, a bass guitar, a wide range of other acoustic guitars, and a variety of instruments from around the world. There is even a virtual drummer that will create the beats for your music for you and allow you to choose from a wide range of styles and an external section, which allows you to add your own instrument and record directly into GarageBand.
Lastly, the Sound Library is full of additional sound packs and tracks that you can add to your GarageBand library for more ideas, beats, and inspiration. Live Loops is another great section within GarageBand, which we'll cover in another video.
To choose a touch instrument, simply tap upon it. Each touch instrument is different and has an array of features. Let's dive into the keyboard and explore further. Each touch instrument also has a play area and a controls area. You play melodies, chords, and sounds by touching the keys, strings, or other elements in the play area. Here on the keyboard, this can be located at the bottom of the screen. You can change the sound of the instrument using the knobs, buttons, and other controls in the controls area, and this is found at the top section of the screen.
In the keyboard section, you can firstly select from a wide range of keyboards or pianos by tapping the instrument in the centre of the screen. Let's jump in and choose an electric piano. As with all instruments, the features and look are different. It might be wise to orientate yourself with each instrument's features before recording your track.
A common feature across a range of pianos and keyboards is a number of octaves or scales. These allow the musician to play a higher note moving to the right of the keyboard and a lower note moving to the left. In GarageBand, you can adjust the octave in two different ways. You can manually toggle the keyboard up and down by selecting the glissando mode and pressing the right or left arrows. Alternatively, selecting the scroll option allows the musician to slide the keyboard left or right to find the note that they require. The scrolling occurs by sliding your finger to the left or to the right.
By selecting the keyboard option, you can adjust the look and the feel of the on-screen keyboard. This might be worthwhile exploring when starting for the first time.
Exploring the chords section allows the students to use pre-recorded combinations of notes. By switching to the autoplay feature, a pre-recorded soundtrack will be available using the notes that make up that chord. This is certainly worth exploring and experimenting with.
At the very top of the screen is the control bar. This features the navigation, playback and volume controls. Below the control bar is a ruler that shows the musical time in bars and beats. The playhead moves across the ruler to show what part of the song is currently playing. Let's explore the features of the control bar at the top of the screen.
These features are more common across all of the instruments and allow the user to navigate around the application, record and make many adjustments to their musical tracks. Starting from the top left, the first option is to save your work. Next, we can switch back to the sound browser to select other instruments and inputs. This could be handy if we wanted to add some guitar sounds to your song or to your track.
Next, we can explore the tracks mode for our recordings. These are the actual recordings, and you have a lot of functionality here to make a lot of edits. In the centre of the screen, we have our play and record operations. Next will be your sound controller and metronome button. The metronome button starts and stops. The metronome click you will hear when you are recording your music to help you stay in time with the beat.
Lastly, we have our settings and info buttons. The info button can be quite handy to show the coaching tips overlay, which contain helpful information about the current instrument or tracks view. You can play the instrument and use all of its controls while the coaching tips are visible. Tap the info button again to hide the coaching tips.
With a vast array of functions and touch instruments available to you, the best way to explore GarageBand is to dive in and start experimenting with different tracks, sounds and songs. What new music will you create today?
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