KEY POINTS:
I've been having a good look at GarageBand '09, and before any of you knockers rush to post comments about this not being 'serious' audio software, you're wrong, wrong wrong.
I have made recordings in all sorts of environments over the years, in and out of studios, and GarageBand is not, despite initial appearances, an amateur application at all. I have also, for the record, worked with Pro Tools and Logic.
However, due to Apple's philosophy of empowerment, it is very approachable and does allow your aunts and uncles and cousins to make slick, professional music and podcasts.
That doesn't mean they will, of course. But we'll get to that later.
One of the reasons for this comes down to features built into Macs at a fairly fundamental level. Like Core Audio, an Apple technology designed to deliver high-quality and low-latency audio for Macintosh users.
This is what GarageBand (and Apple's pro audio application, Logic) taps to do its work. The second objective of Core Audio was to save developers having to establish their own audio and MIDI protocols in their applications - they just need to tap Core Audio, too. (There's an Apple developer note about Core Audio here. Note that Microsoft Vista also contains something called the Core Audio API. They are not related.)
Somehow GarageBand's ability to enable mom and pop users (and legions of kids) to create slick-sounding audio (and images, movies ...) seems to be one of the things that annoys Apple bashers more than anything else.
Apple unlocks the gates to the tech castle, rolls out the red carpet and says 'welcome' in clear language. This means that anyone can be productive, and not only that, their efforts can lead to results that sound - and look - surprisingly slick.
This is countered by charges that Apple's software is for simpletons and idiots.
It's a bit like the car analogy - when they first came out, cars were for the rich, and owners either needed to be mechanically fascinated enough to become apt or to hire a full-time mechanic. How they must have railed when first, everyman could afford a car (thanks to Henry Ford, mostly) then, worse, could drive them day to day without retaining the services of full-time mechanics.
Of course, having the ability to create slick music doesn't mean that you can. We're not all Nine Inch Nails, Oasis or Fallout Boy, all of whom have worked with GarageBand before. Oasis collaboratively roughed out their latest album in it, for convenience's sake, after reportedly becoming unsatisfied with the convoluted studio process.
Fallout Boy and Nine Inch Nails have both released projects that could be remixed by fans and uploaded to a site for others (including the band members) to listen to.
Fallout Boy, to go further, regularly uses GarageBand to create demos, like many other professional musicians and uses it on the road.
But like I said, having the tools to create good audio doesn't mean you can. We're not all musically inclined. Thanks to prerecorded Apple Loops, anyone can knock together an audio track for a slide presentation or movie.
And they own the rights to it. GarageBand even takes care syncing up the timing and matching the pitch, should you experiment and add a few lines from its extensive built-in sound and instrument library.
But the new version has added a whole 'new track' category - electric guitar. This means you can plug in your guitar, choose an amplifier profile and add a set of 'stomp-box' effects. You can save your customised cab and effects for later use.
Still, though, you might be a pretty terrible guitarist.
So Apple decided to help even further and put guitar and piano lessons right there in GarageBand '09, taking care of the other end of the spectrum.
Now you can kick back, just you and your Mac, and have personable people teach you piano and guitar step by step. You can slow it right down to follow note by note, and you can play along, taking the teacher out of the equation if you wish.
This is really easy to follow and to learn from.
There's just one thing that bugs me - once upon a time (like last year), a mate would teach you piano, or you'd have guitar at school or even hire a one-to-one tutor. With GarageBand, you don't really need people to learn.
So Apple might make its users lonely. (We'd sound good, though.)
- Mark Webster mac.nz
