3.14. Tutorial: Funk for Nonmusicians

 < Day Day Up > 

GarageBand can be extremely addictive , as you're about to find out. Even if you don't know a quarter note from a Quarter Pounder, you'll be able to create amazing, professional-sounding compositions just by dragging loops around.

The piece you're going to create sounds awfully cool, considering it doesn't involve a single bit of actual playing on your part. But constructing it will nonetheless be an educational process, because you'll learn something about arranging : the art of making music build, relax, and surge forward again, and knowing when to add instruments and when to take them away.


Tip: If you're using a laptop, choose System Preferences, click Energy Saver, click Options, and make sure that the Processor Performance pop-up menu says "Highest." If it says Reduced, GarageBand may not have the horsepower to process the sonic wall youre about to build.That's a good piece of advice any time you work in GarageBand.

If you'd like to compare your work with the finished file, download the "GarageBand Examples CD" as described on Section 1.5. The file you want is called "02 Loop Tutorial."

3.14.1. Phase 1: Clean Up the Garage

The following steps assume that (a) you know how to find a certain loop, as described starting on Section 2.2, and (b) you know your way around the beat ruler (Section 1.6).

  1. In GarageBand, choose File New. In the New Project dialog box, type Funky Graham , press -D to choose the desktop as the file's home, and click Create .

    You've just accepted a tempo of 120 beats per minute, a meter of 4/4, and the key of C. That's all fine, even if you don't know what it means (Section A.5).


    Tip: You could have pressed the Return or Enter key instead of clicking Create. In fact, you can press Return or Enter to "click" the blue pulsing button in just about any dialog box.

    You arrive at an almost empty GarageBand screen. There's a Grand Piano track waiting for you, probably accompanied by the GarageBand onscreen keyboard. You won't need either one.

  2. Close the onscreen keyboard by clicking the tiny Close button (the tiny droplet button at top left of the keyboard window). Get rid of the Grand Piano track by pressing -Delete .

    Or choose Track Delete Track, if you like doing things the long way.


  3. Open the Loop browser .

    Do so by clicking the eyeball button at lower left, by choosing Control Show Loop Browser, or by pressing -L. In any case, the Loop browser should now appear at the bottom of your window.

3.14.2. Phase 2: Install Some Loops

At last you're ready to start filling that great gray expanse with some actual music.

  1. Find the loop called Upbeat Electric Piano 03 .

    One quick way would be to type upbeat into the Search box at the very bottom of the window. Another would be to click the Elec Piano and Clean buttons , and then scroll down a tad. See Chapter 2 for the full scoop on finding loops.

  2. Drag the words Upbeat Electric Piano 03 into the upper-left corner of the empty gray timeline area .

    You've just installed it at the beginning of measure 1. GarageBand creates a new track, called Electric Piano, to hold it.

    Your piece is so far only two measures long. Alas, nobody ever won a Grammy for a two-measure piece.

  3. Grab the upper-right corner of your new green region, so that the cursor turns curly. Drag to the right; release when you reach measure 9 (see Figure 3-7) .

    Figure 3-7. You've just told your keyboard player to play the same thing four times in a row. So far, the music is funky, all right, but a bit monotonous. Time to start laying down some more tracks.


    To hear your creation so far, press the letter Z key and then the Space bar. (Both the Home key and the Z key mean "rewind to the start." But learn the Z key. First of all, it's right there near the Space bar, so you can easily go Z-space ! whenever you want a playback. Second, if you're a roving musician, there's no dedicated Home key on a laptop.)

    Press Space again to stop the playback.

  4. In the Loop browser, click Reset. Find the loop called Funky Pop Drum 08. Drag it up below the first track; release your mouse at measure 3 .

    As you drag, a vertical positioning line appears so you'll know where the loop will sit when you let go.

  5. Drag the upper-right corner of this drum loop so that it ends at measure 7 .

    Do a quick ZSpace bar. Feel how the music takes a giant leap forward in interest, propulsion , and funkiness when the drums enter? This business of layering your compositions, bringing in new elements gradually, is a cornerstone of music making. If you'd just begun the song with both the piano and the drums, it wouldn't have been nearly as interesting.


