
- Mastering tracks in garageband software#
- Mastering tracks in garageband professional#
- Mastering tracks in garageband mac#
"Anybody who thinks they can write a song can do it now, and a lot of the time, they're pretty shitty songs," says Garver. Garver and many others believe that GarageBand has created an entire nation of wannabe musicians as well as a paralyzingglut of new songs constantly being uploaded to the Internet. "There's been a devaluation of audio engineering because GarageBand makes it look so easy to do," says Garver, whose studio mastering work includes projects for U2 and Madonna. "GarageBand has made anyone who buys an Apple computer a producer," gushes Rechtshaid.Īndrew Garver, a professor at USC and a Grammy-nominated mastering engineer, agrees that the program has vastly increased the accessibility of music-making, but he's decidedly less enthused about it.

That staggering baritone wobble-which "sounds like a bass because it was set two octaves down by accident," according to Rechtshaid-eventually became the most distinctive sonic earmark off Haim's wildly popular debut album, Days Are Gone. While working with Haim a couple of years ago, Rechtshaid discovered one of the trio's GarageBand demos, casually dubbed "My Song 5", which included a horn native to the software. The idea of using GarageBand in conjunction with more traditional studio methods is seconded by producer Ariel Rechtshaid, 36, who has collaborated with what he calls "GarageBand-ed out" musicians like Blood Orange's Dev Hynes and Haim, as well as more established artists including Madonna and the Killers' Brandon Flowers. Gottehrer's open-minded approach shows that the acceptance of GarageBand as a legitimate music-making tool isn't solely based on one's age or experience. "It's essentially the backbone of her work, so we just enhance a lot of what she does in GarageBand," says longtime DDG producer and 75-year-old industry lifer Richard Gottehrer, whose 50-year career includes co-writing Brill Building pop hits and manning the boards for Blondie's first two albums.
Mastering tracks in garageband professional#
Though DDG albums are augmented by professional producers and engineers, the process of transforming Dee Dee's GarageBand demos into studio recordings is never about washing away the digital effect.
Mastering tracks in garageband software#
Along with records by Best Coast and Vivian Girls, Dum Dum Girls' debut album, I Will Be, helped define indie's lo-fi sound in the late-2000s Dee Dee created that album's backbeat by manipulating Apple drum loops to simulate an effect similar to Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, essentially utilizing digital software to give modern music a vintage feel-a strategy that could make some analog purists' heads spin. "I open programs like Ableton and sort of stare mouth agape at the screen," says Dee Dee, who began her fuzzed-out girl group project in her Los Angeles bedroom using GarageBand and still turns to the program while demoing her ideas. "There's not a lot of stuff in GarageBand that's good." Boucher has since graduated to more advanced DAWs like Ableton Live.įor others, like dream pop singer/songwriter Dee Dee of Dum Dum Girls, GarageBand is about as far as they'd like to explore the digital realm. "It really can't do anything," Boucher once told Clash magazine.

Eventually, though, she realized the software's limitations couldn't keep up with her appetite for digital complexity.

Those experiments eventually led to the 27-year-old's breakthrough album, Visions, which was recorded entirely on the digital audio workstation, or DAW. Take Claire Boucher, aka Grimes, who spent years tooling around with GarageBand in Montreal's underground scene while searching for her voice as an artist and producer. For many musicians, the rudimentary software acts as their first home recording tool, digital effects pedal, practice space, and, in many cases, their first bandmate.

While GarageBand effects have directly blended into the sound palette of even the most popular music- the beat for Rihanna's "Umbrella", for one, was created using one of the program's loops-it's played a greater role by compressing the space between an expensive studio and a DIY artist's bedroom, between professionalism and amateurism. And with Apple selling nearly 300 million devices in the last year alone, it's no wonder that GarageBand has engendered praise for its egalitarian simplicity as well as some ire for its creative limitations.
Mastering tracks in garageband mac#
Pre-programmed into every Apple device, anyone with an iPhone, iPad, or Mac can open the program and record something amazing (or, perhaps more likely, something totally embarrassing). Over the last decade, GarageBand has become the Starbucks of digital recording studios: consumer-friendly, global, omnipresent.
