multipurpose music synthesizer with a huge range of keyboard, guitar, and percussion options, and a full recording studio and mixing board. This was also true of the Mac version of Garageband, which has long been part of Apple’s iLife package of home media software; the difference is that the iPad version is touch-driven. You don’t have to plug in a keyboard accessory to lay down a virtual keyboard track—you just play right on the screen (with a virtual metronome in the background, if you want).
Synthesized instruments are nothing new, of course—touch-sensitive drum machines have been around for years, and there are hundreds of digital-music apps available for iOS devices. But with Garageband, as Robby writes, “Apple has proven that the whole of the iPad is greater than the sum of its parts.” It’s worth quoting from his post at length:
It isn’t that the Garageband keyboard has better sensitivity and sound than Pianist (though it does), or that the virtual guitar is easier to use than Air Guitar (though it is), or that the beat sequencers are easier to use than Korg’s iElectribe (though they are), or that the drums sound better than those of JamPad (though they do), or that the recording interface is smoother than FourTrack’s (though it is). It’s that all of these things are now integrated perfectly into part of a larger whole. It is an all-in-one-piece music creation suite, and it is the most capable one on the market.
Now, if you were listening to my songs carefully, you noticed that they were extremely modular. It’s a cheap musical trick: for the piano track in “Peter’s Song” I recorded only about 20 bars of music altogether, but copied and pasted it across 72 bars of music. Also, for both pieces, I added tracks in layers so that the middle of each piece has the most noise and activity, then I removed the tracks one by one to return to the simple opening. Another cheap trick, but one that’s extremely easy in Garageband, with its drag-and-drop interface. Here’s what the final track layout looked like for “Peter’s Song”:
Just as with iMovie, the other new media creation tool for the iPad that I wrote about in April, I’ve learned enough about how to use Garageband to be dangerous, but not enough to create professional-grade productions. My impression is that there’s a lot of depth to the software—enough to create some pretty elaborate songs, once you know what you’re doing. But I wasn’t absolutely sure about this, so I asked Robby Grossman what he thinks about Garageband as a tool for serious musicians. His answer was really interesting. He says you probably won’t be hearing a lot of Garageband-made songs on the radio, but that even professionals could use it as a kind of sketchpad:
I think it serves two kinds of users very well. First is the noodling/amateur musicians who want to create something palatable very quickly. It has protections in place to stop you from going out of key and to stop you from making mistakes in rhythm or timing.
To a serious composer this will feel limiting. Sometimes you want to go out of key to create dissonance. Or sometimes you want to switch between 5/4 and 4/4 to achieve a rhythmic effect. It would be hard (not impossible) to write Arcade Fire’s Modern Man on Garageband for iPad, for instance, because it dissuades you from switching time signatures in the way that that song does.
But it has a place in the serious musician’s toolkit as well. You can record rough demos in record time, and you can easily create accompanying virtual instruments to complement them. If the auto-correct features are too limiting, you can disregard them. The finished product will certainly be distinguishable from a studio production, but until you’re putting out an album, that’s probably fine. Even the most thorough artist has his sketchbook of rough ideas.
If you’re interested in checking out more Garageband-made music, I recommend the videos shared by YouTube users DxDutch, Qvasir, yuriwongmusic, and tipiweb. I’m really impressed by all the experimentation that’s going on with the software, whether people are using Garageband to record their own original songs or just creating imitations of Katy Perry songs or the Angry Birds theme.
Is all this progress in the world of music authoring is a good thing for “art”? The answer to that question probably depends on your feelings about highbrow versus lowbrow culture. Me, I’m the kind of person who appreciates a great performance by the San Francisco Symphony, but also gets some guilty pleasure from surfing YouTube. Yes, much of the material that fills today’s blogs and vlogs is pure dreck (and I’d put my own Garageband ditties in that category). But the upside is that you no longer need training, experience, or professional equipment to act on your creative urges. It’s only a matter of time before some teenager who started out on Garageband becomes the next Cole Porter or Herbie Hancock. I say anything goes.
