Mastering music in Garageband is a fairly straightforward process. With some practice, it can be quick and easy.
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Mar 24, 2011 Hello all - I am thinking about picking up the Garageband app for the iPad. I am a guitarist, and will primarily plug in my own guitar, but I would also like to use the Smart Guitar on occasion. Does anyone know if the Smart Guitar has an option to change the string tunings from the standard tuning (EADGBE) to open tunings, Drop-D, etc.? Aug 09, 2012 Drop Down menu. Helpful answers; All replies. Question: Q: Export from iPad Garageband to Windows PC More Less. Apple Footer. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided; every. Chord charts in Drop D Tuning with various voicings and keys. Our guitar chord charts are free and printable for Drop D guitar tuning. Select your key to get started.
When I first started out, I ran into a few problems with simple solutions that escaped me at the time, so I’ll be sharing some of those with you today.
I’m sure there are sophisticated ways of going about this with precise and expensive plug-ins, but in today’s tutorial, we’re just going to use all of the plug-ins that come default with Garageband.
You really don’t have to get too fancy when it comes to something like this. The simplest way of doing things is usually the best.
Let’s just get right to it.
For this walk-through, I’ll use a song that I created recently that includes a lot of MIDI instruments in addition to a guitar recording.
Rather than going through a step-by-step process, I think it’d be more useful to have a beginner’s checklist at first, due to the fact we’re only doing very basic mastering.
However, afterward, I will guide you through a step-by-step tutorial.
Truthfully, if you’re reading this guide, chances are you’re not a professional mastering and recording engineer.
You may have to go somewhere else for more advanced tactics.
Moving On…
When you’re just starting out, there are just a few basic questions in need of answering.
For instance, what is compression and how do we use it? How do I adjust EQ so it actually sounds good? What’s the point of a limiter?
How do I export my music to SoundCloud and YouTube so it’s 1) actually listenable, and 2) as loud as my competition?
In fact, how do I upload my music to YouTube in general?
These are the kinds of question we want to answer at first. And this tutorial explores just a few of them.
In this guide, we’re primarily going to explore how to get a decent sounding mix uploaded to our favorite platforms and have it sound good.
The links above, however, we’ll answer some of the other questions.
Let’s start with the check-list
1) The first thing you want to consider is your VU meters on all of your track regions.
As I’ve mentioned in other articles, you want to make sure your VU meters are going into the green for the majority of the track and only the yellow during the loudest parts of the song.
Your VU meters should never be clipping, whether we’re talking about the software instrument tracks, recorded instruments, loops, or other miscellaneous recordings.
If you’ve mastered a track where the VU meters are going into the red, you’ll notice the distorted sound in the final product.
2) The next thing you want to do is ensure your master volume slider on the top right-hand side is turned down to +0.
Although, it’s not a big deal if your master volume meter is going into the red.
I’m not entirely sure why the master volume doesn’t matter so much for this phase, but either way, I’ve noticed that if it’s going into the red a little bit, it doesn’t matter, but if it’s cranked, then it does.
3) There should also be no plug-ins running on your master channel. To check this, hit ‘B’ on your keyboard to bring up your Smart Controls, and then click on the “Master” option beside where it says “Track.”
Usually, by default, the Channel EQ plug-ins will be on, but there won’t be any boosts or cuts added to it. Just turn that bad boy off.
It’s ok if your individual track regions have plug-ins running on them, in fact, you can have even more of them if you want. It’s not a big deal.
4) By hitting the ‘A’ key on your keyboard, you can bring up the Automation track to see if there are any adjustments in volume you want to make.
The Automation channel is handy for setting up a volume increase or decrease depending on where you want changes in the mix.
**However, remember that you don’t want to increase the volume to a point in your mix where it’s clipping.
This is quite the annoying problem to have, because you’ll wonder why your song is clipping at certain points but not others.
Say, for example, you want the last part of your track to hit really hard, just hit the ‘A’ key, select the Yellow line to drop Automation points, and then adjust the volume according to an incline or a decline.
It’s fairly intuitive, so you should get it right away.
Mastering, like creating music, is an art form rather than a science, so, none of the following advice is meant to be like the only way of doing it. Everyone has a different way of making music.
Personally, I like to master a song as quickly as possible. Hopefully, I can have it finished in around 15 to 20 minutes, but sometimes, it takes even longer than that.
