Nov 05, 2015 How to load up 3rd party software instruments in Garageband & also how to then save that synth as a preset into the library from where it can be loaded anytime. Use the Sound Library to download additional free instruments, loops and sound packs. Audio Unit Extensions in iOS 13 allow you to play, record and mix third-party instruments or effects right into GarageBand. And then share your song with friends and family. But GarageBand can do much more than this: it gives you complete control over its Software Instruments. You can sculpt synth sounds, re-create vintage instruments, change a seventies sound to an '80s instrument, create wonderful electronic sweeps and swirls in synthesizer pads, emulate your favorite artist's axe, etc etc.
- Garageband Wants To Install Your Download Of Instruments And Sounds Music
- Garageband Wants To Install Your Download Of Instruments And Sounds Video
Incredible music.
In the key of easy.
GarageBand is a fully equipped music creation studio right inside your Mac — with a complete sound library that includes instruments, presets for guitar and voice, and an incredible selection of session drummers and percussionists. With Touch Bar features for MacBook Pro and an intuitive, modern design, it’s easy to learn, play, record, create, and share your hits worldwide. Now you’re ready to make music like a pro.
Start making professional‑sounding music right away. Plug in your guitar or mic and choose from a jaw‑dropping array of realistic amps and effects. You can even create astonishingly human‑sounding drum tracks and become inspired by thousands of loops from popular genres like EDM, Hip Hop, Indie, and more.
More sounds, more inspiration.
Plug in your USB keyboard and dive into the completely inspiring and expanded Sound Library, featuring electronic‑based music styles like EDM and Hip Hop. The built‑in set of instruments and loops gives you plenty of creative freedom.
The Touch Bar takes center stage.
The Touch Bar on MacBook Pro puts a range of instruments at your fingertips. Use Performance view to turn the Touch Bar into drum pads or a one-octave keyboard for playing and recording.
Plug it in. Tear it up.
Plug in your guitar and choose from a van-load of amps, cabinets, and stompboxes.
Design your dream bass rig.
Customize your bass tone just the way you want it. Mix and match vintage or modern amps and speaker cabinets. You can even choose and position different microphones to create your signature sound.
Drumroll please.
GarageBand features Drummer, a virtual session drummer that takes your direction and plays along with your song. Choose from 28 drummers and three percussionists in six genres.
Shape your sound. Quickly and easily.
Whenever you’re using a software instrument, amp, or effect, Smart Controls appear with the perfect set of knobs, buttons, and sliders. So you can shape your sound quickly with onscreen controls or by using the Touch Bar on MacBook Pro.
Look, Mom — no wires.
You can wirelessly control GarageBand right from your iPad with the Logic Remote app. Play any software instrument, shape your sound with Smart Controls, and even hit Stop, Start, and Record from across the room.
Drummer, the virtual session player created using the industry’s top session drummers and recording engineers, features 28 beat‑making drummers and three percussionists. From EDM, Dubstep, and Hip Hop to Latin, Metal, and Blues, whatever beat your song needs, there’s an incredible selection of musicians to play it.
Each drummer has a signature kit that lets you produce a variety of groove and fill combinations. Use the intuitive controls to enable and disable individual sounds while you create a beat with kick, snare, cymbals, and all the cowbell you want. If you need a little inspiration, Drummer Loops gives you a diverse collection of prerecorded acoustic and electronic loops that can be easily customized and added to your song.
Audition a drummer for a taste of his or her distinct style.
Powerful synths with shape‑shifting controls.
Get creative with 100 EDM- and Hip Hop–inspired synth sounds. Every synth features the Transform Pad Smart Control, so you can morph and tweak sounds to your liking.
Sweeping Arp
Droplets
Bright Punchy Synth
Pumping Synth Waves
Epic Hook Synth
Learn to play
Welcome to the school of rock. And blues. And classical.
Get started with a great collection of built‑in lessons for piano and guitar. Or learn some Multi‑Platinum hits from the actual artists who recorded them. You can even get instant feedback on your playing to help hone your skills.
Take your skills to the next level. From any level.
Choose from 40 different genre‑based lessons, including classical, blues, rock, and pop. Video demos and animated instruments keep things fun and easy to follow.
Instant feedback.