    Tip: The piano turns out to be a tease or a preview. You've just figured out why the audio of some movie scenes sometimes begins before the picture changes, and why some novels begin with teaser sentences like, "Casey put down the tweezers and walked out the door, never to be seen again."

    Only trouble is, the piece so far begins a bit too timidly. It's just noodling on an electric piano. That's hardly going to get the attention of the murmuring jazz-club audience as they finish dessert. You need something right up front, something commanding that says, "I'm about to play some funk, and you will listen ."

  6. Find RnB Horn Section 05. Drag to the beginning of the piece beneath the first two tracks, so that GarageBand creates a third track .

    When you play this back, you'll discover that RnB (that is, "rhythm and blues") Horn Section 05 begins with a single notea brass sting or stab . It's just the attention-grabber you need.

    Trouble is, this loop also contains a bit of melody a few beats laterand you want to delay that particular gratification. It would be better if you could split this loop in half, and save the second part for later.

    But how is a poor author to show you exactly where to wield the scalpel without actually coming over to your house?

    Easy: By teaching you about the Time display.

3.14.3. Phase 3: Meet the Time Display

The Time display is the blue "LED" number counter just below the timeline.

As shown in Figure 3-8 at top, this display can express the position of the Playhead in either of two ways:

  • As measures and beats . If you're musically inclined, you'll probably prefer the standard musical notation that appears here. It's this format: 025.15.3.100, which refers to measures, beats, sub-beats (that is, quarters of a beat), and ticks (of which there are 240 per sub-beat).

    That's probably way more precision than you'll ever need, but heyoverkill is in these days. (Just ask anyone who's bought a Hummer.)

  • As hours, minutes, and seconds . The Time display can also show you your position in pure time codethat is, how many hours, minutes, seconds, and thousandths of a second you are into the song.

This mode is especially handy when you're preparing music to accompany, say, an iMovie movie, because you can use it to make sure that the music fits the important moments in the movie exactly.

Figure 3-8. Top: The Time display can show either musical time or stopwatch time.
Middle: The Time display is also a navigation tool. Method 1: Click a number, but keep the mouse button pressed. Now drag up or down to make the number bigger or smaller.
Bottom: Method 2: Double-click a number (which now begins to blink), type new numbers , press the right or left arrow key to jump to the next number, and so on. Press Return or Enter. Either way, the Playhead jumps immediately to the point you specified.


To switch between these two displays, click to the left of these digits, where you see the tiny clock (absolute time) or musical note (measures:beats).

So how will you split the new horn lick at just the right spot? Like this:

  1. Using the Time display, position the Playhead at 002.2.1.001 (that is, measure 2, beat 2) .

    If it's easier, you can just drag the Playhead handle and keep an eye on the Time display as you drag.

  2. Click the RnB Horn Section 05 loop to select it (if it isn't already selected). Then choose Edit Split (-T) .

    You've just cut the loop in two. You've separated the melody from the initial sting.

  3. Shift-click the first piece to deselect it, then choose Edit Cut (-X) .

    You've just socked away the melodic second part of this loop on your invisible Clipboard. You'll return it to the piece in just a minute.

  4. Find the loop called RnB Horn Section 08. Drag it into the existing Horn/Wind track, measure 3 .

    That's not actually where this loop is going to wind up, but that's as close as you can get with your initial drag. GarageBand doesn't let you drag a loop anywhere except at the beginning of a measure (the numbered "inches" tick marks on the beat ruler).

    If you want one to begin partway through a measure, you have to adjust it afterward, like this:

  5. Put the Playhead at 002.4.1.001 (measure 2, beat 4). Drag your newly installed Horn Section 8 loop slightly to the left, until its left edge aligns with the Playhead .

    This horn lick now begins on the fourth beat of measure 2. A quick Z-Space will prove how great it sounds. And while your brass players are on a roll, you can finally permit them to finish the loop you split a moment ago.

