Instruction Manual

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Tutorial

Lesson 2:

Working With Real Instruments

If you sing or play a musical instrument, you can connect a microphone or an electric musical

instrument to your computer and record your performances in a Real Instrument track. Each

recording appears as a region in the track. You can add effects to a Real Instrument track, and

edit Real Instrument regions in the track editor.

What You'll Need

To work with Real Instruments, you’ll need to have each of the following items on hand:

•

Enough free hard disk space to record to (stereo CD-quality recording requires about 10 MB of

disk space per minute of recording)

•

A microphone to record voices or acoustic musical instruments, or an electric musical

instrument you want to record

•

Audio cables to connect the microphone or instrument to your computer

•

Optionally, an audio interface to connect the microphone or instrument to your computer

Before You Begin

To make it easier to follow the lesson as you work, print the lesson before you start.

In many of the tasks shown in this lesson you need to choose menu commands. In the lessons,

and in the GarageBand Help, menu commands appear like this:

Choose Edit > Join Selected.

The first term after

Choose

is the name of the menu in the GarageBand menu bar. The term (or

terms) following the angle bracket are the items you choose from that menu.

Summary of content (7 pages)

PAGE 1
Lesson 2: Working With Real Instruments 2 Tutorial 2 If you sing or play a musical instrument, you can connect a microphone or an electric musical instrument to your computer and record your performances in a Real Instrument track. Each recording appears as a region in the track. You can add effects to a Real Instrument track, and edit Real Instrument regions in the track editor.
PAGE 2
Connecting Musical Instruments to Your Computer Some microphones can be connected to your computer using the audio in port, if your computer has one. You can also connect microphones and instruments using an audio interface. Some audio interfaces let you connect multiple microphones or instruments to your computer and record them on different channels. Audio interfaces are available in a variety of formats, including USB, FireWire, PC card, and PCI formats.
PAGE 3
Getting Ready to Record Once you have connected your instrument and added a track to record in, there are a few things to check before you start recording: • Make sure the microphone or instrument is connected properly and is working. • Make sure the correct audio drivers are selected in the Audio/MIDI Interfaces pane of GarageBand Preferences.
PAGE 4
Recording a Real Instrument Now you’re ready to record your Real Instrument. You can record one Real Instrument track at a time. To record a Real Instrument: 1 Click the header of the Real Instrument track you want to record in to select the track. 2 Move the playhead to the point in the timeline where you want to start recording. 3 Choose Control > Count In to have the metronome play a one-measure count-in before recording starts.
PAGE 5
Recording a Real Instrument with the Cycle Region GarageBand lets you record over a specific part of a song. Musicians sometimes call this “punching in” and “punching out”, and call the points where you start and stop recording “punch points”. To record over a specific part of a song, you set the cycle region in the timeline. To set the cycle region: 1 Click the Cycle button. The cycle region appears as a yellow strip just below the beat ruler.
PAGE 6
Adding and Adjusting Effects Each Real Instrument has a set of effects, which include a noise gate, compression, equalization (EQ), echo, and reverb. You can adjust a track's effects, and add up to two additional effects, in the Track Info window. Select an instrument category from this list. Select an instrument from this list. Use these controls to set the input format and input channel. Use these controls to add and adjust effects.
PAGE 7
Changing the Input Channel and Input Format When you create a Real Instrument track, you set the input format to either mono or stereo, and set the input channel (for mono input) or pair of channels (for stereo input). You can change these settings in the Track Info window. To change the input format: 1 Select the track, then click the Track Info button to open the Track Info window. 2 Choose an input channel, or pair of channels, from the Input pop-up menu.