Anyone use GarageBand?

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I have a couple friends who showed me their Apple Garage Band tunes - I had no idea the software was that capable right out of the box!! Dang... that alone might make me convert to Apple (I hate Win8 that much, too!)

Any of you use it? Any thoughts - good or bad?

<--- Cubase user. (And Windows 8, too.)

I only used Garageband once, and this was the result:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jO8bUZ9BBVU[/youtube]

My brother is significantly better at using Garageband and he makes offensive noise under the moniker Šyþed Pyklez. You can listen to his stuff here. Check out the "unnamed 4-chords demo" if you want proof that he can actually use it to make music. He also uses it make the music for our "band", Ghelded Kultz, which is basically just pony themed Šyþed Pyklez.

I was initially impressed with GB the first time I used it. My enthusiasm waned once I figured a few things out, though. Sound design with "in the box" native GB instruments is pathetic. It still has some good sounds, though. But I also had a small collection of outboard synths that I wanted to use, and, at least at the time, GB didn't have support for external gear. Since GB came standard with my iBook G4, it was no great loss. I eventually bought Logic, and despite the fact my iBook couldn't hold up in a live scenario, it was a great 2-track recorder with an interface and I made a lot of good music on that thing.

Not long after the Macintels came out, I got a MBP, which is still my current computer. Underpowered compared to the new stuff, but is compatible with my Presonus FP10, all my external gear, and runs terminal emulation for my Synclavier. Logic is certainly more versatile than GB and offers a greater degree of control and sound design potential.

If you're really, really good, GB is ok. I would not, however, and I repeat--WOULD NOT--track drums in GB. If you're just making beats, ok. Making a quick one-off demo of your latest original for your band to learn before next practice or jam session, fine. But unless you're really good at it, I wouldn't push anything out of GB as pro quality.

Take some time, save some cash, get the full version of Logic. Not Express. The full version. Sure, GB is great for newbs just getting their toes wet in music production. So you learn some basics. Now it's time to get out of the kiddie pool and go play with the grownups.

Oh, and I do have the $99 version of Ableton. It's called Live Intro. I like it because it's a better loop player than anything Apple has out there, AND it's ReWire, which means you can integrate it's loop playing facilities into Logic or MainStage (for playing live). If you want just a do-all kind of app, go full version either Ableton Live or Logic Pro. I prefer Logic because that's what I'm used to, but they're both excellent DAWs.

No external synths?? That's a deal-breaker!
I'm a lousy live player so I think I'll stick to the original plan of Finale for composition, then.

Well, don't take my word for it... Do some research. They might have added hard synth support since I used it.

Actually, funny thing...for a long time, Logic Pro didn't directly support hard synths, either. You can still do it the old-fashioned way, but you can also load a hard synth as a "plugin." The old fashioned way was you'd create an audio track to input audio from the synth. Then you'd create a MIDI track to record MIDI data. To hear what you're doing, you'd have to arm the audio track for monitor while you arm the MIDI track for record. I find the old-fashioned way more useful because the only way you can freeze an external MIDI track is to have real-time playback to convert the MIDI track to audio--also useful if you have processor-intensive plugs, just doesn't take nearly as long. If I already have an audio track armed and ready, that's just one less step I have to do. It's 6 of one, 1/2 dozen of another.

But...anyway, while I was thinking about it, I checked it out. Indeed, GB does NOT support MIDI out. There IS a workaround. You need this: MIDIO It's a plug that will send MIDI out of GB. But I'd still be worried that a lot of the results you'd get from GB would still end up sounding amateurish.

You use Finale for composition, eh? I don't lean on it as much as I used to, but it got me through grad school. I figured out that for my purposes and the direction I was going musically, I did better to stick with sequencers. It has been my custom to write for orchestra about this time leading up to Christmas, but I just didn't have my heart in it this year, and my main collaborator has been otherwise preoccupied, though she's starting to show a renewed interest as of late. Anyhow, what I do is sequence my composition, turn some knobs, make it sound as "human" and "lifelike" as I could, and slowly transcribe my MIDI files into something humanly readable, completely with all necessary markups.

The thing I don't like about Finale is that it's greatest strength is that it's just digitized pen, paper, and engraving tools. My electronic composition teacher used Finale as a point-and-click sequencer that had the added advantage of having electronic compositions instantly transcribed. It is limited by the system it is run on, by MIDI, and the capabilities of the gear it drives. Ever heard 128th note septuplets at M.M.=400? No? Me either, and I probably never will! But it isn't for lack of trying.

It takes a tremendous amount of skill to compose in Finale and get EXACTLY what you hear in your brain. I've done it before, but it was a tremendous amount of time-consuming work. The way you do it is compose what you want--notes, expressions, tempo changes, everything. Export that as a MIDI file to a good sequencer. Load up your custom synth patches, instruments, etc. Play in your composition line-by-line in real time, add nuance with controllers, like dynamics, filter sweeps, articulations/envelopes. Bounce the whole mix as an audio file when you're done, and port that right back into Finale. That way, when you do playback in Finale, you'll hear it exactly the way you want to and have a beautifully notated score to go with it.

I also use GarageBand to record myself doing karaoke and to create vocal harmonies most of the time. I get quite a kick using it!

I love both Garageband and Finale 2012! I use both of them fluently to compose and record music. I partially disagree with AngelRho because I use Finale's HyperScribe (a feature that will hear MIDI and automatically notate it) to compose my music and then I add extra things needed (slurs, articulations, accidentals...etc). I can then export the score as a .mid (type 0 or type 1) and drag it into Garageband to get different software tracks to play my music. I find it fun.

I've gotten better at using Garage Band, you can listen to my crap here: https://soundcloud.com/geryondice .

I'm about to upgrade to 2012. It's been a long time...since 2009.

HyperScribe is a usefull tool for a lot of users. I've never been able to get it to work right with any consistency. That's why I prefer composing in sequencers first and transcribing the sequences. Since you mainly need Finale for engraving, and since notating scores is time consuming, and since most of my work never makes it past electronic media, notating my music is fairly pointless. I pretty much just use it to write materials for my students.

Although I will say this... The new worship leader at my church is also a songwriter interested in getting his music in front of our congregation, so it's fallen to me to study demos and write choir parts and lead sheets. I still find sequencers to be more precise, though. They capture more performance data than Finale. I don't feel that same sense of freedom composing in Finale.

I'm currently deep into sound design for my Synclavier FM synth while looking ahead to finishing a space/ambient project I started a few years ago. I'm tempted to compose this one entirely in Finale because I want to bring back a technique I used back in the day for my master's thesis. The advantage to using Finale for composing this particular type of music is the placement of controller data precisely in the score when and on what note you want it to happen. You can do the same with a sequencer, of course, but it's much less visual in that regard. Sequencers are great for mostly improvised music, less so for integral serialism.