Building a Song from Scratch

The next series of exercises will walk you through the steps of building a song using Software Instruments. Some of the instrument parts will be prerecorded Apple Loops; others you will record using the onscreen keyboard and Musical Typing. Once the parts are in place, you will open the different regions in the Track Editor to edit and transpose them.

Previewing the Finished Song

Let's take a sneak preview of the finished song, so that you'll have an idea what you're going to build from scratch. I've called this song SciFiShow, because it's the sort of thing I would score for the opening title sequence of a hip science fiction show.

1.	Choose File > Open to open an existing song file.
2.	Select Lessons > Lesson_03 > 3-3 SciFiShowFinal.
3.	Double-click 3-3 SciFiShowFinal to open the song. The song opens in the GarageBand window.
4.	Press the Home key to move the playhead to the beginning of the song. Before you play the song, it's a good idea to turn off the metronome.
5.	Choose Control > Metronome, or press Cmd-U to turn off the metronome.
6.	Press the spacebar to listen to the song once.
7.	Press Cmd-W to close the current project. The GarageBand 2 Welcome window appears. A new feature, this window allows you to Create a New Project, Open an Existing Project, or Quit. There you have it. Let's get started.

Starting a New Song

First, you need to start a new song and create a few instrument tracks for recording.

1.	Click the Create a New Project button on the GarageBand 2 Welcome window, or press Cmd-N to open the New Project window.
2.	Type SciFiShowStarting in the Save As field.
3.	Select your GarageBand Songs folder from the Where pop-up menu.
4.	Click Create to create the new song.

Adding Software Instrument Tracks

You're going to be recording two Software Instrument tracks using synthesizer sounds. Let's go ahead and add another Software Instrument track before we start building the drum tracks.

1.	Choose Track > New Track, or press Option-Cmd-N to add a new track. The New Track window opens.
2.	Scroll down through the Software Instruments and select Synth Pads from the left column.
3.	Select Falling Star for the specific Synth instrument.
4.	Click Create to make the Falling Star Synth track. The new Falling Star track appears in the Timeline.
5.	Double-click the Grand Piano track header to open the Track Info window.
6.	Select Synth Pads for the Software Instrument and Angelic Organ for the specific instrument.
7.	Close the Track Info window. The top track in the Timeline is now titled Angelic Organ.
8.	Press Cmd-S to save the project with the new tracks.