For this tutorial, we’ll run through how to master using just a few plug-ins, notably, the compressor, the Channel EQ, the multipressor, as well as the limiter.
I actually have articles written on each of the parameters, with the exception of Channel EQ, so you can click on the appropriate links in this article if you want to read more about them.
Moving on…
How To Master Using My Step-By-Step Process
1) The first step in the mastering process is to check off all of the boxes that I outlined in my checklist above.
You’re ready to export the track as an AIFF file. An AIFF file was created specifically by Apple Computers back in the late 1980s, and it stands for an “Audio Interchange File Format.”
An AIFF file is an uncompressed file format. Therefore it’s very large and high quality compared to a regular mp3 file. An mp3 is quite small.
You can export a track in Mp3 format or a WAV if you want, but the AIFF file is going to give you the highest quality recording to work with, so I’d suggest using it.
2) Click on the “Share” button in the top of the toolbar and click on the button that says “Export To Disk.”
3) In the drop-down menu, click on the circle that says, “AIFF,” and then hit the “Export” button.
From here, I make sure I’ve exported the song to my desktop rather than in my files somewhere because I’ve noticed it kind of disappears into the wilderness otherwise.
4) At this point, I’ll normally drag and drop the AIFF file from my desktop back into Garageband beneath all of my track regions.
In other words, I like to master it first using plug-ins and what not in the original file like you can see below.
The reasoning for this is that you can easily adjust the volume of other tracks without having to repeatedly open up your original file, and then go into the AIFF mastering file over and over again.
5) Mute all of the other tracks and play the recording to see if it’s clicking at any point in the song.
6) Once you’ve ensured that it’s not clipping, you can open a new project and drag and drop your AIFF file into the Workspace.
7) At this point, I typically only use three plug-ins, the Channel EQ, the Multipressor or the Compressor, and the Limiter.
To make your mix sound good, that’s truly all you really need to maximize the volume and ensure that it sounds as good as your competition.
I usually go in the order of Dynamics > Effects > Limiters.
Although, sometimes I’ll start with the multipressor/compressor first, then the limiter, and then finally the EQ at the end.
***It’s worth noting that the order of your plug-ins matters quite a bit.
In this case, I used the Channel EQ first, the multipressor, and then the limiter.
Experiment with the order of the plug-ins to see what you like.
8) All of the following steps are really up to you, but for the sake of this tutorial, I’ll just assume you want to increase the volume, reduce distortion and clipping, and upload it to whatever platform of your choice.
a) Go into the Channel EQ settings, and then drop the EQ around 35 Hz by +3.0 – + 4.0 dB. Typically, we want to increase/decrease the EQ by a maximum of + 4.0dB.
I also drop the highest frequency, 20,000 Hz, at the end.
b) Then, you want to do what is called an EQ sweep. What that means, is you pull the EQ points all the way up and then literally sweep it across your screen to find where the undesirable sound is.
Once you’ve found it, you can drop back down to a small decrease of +2.0 dB or so.
c) I almost always increase the EQ from 425 Hz until 15000 kHz, but as I said above, by around +1.0- +2.0 dB. The reason why is I like to add a bit of “brightness.”
d) I’ll also increase the frequencies at 115 Hz by around 4.0dB, but then I’ll reduce the “width” of the increase.
You do that by, first, clicking the point once or twice, and then going into the Q setting and hitting your down/up arrow on your keyboard.
It’s a bit annoying at first, but you’ll eventually get on to adjusting the Q without constantly exiting out of the Channel EQ plug-in.
9) The next thing I move on to usually is the Multipressor or Compressor.
Now, the Multipressor with Garageband comes with a series of presets, rather than individually adjustable knobs, so it hardly takes any time at all.
You can experiment with the ones you want the most, but what I like to do is just slap on the Final Hip Hop Compressor.
I feel like this gives the track an added punchiness without destroying the dynamics of my song. It sounds pretty good.
You can also increase the compression of the track instead.
Compression is alright to use, but frankly, what I don’t like about it is that it tends to squeeze all the good parts of the song right out of my mix unless of course, I turn down the ratio.
In my opinion, compression is best used on individual channels, for instance, I often use it on my guitar recordings to boost the quieter sounds that didn’t shine through on account of my imperfect playing.
If you’re confused about the compressor and all of its parameters, I suggest you read my article on compression here.
10) The last parameter to adjust in the mastering process is the limiter, which I’ve also written another article about. You can access it here.
