GarageBand 2: The Missing Manual

Chapter 6. Recording and Editing Live Audio

When you get right down to it, GarageBand is actually three programs in one. It’s a loop-building program that lets anyone build great-sounding compositions, even with no musical training. It’s a MIDI sequencing program that records whatever you play on a MIDI-compatible keyboard, guitar, or drum set. And now, as you’re about to find out, it’s also a digital multitrack tape recorder that can record live sound.

That’s an important feature, because plenty of musical sources don’t have MIDI jacks—including your own voice, not to mention mandolins, harps, violins, castanets, and 8-year-olds burping.

The beauty of GarageBand is that it lets you layer these recordings on top of tracks that you’ve built using its other tools (like loops and MIDI performances), and can play all of it back together at once. The creative possibilities that result are mind-blowing—and make possible a world where Joe Nobody, a guy with a great voice but no money, can produce a studio-caliber demo CD in his living room.

But using GarageBand for nothing but its audio-recording features is also perfectly legitimate. Forget the loops, forget MIDI, just use it as a tape recorder with a lot of tracks. You’ll still enjoy the freedom to edit your recordings, stack up tracks to create harmony, process them with special sound effects, and mix the whole thing down to a polished, single track.

The Setup

GarageBand can record live audio from two kinds of sound inputs: microphones, ...