9.8. The Instrument Tuner

GarageBand obviously has a lot of appeal for keyboard players, but its multitrack digital studio features have turned a lot of other instrumentalists' heads, too. If you play a tunable instrument (guitar, violin, flute, or whatever), you may as well add an electronic tuner to your kit. What the heck ”it's built right into GarageBand 2.

This little onscreen gadget, shown in Figure 9-9, is a lot like one of those gadgets you'd pay $50 for at a music store ”but again, it's built right into GarageBand 2.

To make it work, connect the instrument you want to tune (or the microphone that's picking it up) to your Mac. Click the Real Instrument track you'll be recording, if it's not already selected, so that you can hear what you're playing.

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Tip: You can tune your instrument even while music is playing back.

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Now 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; proceed as shown in Figure 9-9.

Figure 9-9. Top: Play one note. (The instrument tuner doesn't work if you play chords or moving notes.)
The tuner displays red lights to the left of the 0 if your instrument is flat, or to the right of the 0 if it's sharp. As a courtesy , it also displays the name of the note it thinks you're trying to play.
Bottom: If your instrument is perfectly in tune already, you get a green light at the 0 point. Congratulations ”you're ready to rock! (Click anywhere in the display to return to the time/beat counter.)