Garageband’s limiter, like the multipressor, only has a couple of different parameters. In the case of the limiter, it has the “Gain” and the “Output Level.”
Of course, the “Gain” will turn up the strength of the signal on the entire track, whereas the output level is the part of the limiter that controls just how much limiting is taking place.
It’s kind of like the compressor’s ratio option.
From what I understand, the point of distortion is usually around +0.0dB so the least amount of limiting possible is -1.0dB.
That’s literally one dB below distortion, so I don’t have to worry about over-limiting my music.
I’ll turn the gain up to around (+2.0 dB) – (+3.0 dB) and then the output level sits at (-1.0dB) or (-2.0dB).
In my experience, the limiter is more of an emergency control. It’s kind of like what I slap on at the end of the track just to ensure that no undesirable sounds are coming through my mix.
However, as I wrote about in my article on limiting, the limiter can also be used to shape dynamics, but I’ve never used it in that way, so I can’t help you there.
11) After you’ve finished mixing and mastering your song, you can just click on “Share” at the top of Garageband’s toolbar, and that will give you the option to upload it to iTunes, SoundCloud, as well as YouTube.
But let’s be honest, your mix isn’t going to be perfect on the first try. (Producers love to poke fun at this phenomenon using Instagram memes).
What I normally do at this stage is the following:
Irig with garageband mac. Tap the downward arrow at the top-left of the screen, then on Clean Combo. For some reason the monitor is off by default – to fix this, tap on the guitar plug icon at the top left of the screen and flip the Monitor setting to On.Tune Up Your InstrumentNow is a good time to make sure your guitar is in tune – tap on the tuning fork icon. The letter will turn from red to blue if it’s in tune.Use it for any strange guitar tuning you like, since it’s chromatic rather than fixed.Choose from Seven AmpsBy default, you get the Classic Combo amp, but there are seven others to try.
Due to the fact it usually takes a long time to upload your music to SoundCloud or YouTube, what I’ll do is I’ll quickly upload it to iTunes, and then listen to it from there, checking to see that there’s no distortion and everything sounds the way that I intended originally.
If it doesn’t sound good, then I delete the track from iTunes and do it all over again.
I think it’s important to note there are some things you want to avoid. For instance, if you don’t have enough bass, don’t bother cranking up the mids in the EQ stage just to hear more low-end.
You’re much better off to go into the original track that you made, turn up the bass, re-export it as an AIFF file back in the workspace, and then master it again.
But the good thing here is the fact you can save your original mastering file’s plug-ins settings, the EQ, Limiter, and Multipressor, and then simply drop your track back into it with the original settings and you don’t have to do everything over again.
Repeat until you’re happy with the final product.
Anyway, I hope this was really helpful for you. Make sure to share this on social media if it was, or check out the list of my favorite products to use with Garageband.
In this tutorial today, I’m going to show you how to make a quick hip-hop beat in Garageband.
Will it be the most sophisticated beat in the world?
No, it will not, because, I’m not the greatest producer, and all I can do is show you how I do things. Hopefully, you can learn something from me.
Assuming you’re an absolute beginner, this tutorial should save you a fair amount of time in terms of avoiding common mistakes, like not turning off the Auto-Normalize function in Garageband’s preferences.
This is my way of making a hip-hop beat using my own unique individual style. It may not be your style of music, but maybe it’ll help you understand how people go about making songs.
Before we begin, I’ll give a brief explanation of what I consider to be hip-hop as well as some of its parameters.
Features Of Hip-Hop
Hip-hop, like metal, rock, and many other genres, has a ton of sub-genres and dynamic differences between each other.
Therefore, in my opinion, there’s no point in saying that it has to sound a certain way – because it doesn’t.
In the past, there were many beats that had kind of a major/happy sound and there are many minor sounding beats of varying stylistic characters such as jazz, soul, funk, country, and even rock.
Moreover, hip-hop utilizes a ton of soul and funk samples from the 1960s and 1970s like James Brown, Funkadelic, Parlament, and so on and so forth.
Perhaps my favorite example is Kanye West’s song, “Touch The Sky,” created by Lupe Fiasco, which uses Curtis Mayfield’s legendary soul tune, “Move On Up.”
The great part of hip-hop, like rock music, is that it’s versatile, so as long as you have a melody and a rhythm section, a rapper can probably spit bars over it.