  6. Position the Playhead at 006.2.1.001 (measure 6, beat 2). Choose Edit Paste (-V) .

    The melodic portion of RnB Horn Section 05 reappears, neatly trimming off an empty piece of the preceding horn region. When you play all this back, it sounds like one smooth brass part. Nobody would ever guess that you built it out of chopped-up canned music products.

    If you now try to listen to the piece with fresh ears, you can sort of tell that the piece is building up to something musically important at measure 9. (Most mainstream music is built out of four-, eight-, or sixteen-measure sections.)

    At the moment, though, your drum part peters out at measure 7. To complete the drumming for the first section, you'll add a slightly different drum loop, one whose sound suggests the major new musical section that's about to begin.

  7. Find Funky Pop Drum 07. Drag it into the second track at measure 7, right next to the original Funky Pop Drum loop .

    Now then: Where has the bass player been all this time? Time to add another layer of interest.

  8. Find the loop called Edgy Rock Bass 01. Drag it beneath the other tracks so that it lines up with measure 5 .

    Doing so creates a new Electric Bass track.

    You've just completed the first eight bars (measures) of what may be the funkiest music your Mac has ever played . Do a Z-Space bar to play it back.


Note: Take a moment, if you haven't already done so, to save your work (choose File Save, or press -S). The dark dot inside the window's red Close button (upper left) lets you know that your project has unsaved changes; make a habit of saving your work every few minutes.

3.14.4. Phase 4: The Bridge

You could stop now, of course. You can press -S (or choose File Save) to preserve your work, which you should do every 10 minutes or so, and move on to other work.

You could also eat just one potato chip, read just one email message, or open just one birthday present.

In any case, if you decide to finish the piece, you'll be building the next section of the piecethe bridge . The bridge, as the name suggests, is the piece of contrasting music that connects two major sections. Ordinarily, the bridge (or the "B" section, as it's sometimes called) connects to another important section, often a repetition of the first ("A") part. In the case of this short tutorial, though, the bridge just builds into the climactic end of the piece.

  1. Find Groovy Electric Bass 04. Drag it up to measure 9 in the Electric Bass track .

    Now there's a twist! You're probably accustomed to creating a new track with every loop you install. But blue Real Instrument recordings can go end-to-end in the same track, even if they're recordings of totally different instruments. They maintain their original sound, but share the same effect settings (like reverb or echo).

  2. Drag the upper-right corner of the new loop to the right. Stop at measure 21 .

    If measure 21 isn't currently on the screen, no problem; the window scrolls automatically as your cursor reaches the right edge of the window. (Otherwise, you can always zoom out, using the slider below the track names .) The point is that you want this bass player to keep going and going to the end of the song.

  3. Find Shaker 04. Drag it below the other tracks, measure 9 .

    Your fifth track is born.

  4. Drag the Shaker loop's upper-right corner all the way to the beginning of measure 15 .

    Your percussion player is going to start gently, using only the shaker. But then, as the frenzy builds, he'll start getting funky and Latin.

  5. Find Funky Latin Drums 08. Drag it up to measure 15, in the same track as the Shaker. Extend its upper-right corner to the beginning of measure 19 .

    Between the bass and the percussion, you've got yourself a smoking rhythm section. But after a couple of measures of this, your ears will crave the entrance of some new musical interest.

  6. Press the Z key (to scroll back to the beginning). Click the blue RnB Horn Section region in measure 1, and choose Edit Copy .

    You'll be recycling this brass sting several times.

  7. Move the Playhead to measure 11. Choose Edit Paste (-V). Paste another copy at measure 13, measure 17, and measure 21 .

    These horn stabs are your musical punctuation marks.

    This is all sounding plenty funky, but it's time to reintroduce our friend the electric piano player. Remember, the magic of good arranging is knowing when to add, and when to take away. In this case, building the instrumentation builds excitement.

  8. Hit the Z key and copy the Upbeat Electric Piano loop at the top. Click in the beat ruler at measure 13, and paste .

    Oopsit's a tad too long. You'd set it up for four complete repetitions, and you need only three here.

