Section 27.2. Recording a Live Audio Track


27.2. Recording a Live Audio Track

Once you're hooked up, recording a voice or electronic instrument is a lot like recording from a MIDI instrument as described in Chapter 26. In general, though, you'll spend a lot more time in the New Track (or Track Info) dialog box, telling GarageBand about the nature of the sound you're about to record.

27.2.1. Phase 1: Create the Track

What you want is a track that turns bluish when you click it. That's a Real Instrument track, as opposed to the green Software Instrument tracks described so far in this book.


Note: When you record digital audio, you create purple regions in the timeline. They're the same digital audio as GarageBand's blue, digital-audio loops , and you work with them the same way; a single track can contain both blue and purple regions.Still, the color -coding is a handy means of helping you tell your creations apart from Apple's canned ones.

If you don't already have a digital-audio track ready to record, there's a short way and a long way to go about creating one.

The short way is to choose Track New Basic Track. You get a new, empty Real Instrument track that comes with no effects, monitoring off, and stereo recording on. (You can read about these settings in the following paragraphs.) Basic is right!

If you'd like more control over your new track, though, choose Track New Track instead. This way, the New Track dialog box appears (Figure 27-3).

Figure 27-3. The instruments listed here aren't instrument sounds. They're effect presets that audio engineers consider ideal for the listed instrument types. To use it, click an instrument name in the left column, then an individual effect preset in the right-side list.


Click the Real Instrument tab, and then work through the options as follows :

  • Bass, Drums, Guitars, etc . It's important to realize that the names listed here don't represent instrument sounds ; you're going to supply the sound yourself.

    Instead, these are canned sets of effects , like reverb and echo, that, in the opinions of GarageBand's creators , are especially well suited to these instrument types. If you plan to sing, for example, you'll find that Live Vocals (in the Vocals category at left) gives your singing sound just a gentle touch of pro-sounding reverb; Male Dance Vocals makes it sound like you're singing in a deserted alley; Ambient Vox sounds like you're at the bottom of the Grand Canyon; and so on.

    Technically, though, there's nothing to stop you from selecting the "wrong" instrument type, such as choosing one of the Horns effects to apply to your guitar playing. Your guitar won't sound like a brass instrument in the leastyou're just adding certain processing effects to itand you might even come up with a strange , spooky sound that's just right for the effect you seek.


    Tip: It's a great idea to "walk" through these various effect presets with the up and down arrow keys on your Mac keyboard, listening to each as you play or sing a few notes. Eventually, you'll begin to associate the specific sounds of each preset with its name, and you'll identify your favorites for use in subsequent hit singles .

    You can read much more about GarageBand's effects in Chapter 28. For now, though, note that you don't have to make a decision before you record; you can change the effects applied to your live-audio track at any time, before or after the recording session.

    To sing without any help from GarageBand's studio-engineer elves, for example, just click the Vocals category, and then click Unprocessed. (On the other hand, a little reverb tends to smooth out the rough edges of the sound, making it sound more professional. As a result, you may feel more comfortable and confident in your singing or playing. That's a psychological byproduct technically called the Singing in the Shower Effect.)

  • Mono or Stereo . GarageBand can record both the left and right channels of sound from a stereo signala stereo microphone, for example, or the left and right outputs from a mixing board. If your sound source does, indeed, produce both left- and right-channel sound, turning on Stereo here tells GarageBand to record them simultaneously . Later, you can use GarageBand's mixing tools to emphasize or de- emphasize one channel or the other, if you like.

    Plenty of instruments, however, produce only a single stream of sound. These are monophonic , or mono, sound sourcesan electric guitar, for example, or a cheap USB desktop microphone. If that's what you're using, click Mono instead. You'll save a lot of disk space. (Stereo recordings, of course, use up twice as much disk space as mono.)