*Before continuing, make sure you’ve downloaded all of the available sounds. To do that, just go into the Garageband Preferences, and go to “Sound Library,” and then choose the option, “Download All Available Sounds.”
Without further ado…
How To Make A Hip-Hop Song In Garageband
The first thing that you want to do is open up Garageband.
1) Open up Garageband.
2) Select the hip-hop template.
The first thing that shows up is the Trap Door template, and the drummer’s name apparently is Dez. Personally, I hate the sound of the Trap Door pre-sets, so I avoid it at all costs.
It can be doctored to sound good, in my opinion, by decreasing the complexity of the fills and also choosing the “Simple” setting by dragging the little yellow ball to the left, or changing the actual kit of the pre-set.
Around half of the instruments that Garageband gives you sound good, with the “Steinway Grand Piano,” Deep Sub Bass,” “Vox Box Lead,” and the “String Ensemble” being the most important and useful.
The “Arctic Noise Lead” is definitely a popular choice as well.
3) Go ahead and choose the “Flute” option under “Vintage Mellotron,” the “Jazz Organ,” the “Scream Lead” from the synthesizer section, as well as the “String Movements” from the Soundscapes option.
Also, choose the “Beat Machine” drum-kit under the Electronic Drum Kit section.
4) First Melody (Chord Progression) – (Jazz Organ)
For this particular track, “Spaceship Underwater,” the very first thing is that I made the chord progression with the “Jazz Organ,” which is just a C Minor with an added 9th and an Eb Major with an added 9th.
You can give the final track a listen here:
Cmin9 = C, Eb, G, D
Ebadd9 = Eb, G, Bb, F
Both of these chords belong to the Key of G Minor.
Here are all of the chords of G Minor (relative minor of Bb Major):
i – G Minor – G-B-D
iiº – A Diminished – A-C-Eb
III+ – Bb Major – Bb-D-F
iv – C Minor – C-Eb-G
v – D Minor – D-F-A
VI – Eb Major – Eb-G-Bb
VII – F Major – F-A-C
iiº – A Diminished – A-C-Eb
III+ – Bb Major – Bb-D-F
iv – C Minor – C-Eb-G
v – D Minor – D-F-A
VI – Eb Major – Eb-G-Bb
VII – F Major – F-A-C
In case you haven’t seen the scale degrees before and how they look, know that the lower-case roman numerals., “i,” mean Minor, and the upper-case numerals, “V,” mean Major.
***If you want to learn more about theory, I suggest going over to MusicTheory.net, or pick up Mark Sarnecki’s book on theory, which you read about on my recommended products page (It’s #15 on the list).
The “+” means augmented and the “º” means diminished.
If these words are scary don’t worry about it. Just pay attention to the letters of the chord, “GBD.”
Check out the diagram I created of the “Musical Typing” below if you’re totally unfamiliar of where the notes of the Piano lie.
When I build beats, I pretty much always start with the melody and then I build the drums, bass, and everything else afterward.
5) Second Melody – (Screamlead Synth)
Because I know that I’m in the Key of G Minor, there are certain notes available to me that will sound “correct.” They are the following:
Garageband 24 bit. Sep 08, 2006 What is the bit rate of audio that is recorded onto Garageband? I just got a new Zoom G21U multieffects pedal with a USB connection so that it can be used as an interface with my Mac. The Zoom box has a sampling rate of 96 kHz and 24 bit A/D/A conversion.
G, A, Bb, C, D, Eb, F.
The relative Major of G Minor is actually Bb Major, which means they are the same notes, just played in a different order and having a different root note or tonal center.
Here is the Bb Major scale:
Bb, C, D, Eb, F, G, A
asically, after I built the chord progression, I loaded up an instrument that sounded cool and started playing around with it on my MIDI Keyboard.
I usually start with an Ehru, Piano, or another instrument with a sound I love. The reasoning for this, as an artist, is for the inspiration.
In this case, I chose the Screamlead instrument, which you’ll find in the Lead subcategory within the Synthesizer section.
Here’s an image of how the second most important melody of the song looks in the MIDI work-space:
Tip: Always use instruments, plug-ins, arpeggiators, and other tools that inspire you to play.
That’s what being a musician is all about, frankly. It’s the same thing with playing the guitar or another instrument. You have to buy a piece of equipment that actually inspires you to play.
After I built the second melody using the “Screamlead ” instrument, I went into the Software Instrument’s settings and messed around with it until it actually sounded cool.