  9. Grab the right end of the newly pasted Electric Piano loop. Drag inward to measure 19 .

    That's rightyou can drag not only outward to create more repetitions, but also inward to decrease the number.

  10. In the Loop browser, find RnB Horn Section 08. Drag it into the Horn/Wind track, measure 23 .

    Now, measure 23 is actually a moment after the song is over. But you need to perform some surgery on this four-measure-long horn lick, and there's nowhere else to put it. (If you were to drag it between two other horn licks, it would erase them anywhere it overlaps.) So you're going to use measure 23 as an operating table. After the trim, you'll move it into its final position.

  11. Carefully grab the left end of the newly placed horn loop. Drag to the right as shown in Figure 3-9 .

    Figure 3-9. Top: You've parked this horn loop here as a temporary staging area while you make it shorter. Position your cursor at the left edge of the region, so that the special trimming cursor appears.
    Bottom: Trim away everything up to the final batch of sound waves, like this.


    You've just cut away the two bursts of repeated horn notes that begin this lick, leaving behind only the melody part.

  12. Double-click the first blue numbers in the time display, so that they start blinking (see Figure 3-8 on Section 3.14.3). Type 14, and press the right arrow key. Type 3, and press the right arrow again. Type 1; right arrow again. Type 1, and press Return .

    You've just placed the Playhead at a very precise spot: measure 14, beat 3. By placing this horn fragment at a position that's not the beginning (downbeat) of a measure, you'll be putting the accent on a different "syllable," giving it a different sound from its earlier incarnation when you used it in measure 3.

  13. Drag the shortened horn loop to the left, so that its left end aligns with the Playhead .

    Now scroll back to measure 9 and give your second half a listen. Pretty cool especially the way the bass player gets her own little solo at the end, right?

3.14.5. Phase 5: The Big Finish

At the moment, the only payoff you get for all of this musical genius is a single brass stab at the beginning of measure 21. It does seem to say, "That's all, folks," but could use a little beefing up. You want your ending to land , not to just fizzle out.

The way to give the final note more oomph is to back it up with bass and drums. It so happens that a loop called Distorted Finger Bass 01 begins with a perfect two-note lick that would sound great when played together with your brass "exclamation point." (Listen to it now to see.)

  1. Find Distorted Finger Bass 01. Drag it into a gray area beneath your other tracks, measure 21 .

    You've just created a new track that contains nothing but this loop.

    Unfortunately, the instrument used by that loop is some weird, synthesized bass sound that doesn't really match the rest of your instrumentation.

    Fortunately, it's a Software Instrument (green), so you can change the instrument that plays its notes. That's what you're about to do.

  2. Double-click the track header (where it says "Electric Bass" and bears the picture of a bass) .

    The Track Info dialog box opens (Figure 3-10, bottom). This is where you can change a Software Instrument's sound.

  3. In the left-side list, click Bass. In the right-side list, click Slapped Electric Bass. Close the dialog box .

    When you play back this loop, you'll discover that it's now played on an electric bass like the one you've been hearing all along.

  4. Drag the right side of the Distorted Finger Bass inward until only the first two notes remain .

    Finally, a little help from the drummer would help to nail this last chord.

  5. Find Single Open High Hat 01. Drag it into your Shaker track at measure 21 .

    Now you've got yourself an ending! Hit the Z key, then Space, to play back your masterpiece.

In later chapters, you'll find out how to fiddle with the relative volumes of these tracks. But as a quick Z-Space bar will tell you, using GarageBand can produce some pretty slick results even if you don't do anything more than choose the right loops and slice up a few regions .

Figure 3-10. Top: When you try to change instruments, this dialog box may appear. In it, "the file" refers to the instrument-and-effects preset listed in the right-side list. GarageBand is just checking to make sure that, if you've fiddled with any of the effects, as described in Chapter 7, you have the opportunity to save those settings, so they'll still be there the next time you choose this instrument sound.
Bottom: Choose a new sound for this Software Instrument track.


 < Day Day Up > 


GarageBand2. The Missing Manual
GarageBand2. The Missing Manual
ISBN: 596100353
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 153

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net