  • Input . Even though this pop-up menu appears above the Mono/Stereo switch, you'll generally use it after making your Mono/Stereo choice. If you've selected Stereo, this pop-up menu is irrelevant; it always says Channel 1/2 (meaning that it will record from both left and right channels).

    This pop-up menu is useful when, for example, you've indicated that you want to record a Mono track, but you've connected a stereo sound source. In that case, this pop-up menu lets you specify which channel you want to record: the left (Channel 1) or the right (Channel 2).

    The Input pop-up menu is also important when you've connected an audio interface that has enough input jacks for several mikes or instruments at once. Suppose you have an eight-channel box connected, with different microphones or instruments connected to each pair of inputs. In that case, with the Stereo button turned on, you would use the Input pop-up menu to specify which channels you want to record: "Channel 1/2 ," "Channel 3/4," "Channel 5/6," or "Channel 7/8."

  • Monitor: Off/On . "Monitor," in this case, means "Play what I'm playing through the speaker, so that I can hear it."

    Now, your first reaction to this option might well be, "Well, DUH! Of course I want to hear myself . It's called an electric guitar, hello! It doesn't make any sound at all unless it's hooked up to an amp or some speakers !"

    And sure enough, if you're playing an electronic instrument like a synthesizer or electric guitar, you'll want Monitor to be On. That way, you'll be able to hear your own playing in the context of any other tracks you've already recorded. (You'll also be able to hear yourself when you're not recording, so you can rehearse parts before recording them.)

    But if you're recording from a microphone, the situation is slightly more complicated. In that case, you can already hear what you're playing or singing. Furthermore, if Monitor is turned on during the recording, your microphone will also pick up that sound, coming out of the Mac's speakers.

    Unfortunately, that kind of setup produces the ear-splitting, high-pitched whine known as feedback (a staple of the standard teen-movie scene in which the doofus principal first steps up to the microphone at the school assembly).

    So how do you avoid feedback? Your first instinct might be to turn off the Monitor feature. Now you'll hear only the existing GarageBand tracks playing as you sing or playno feedback. Trouble is, GarageBand may then wind up recording both your voice and any previously recorded tracks as they play along with youan ugly situation, because their sound will become a permanent part of your vocal track once you're done.

    Fortunately, there's a simple solution to both problems: If you're recording from a microphone, listen through headphones . Leave the Monitor feature On, so you can hear yourself as you play or sing.


    Tip: Turn Monitor off when you're finished recording. That way, you won't reopen this GarageBand project next week without headphones connected and get a blast of feedback in your ears.
  • Icon pop-up menu . Use this pop-up menu, if you like, to choose a little picture to represent the recording you're about to make. (It's purely cosmetic, and has no audible link to the instrument sound.) Apple gives you 68 little graphics to choose fromevery instrument in GarageBand, plus silhouettes of singers.


Tip: To open this palette of icons, you don't have to click the tiny, down-pointing triangle, as you might expect. Instead, click squarely on the icon itself. That broader target means quicker access.

When you're finished setting up your new Real Instrument track, click OK. You return to the main GarageBand window, where your new, blue track appears, ready for recording.

27.2.2. Phase 2: Prepare the Studio

From here, recording live audio is a lot like the MIDI-recording procedure described in Chapter 26. For most people, the routine goes like this:

  1. Turn on the metronome, if you like .

    Use the Control Metronome command, or the -U keystroke, to turn the metronome clicker on or off.


    Tip: GarageBand can even help you tune your instrument (guitar, violin, flute, or whatever). Click the tuning fork icon at the left of GarageBand's beat counter, or choose Control Show Instrument Tuner. The display changes to reveal a sort of pitch ruler, with 0 in the center. Play a single note: The tuner displays red lights to the left of the 0 if your instrument is flat, or to the right of the 0 if its sharp. (It also displays the name of the note it thinks you're trying to play.) If you're perfectly in tune, you get a green light at the 0 point.
  2. Choose a tempo .