At first, as I said before, it was the Pipu, but I couldn’t use that because I already made a track using it recently and I didn’t want to get too repetitive.
I turned it into a Screamlead, and then adjusted the settings of it.
In the image below, you can see all of the different settings for it, including, Glide, Sub, Shape, Depth, Harmonic, Overdrive, Delay, as well as a bit of Reverb.
The part I changed the most was the “Glide” option as well as the “Shape.” That’s what gave it the sound that is completely different from the stock version of it.
Another big change I made was with the “Harmonic” option. I turned that bad boy all the way down.
5) Third Filler Melody – (Delicate Bells)
For the third melody, I simply used it as a filler, a way of filling out the rest of the track and adding a little bit of “Body” or character to the sound.
I used Delicate Bells, and I copy and pasted the track from the Screamlead and dropped it into the Delicate Bells track.
It was a one-two process, and I turned it down fairly significant so as not to take too much attention away from the rest of the more important instruments.
I also EQ’d it a little bit as well. For this section, I implemented a Low-Pass, so in other words, I eliminated all of the highest frequencies. This EQ setting looks like this:
6) Fourth Melody (Flute)
Perhaps the most important melody of this song was the flute, rather than the initial chord progression and melody.
The flute is the part that repeats through the entirety of the song, and I loved the way it sounds. I think it was a nice touch.
The funny part about it is the fact it’s simply three notes but played at two different octaves. It’s easily the LEAST sophisticated part of the entire track.
It goes to show that sophistication is not necessary at all, in fact, this plays into improvisation as a musician as well. It’s easy to get caught up in all of these incredibly convoluted details, but frankly, there’s simply no need.
A good question to ask yourself is: does this make the music sound good? Does this contribute to the entirety of the song?
Moving on to arguably the most important part of a hip-hop song: the drums and the Boutique 808 pattern.
I think, perhaps, a crucial detail to add here is the fact that the drums and boutiques are actually the most important part for music producers but not for the listener.
Listeners don’t care about EQing the snare as you do, they just want to hear a great melody and beat.
7) Drums (Kick, Snare and Hi-Hats)
Obviously, music producers have different ways of going about this. Many actually “draw” their music, by adding individual notes and so on and so forth in the “Piano Roll.”
To begin drawing in the Piano Roll, double-click (right-click) in the workspace and select the option, “Create Empty MIDI Region.” This will make a file in which you can start dropping notes.
Truth be told, I don’t do this.
I find this kind of thing to be, actually, annoying and not that fun.
I played guitar for my entire life before I started using a DAW, so I’m all about playing from the heart and improvising on the spot.
What I do, is I open up the Musical Typing (Garageband’s keyboard – Command + K), and I just start jamming on the Kick and Snare, trying to come up with a pattern that I’ve never used before but also sounds very good.
Usually, the Kick and Snare is loaded at the C3 level on Garageband’s Musical Typing, so I just hammer on the “C” and “D” note, or as it says on the actual laptop Keyboard, the letters “A” and “S.”
If you’re using a MIDI-Keyboard, it’ll likely be the very first C and D on the left-side of the Keyboard.
After I’ve built a cool sounding Kick and Snare pattern, I usually begin adding the other details.
8) Shaker
I’ve been actually using the Shaker function quite a bit lately. I feel like it’s a nice touch to the sound.
And for the most part, I either add the hi-hats on every single beat, or I add it about half-a-beat after the Snare Drum. I think it sounds cool.
I use the shaker – and this is a great thing to keep in mind for producing all kinds of drum-centric music – to keep the beat at a more consistent pace.
Many producers use the Kick, Snare, or the Hi-Hat as a way to keep time.
For me, using the Shaker is good for that, because it’s not too intrusive or obstructing. In other words, it doesn’t take too much attention away from other sounds, instruments, and melodies.
A snare or kick can be quite aggressive.
9) Bass
This is arguably the most important part of hip-hop production, and frankly, I’m not the greatest at it, so you may want to check out another person’s tutorial to figure out how to make great Boutique 808s and bass-lines.
As I explained in this article about Boutique 808s, there are many different ways of drawing/playing bass-lines, as well as EQ-tactics and methods for making it sound good.
Make sure to check out the article at the above link to see what I’m talking about.
For the sake of this tutorial, however, I’ll outline what I did for “Spaceship Under Water.”
