Listening to the Finished Song

Before you start the next series of exercises, it's good to know what you're aiming for. Follow these steps to hear the finished song you will be creating from scratch using Apple Loops.

The song you'll create is called IvoryGroove and is based on a short theme song I composed for a production company. The production company used it with their animated logo at the beginning of their film and television productions. Since the process to develop the story for a film is similar to developing a song, I used the creative energy of a live music jam session as a template for the music.

In the many jam sessions I've experienced over the years, somebody in the band has an idea for a riff, and in a matter of seconds, other musicians catch the groove and join in. In IvoryGroove, as you'll hear in a moment, something similar happens. The piano comes in, then the strings double-up on the melody, then the bass and drums/percussion come in, and finally the song ends with a cymbal crash.

Keep in mind, a jam session is live musicians joining in to play an unrehearsed piece of music and to see where it goes. In some ways, writing a song in GarageBand is the opposite of a jam session because you have to think and plan each part to add it to the Timeline. On the other hand, since your musical choices in GarageBand are unlimited, the essence of a jam session lives on.

1.	Choose File > Open and select 5-2 IvoryGroove Finished from the Lesson_05 folder to open the song. The project 5-2 IvoryGroove Finished opens in the Timeline. The song is composed of 4 green Software Instrument tracks, 3 blue Real Instrument tracks, and an imported Real Instrument region, which appears orange in the Timeline. Orange regions are new to GarageBand 2; now you can import loops and audio files. You'll get a chance to import a region in Lesson 9.
2.	Press the Home key, then press the spacebar to play the song from the beginning of the Timeline. Note If you are running a slower computer and are having trouble playing this song, try locking the Software Instrument tracks by clicking the small lock icon on each track. The Lock button is new to GarageBand. Not only does it lock the track to prevent unwanted changes, but it also renders the track to the computer's hard drive so it won't need to be processed by GarageBand as it plays.
3.	Choose File > New to open a new song.
4.	Name the song IvoryGroove and save it to your GarageBand Songs folder.