    When you record from a MIDI instrument (Chapter 26), the tempo (speed) of the music during your recording makes no difference. During recording , you can set the piece so slow, your part is pathetically easy to play. You can stumble along, playing one note per second, like a first-time piano studentand then during playback , you can crank up the tempo to make yourself sound like you're some kind of fleet -fingered prodigy. The pop stars do it all the time.

    When you record live playing or singing, however, you lose some of this advantage. When you change the tempo of a piece, audio regions that you've recorded yourself do expand or contract to stay aligned with the rest of the music, just as GarageBand loops do. (The fact that live recordings can change speed to fit your new tempo is one of GarageBand 2's coolest features.)

    But the more the tempo changes, the more of a peculiar electronic quality your recorded tracks may gain. Take this moment, therefore, to play back your piece, or at least the hard parts, a few different times at different tempos. (See Section 23.4 for details on using the Tempo control.) Settle on the speed that will suit the finished product.

  3. Choose a key .

    In GarageBand 1, once you'd recorded a digital-audio track, you were stuck. If you sang in the key of D, the vocal track had to stay in the key of D forevermore; you couldn't transpose digital audio.

    The miracle of GarageBand 2, of course, is that it can transpose digital audio, even your own singing or live playing. It's no big deal to shift the key higher or lower even after you record.

    Here again, though, transposing a live recording changes the sound, even if it's just a tiny bit. And the larger the interval you transpose, the more processed the recording sounds.

    Therefore, you should go through the piece a couple of times to make sure it's not too high or too low for your singing voice, orif you're playing an instrumentto make sure it's in a comfortable key for playing.

    FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION
    Real-Instrument Delay

    I've got my synthesizer's outputs connected to the Mac. I'm lovin' this thing! The only trouble is, there's a fraction-of-a-second delay between the time I press a key and the time I hear the sound. The response times are killin' me. What's up with that?

    When you press a key, it's taking that much time for the signal to go down the cord to your Mac, undergo processing by GarageBand's effects, and emerge through your Mac's speakers. (In the music biz, this frustrating delay is called latency.)

    Most people don't have to contend with latency problems. The issue crops up only on certain Macs and with certain equipment setups.

    In any case, GarageBand comes equipped with a latency-reducing feature, right in the GarageBand Preferences dialog box. Click the Audio/MIDI button to reveal the controls shown here.

    If you click "Minimum delay when playing instruments live," the latency problem should clear up, or at least shrink dramatically.

    As you can read right in the dialog box, though, there's some fine print: "Small buffer size ." In English, that means, "You've just diverted some of GarageBand's horsepower to solving this latency thing. The program therefore has less power available for playing back your piece. If you're using a slow Mac, or if you've got a lot of tracks, GarageBand may have trouble keeping up."

    In that case, see Chapter 33 for some GarageBand speed tricks.


  4. Put the Playhead where you want recording to begin .

    To start at the beginning, press the letter Z key or the Home key. To start anywhere else, click in the beat ruler or use the keyboard shortcuts (Section 23.5) to put the Playhead there. Of course, you may find it best to put the Playhead a few measures to the left of the part where you want to begin singing or playing, so you'll be able to get into the groove of the music before you begin.

  5. Set up a countoff .

    As you know, GarageBand can "count you in" with a measure full of clicks at the proper tempo so you'll know when to come in. To turn on the countoff, choose Control Count In, so that the command bears a checkmark in the menu.

  6. Put on your headphones, if you're using them. Get ready to play or sing, and then click the red, round Record button next to the playback controls .

    Or just press the letter R key on your Mac keyboard.

    Either way, you hear the countoff measure, if you've requested one, and then GarageBand begins to record.

  7. When you come to the end of the section you hoped to record, tap the Space bar (or click the Play button) to stop recording .

    On the screen, you'll see the new purple region you recorded.