The first thing that I do when I build a bass-line is I usually think about the chord progression and melody, that way I can draw a bassline that is actually on-key.
Many producers struggle with building a bass-line that’s on-key due to the limitations of the human ear. It’s pretty hard to hear the lowest frequencies, so a good way of getting around it is the following:
Tip: Try making a bass-line with the Bass turned up 1 or 2 octaves, that way you can find out if the bass is truly in the proper key signature.
Another thing that you can do is treat the bass as if it’s a melody of its own, and create maybe a piano melody, but then change the software instrument track into the Deep Sub Bass synth or the Boutique 808s.
Moving on…
I typically outline the notes of the chord in order to create the bassline. For example, I know that in this track there are two primary chords that lie as the song’s foundation: Cmin9 and Ebadd9.
![Drop D Garageband Drop D Garageband](/uploads/1/2/6/1/126150952/856933306.jpg)
These two chords, as I mentioned above, belong to the key of G Minor, where these are the following notes of the scale, G, A, Bb, C, D, Eb, and F.
Cmin9 = C, Eb, G, D
Ebadd9 = Eb, G, Bb, F
If I’m going to make a bassline, I would focus on the C note and the Eb note, just as a starter to see how that sounds. C and Eb are the root notes of the aforementioned chords.
After that, I’d play around with the G Minor scale, whose notes I listed above, and I’d see if I could make something out of that. However, usually I crave a little more out of the bassline, and most other people do as well.
Most people would argue that the main purpose of the bassline, whether it’s Boutique 808 or a bass guitar, is to hold the rhythm down of the song, so to speak.
It’s a way of solidifying the groove and flow of the track. It’s like strengthening its backbone.
Without bass, the song wouldn’t have the same “fullness” about it. It would sound likely more empty and hollow. Those lower frequencies really complete and warm-up the song.
In this case, I was struggling to come up with a bass-line that fulfilled that role, so I ended up just outlining the notes of the chords and keeping it very simple.
Sometimes, simplicity is where it’s at.
The final thing to note is the fact I copy and pasted the notes of the Kick Drum into the Deep Sub Bass track, that way I had a reference point for when the Kick and Snare hits.
As I wrote about in my Boutique article, if you want your bassline to hit hard, which is arguably the most coveted aspect of hip-hop production, then it’s essential that you line your kick drum with the Boutique 808s or Deep Sub Bass Synthesizer.
You can check out the image below of the Deep Sub Bass to see how I did that:
Drop Tuning Garageband
11) Volume Control
One last final thing to note before we get into the next section: I did a volume fade at the beginning of the song for the flute section.
In order to do that, you hit the ‘A’ button on the track for “Automation.”
You’ll notice right away that the yellow automation lines will pop up.
By clicking on the line, you’ll drop automation points and then you can drag the line around according to how you want to adjust the volume.
Check out the picture below to see what I did for that particular track.
Moving on to the Exporting, Mixing, and then Mastering stage…
12) Export As AIFF
Now that the song is pretty much completed, we can move on to the easiest stage: the “exporting stage.”
For this part, make sure that absolutely none of your tracks are clipping (going into the red), otherwise, it’ll sound terrible later on.
As a general rule, you want your volume tracks to be going into the yellow only during the loudest parts of the song. It’s cool if the tracks ride in the green the entire time.
Also, turn down the Master Volume to +0.0. I haven’t heard anyone say this matters at all, but for me, it absolutely does.
Make sure the Master Volume is at zero, otherwise, your track won’t mix and master properly.
Make sure there are no plug-ins running on your master track as well.
To do that, go down into the Smart Controls and click on the button that says. “Master,” among the other two options, “Track,” and “Compare.”
You’ll see the list of the plug-ins, and make sure they’re all turned off.
It’s ok if you have plug-ins running on the individual tracks, but you don’t want any on the master channel, from what I’ve been told anyway.
At this stage, your track is nearly ready for export. Listen to the whole thing and make sure all of the instruments sound good, and exactly as you want them to.
Keep in mind, when you go to master the track, some of the other sounds may sound accentuated. For that reason, I typically turn down the sound of the hi-hats, shakers, and other high-frequency instruments.
Explained in another way, If you plan on using compression and an EQ boost, some of the higher frequency instruments, such as the hi-hat or cymbals, tend to make that hissing sound.
