GarageBand

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This article is about the software application. For information about other music-related topics, see Garage band.

GarageBand is a software application that allows users to create a piece of music. It is developed by Apple Computer for the Mac OS.

The application is not aimed at professional musicians, but it is intended to help amateurs produce music easily. The application comes with 1,000 pre-recorded sampled loops, and 50 sampled or synthesised instruments which can be played using a MIDI keyboard connected to the computer, or using an on-screen keyboard. Additional loops and instruments are available in the four GarageBand Jam Packs, separate products offered by Apple Computer; each expansion pack costs $99 USD and adds more than two thousand loops and dozens of virtual instruments. A selection of demonstration loops from each of the Jam Packs are also freely downloadable to users who own a .Mac account. There are several 3rd party companies that offer Garageband Apple loop sample content, both on CD, and in downloadable loop packs.

GarageBand can only be purchased as part of iLife, a suite of applications intended to simplify the creation and organisation of users' digital content. In addition to GarageBand, iLife includes iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, and iWeb.

The application was announced during Steve Jobs's keynote speech at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco on 6 January, 2004; musician John Mayer assisted with its demonstration.

GarageBand 2 was announced at the (2005) Macworld Conference & Expo on January 11, 2005. Major new features included the abilities to view and edit music in Musical Notation form, to record up to 8 tracks at once, and also to fix timing and Pitch of recordings. It shipped, as announced, around 22 January, 2005.

GarageBand 3, announced at 2006's Macworld Conference & Expo, includes a 'podcast studio', including the ability to use more than 200 effects and jingles, and integrate with iChat for remote interviews.

GarageBand was originally developed by the German company Emagic, developers of the professional musical program Logic Audio, which was acquired by Apple in July 2002.

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Limitations

While GarageBand can be used to produce professional-quality recordings, the software has limitations that in practice make this difficult. Significantly, tempo and key signature cannot be changed within a song. Automation of effects parameters is also absent, as is a (native) MIDI out capability.

Garageband 2 introduced some tempo and pitch modification. Automation is extended to track volume, pan position, master volume, and master pitch. Both audio and MIDI can be transposed. Recording is extended to eight real instruments and one MIDI instrument at once. MIDI files can be imported.

Apple's Logic application forms the professional counterpart to GarageBand.

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