    Tip: Instead of stopping altogether, you can also tap the R key on your keyboard to stop recording but keep playing . You can then listen for a while, and then tap R again to record a later section.In fact, you can tap R as often as you like during recording. Each time, GarageBand seamlessly kicks into, or out of, Record mode as it plays.
  8. Play back your recording to hear how you did .

    Rewind to the spot where you started recording. Tap the Space bar to hear your performance played back.

27.2.3. Multiple Takes

As long as you've got yourself a high-quality software studio, you may as well avail yourself of the various cheats that professional recording artists useand that means mixing and matching the best parts of each "take."

One strategy involves recording your live audio part for the entire song, start to finish. If you mess up, just keep going.

Then prepare for a second attempt like this:

  1. Mute the first track .

    That is, click it and press the letter M key on your keyboard, or click the little speaker icon in its track header.

  2. Create a second Real Instrument track with the same settings .

    As it turns out, GarageBand offers a handy shortcut for this step: Choose Track Duplicate Track ( -D). GarageBand gives you a perfect duplicate of the trackempty of notes or regions, but with its settings and effects intact.

    Figure 27-4. Top: In this example, you've recorded two different attempts at the same vocal track. The first take was superior in almost every wayexcept for the middle part.
    Middle: Click the first track and Shift-click the second, so that they're both selected. Position the Playhead just before the messed-up portion and press -T (the Split command). Then position the Playhead just after that section and press -T again. You've just chopped up both takes.
    Bottom: Drag the middle segment of the bottom track (the good one) upward so that it replaces the bad portion of the first take. Now you have a single, unified track containing the best of both attempts. Delete the second-take track.


  3. Rerecord .

    Repeat these three steps until you've got yourself a number of alternate takes to choose from.

Now it's a simpleand, frankly, enjoyablematter to chop up these various takes, deleting the bad portions and leaving only the good ones, as shown in Figure 27-4. (Of course, you can also copy and paste successful partsthe chorus, for examplewithout having to redo them.) For a discussion of splitting, recombining , and otherwise editing Real Instrument regions, see Chapter 25.

27.2.4. Punching In and Out

If most of the first take was good, but you flubbed a shorter section somewhere in the middle, you may want to record right over the bad spot. That's where punching in comes in.

As you can read on Section 26.7, punching in and out is when the software switches from Play mode to Record mode automatically during a segment of the music that you've bracketed in advance (in GarageBand's case, using the yellow Cycle stripe at the top of the window).

Using punch in/punch out for a Real Instrument track is almost exactly the same as for a Software Instrument track. Once again, the idea is to turn on cycling (press the letter C key on your keyboard), adjust the yellow Cycle stripe so that it highlights the music you want to rerecord, turn on the Control Count In command, and then press the letter R key (or click the red, round Record button) and get ready to play. (See Figure 27-5 for the rest of the story.)

Figure 27-5. When you're set up to punch in (rerecord a specified section), GarageBand plays one measure of music before you come in, and then begins to record whatever you play or sing. When you reach the end of the cycle region (identified by the yellow stripe), GarageBand continues to loop the playback of the cycle region until you click the Play button (or press the Space bar).


There is, however, one big difference between punching into Real Instrument and punching into a Software Instrument. With a Real track, GarageBand records only what you sing or play the first time through the cycle region. Then, when the playhead reaches the end of the yellow cycle stripe, GarageBand instantly stops recording and switches to playback-only mode. (In other words, you can't keep playing or singing to build up a cumulative take, one pass at a time, as you can when playing a MIDI instrument.)

The nice part is that if even your punched-in recording wasn't quite right, taking another stab at it is supremely easy. Just tap the letter R key again. GarageBand automatically plays the measure before the yellow stripe, and once again autorecords whatever you play when the playhead reaches the punch-in region. You can repeat this exercise as many times as you need to get the passage perfect.




iLife 05. The Missing Manual
iLife 05: The Missing Manual
ISBN: 0596100361
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 314
Authors: David Pogue

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