For that reason, consider turning the volume down on the individual tracks.
a) Click on the option, “Share,” in Garageband’s Toolbar at the top
b) and then click the option, “Export to Disk,” from there,
c) hit the AIFF check-box,
d) name your track
e) and then export it on to your desktop that way you can simply drag and drop it into the DAW.
From this stage, we can actually drag and drop the AIFF file right back into the DAW among all of the other software instrument tracks.
f) Hit the “Solo” button on the track that looks like a pair of headphones to isolate the song.
The reason for this is that we’ll check and see that our track isn’t clipping it all, and we give it a general test to see what it’s going to sound like after we add a compressor, channel EQ, and so on and so forth.
Now that we can see there’s nothing wrong with the track and it isn’t too loud, we’ll move on to the mixing stage.
g) Start a new project.
11) Mixing.
I’m by no means an expert mixing engineer, so just keep that in mind, but for this stage, I actually don’t do a lot to it.
I usually add a Channel EQ, a compressor or Multipressor, and then maybe a Limiter as well just in case.
a) Channel EQ
As you can see by the image below, I cut the lowest and highest frequencies, dropped the 205hz frequency by -3.5 dB, and then gave the song a bit of a boost by 3dB or so starting from the range of 500hz to 10,000 kHz.
I also gave it a small boost to around 35hz.
b) Multipressor
For the multipressor, I just used the “Final Hip Hop Compressor” pre-set which dropped the gain by around -3.6dB.
I really like the way the multipressor sounds. I find it gives the track quite a bit of punchiness.
*In the YouTube version of this song, I used a compressor instead of a multipressor, but on my SoundCloud, I used the multipressor version.
c) Limiter
As I wrote in my article about limiting, the limiter acts as a compressor with an extremely high ratio, or in other words, it’s a “brick wall” in which no frequencies can pass through.
Using the limiter, we’ll boost the overall volume of the track by +3.0dB, and then we’ll set the output level at -0.2dB.
The gain is best increased by just 1, 2, or 3 dB because then we’re not pushing it too hard.
Regarding the Output Level knob, technically, the point past 0dB is the point of distortion according to what I’ve read.
If we have it set at -0.2dB, then we don’t have to worry about the song exceeding that point and thus, creating distortion.
Because of the way the limiter works, a lot of people like to use it as a volume-increaser at the end of the mixing process.
However, it’s much better thought of as a tool that we can use to ensure no undesirable sounds are heard in the mix.
12) Final Step
Ensure the volume of the track is consistent with other music you’ve created.
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If you have an album on your phone and you hook it into a Bluetooth speaker at someone’s house, you want the tracks to be the same volume as each other.
That way, you won’t have to continuously come back and turn the volume up.
For this point, I would try and match the volume of, not other artists on YouTube or SoundCloud, but your favorite artists and their professionally mixed and mastered hit singles.
If you’re going to try and make a song, you might as well get used to trying to match the amplitude (volume) of their music.
I usually choose the volume to be around +1.6dB on the Master Volume channel. In between +1.6 and +2.0 dB, depending on whether I’ve used a compressor a multipressor.
13) Export
Now, if you want to export your music, thankfully, Garageband comes with a convenient “Share” function on the top toolbar that allows you to easily export music to either SoundCloud, iTunes, or YouTube.
Before doing this, however, make sure you do this one last thing if you haven’t already.
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a) Go into the Garageband Preferences.
b) Click on Advanced.
c) See where it says, “Auto Normalize – Export Projects At Full Volume?”
Make sure this box is unchecked, otherwise, Garageband will export your music at a level that is far too quiet, and the competition will just outshine you like crazy.
Moving on…
With that said, try to avoid making your tracks too loud.
I’m not an expert on this topic, so take notice of this warning, but some people say that making your tracks super loud is a part of what’s called the “Loudness War.”
It’s up to you whether or not you want to engage in this. If you’re curious to read more about it, I recommend this article here.
Some people might argue that an artist/audio engineer has to do whatever they can to get noticed, and that includes exporting music at too high of a volume.
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Others will hate you for making your music so loud.
It’s up to you as to whether you want to annoy other producers and audio engineers. I guess you have to ask yourself though, “am I making music for myself, other people, or other producers?”
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Anyway, I hope this tutorial was helpful to you. As I said before, I’m not a Billboard-topping artist, so I can’t tell you how to make the illest beat you’ve ever heard. I can only show you how I make them.
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Enjoy.
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