Play along with any lesson, and GarageBand will listen in real time and tell you how you’re doing, note for note. Track your progress, beat your best scores, and improve your skills.
Tons of helpful recording and editing features make GarageBand as powerful as it is easy to use. Edit your performances right down to the note and decibel. Fix rhythm issues with a click. Finesse your sound with audio effect plug‑ins. And finish your track like a pro, with effects such as compression and visual EQ.
Go from start to finish. And then some.
Create and mix up to 255 audio tracks. Easily name and reorder your song sections to find the best structure. Then polish it off with all the essentials, including reverb, visual EQ, volume levels, and stereo panning.
Take your best take.
Record as many takes as you like. You can even loop a section and play several passes in a row. GarageBand saves them all in a multi‑take region, so it’s easy to pick the winners.
Your timing is perfect. Even when it isn’t.
Played a few notes out of time? Simply use Flex Time to drag them into place. You can also select one track as your Groove Track and make the others fall in line for a super‑tight rhythm.
Polish your performance.
Capture your changes in real time by adjusting any of your software instruments’ Smart Controls while recording a performance. You can also fine‑tune your music later in the Piano Roll Editor.
Touch Bar. A whole track at your fingertips.
The Touch Bar on MacBook Pro lets you quickly move around a project by dragging your finger across a visual overview of the track.
Wherever you are, iCloud makes it easy to work on a GarageBand song. You can add tracks to your GarageBand for Mac song using your iPhone or iPad when you’re on the road. Or when inspiration strikes, you can start sketching a new song idea on your iOS device, then import it to your Mac to take it even further.
GarageBand for iOS
Play, record, arrange, and mix — wherever you go.
GarageBand for Mac
Your personal music creation studio.
Logic Remote
A companion app for Logic Pro X.
When it comes to MIDI instruments and other stock VSTs, not all are created equal. There are some that are definitely better than others, there’s no question about that.
However, something can be done to make the instruments you have to sound a lot better. For this article, I’m going to go ahead and assume you don’t know a lot about dynamics processors, plug-ins, and other mixing practices.
To improve the sound of your stock instruments in Garageband as well as in other DAWs, use dynamics plug-ins and effects, such as EQ, compression, delay, reverb, and then panning.
How To Make Garageband Instruments Sound More Professional
1) Reverb to Make the Instrument Sound Bigger and Less Up-Front
2) Ambiance to Change the Style of Reverberation
3) Delay to Thicken Up the Instrument or Add Effects
4) Panning to Spread Out The Instruments to Create Room for Them in the Mix
5) Compression to Highlight the Quiet Sounds and Minimize the Loud Sounds
6) EQ to Clear Up Unwanted Noise and Emphasize Desired Sounds
7) Replace Bad Instruments with Superior Plug-ins
1) Use Reverb to Make the Instrument Sound Bigger and Less Up-Front
Reverb is one of the greatest effects out there, and there’s a reason why it’s so popular. It adds a spacious effect to the sound of the instrument, whether it’s vocals, guitar, bass, a snare, or even hi-hats.
Reverb, essentially, is the sound of soundwaves bouncing off the walls repeatedly in a room. In other words, it is the existence of the sound after the source has stopped producing it.
The waves travel back and forth from one side of the room to the other and it sounds like it’s emphasizing or filling up the room.
For instance, when you walk into a large church and clap your hands, the soundwaves travel across the room, bounce off the walls, causing an echo that we call “reverberation.”
That’s essentially what reverb is, except engineers have figured out how to emulate this process through technology.
This natural effect that’s heard in nature can also be used through a plug-in. Without wasting too much time on explaining what reverb is and how it’s used, let’s dive into how to go about using it to make your music sound a lot better.
It really is just as simple as turning up the reverb on the software instrument track until you think it starts to sound good. Depending on the instrument, I find that it sounds good with the setting around 4-5, or sometimes just 3.
Let’s say, hypothetically, you’re not satisfied with the type of reverb Garageband has. There are plenty of reverb types in Garageband, around four of them, and each one has a variety of custom presets you can try out.
There is EnVerb, PlatinumVerb, Space Designer, and Silver Verb, and if you drop one into your DAW, you’ll see each one has a variety of presets like what you can see in the image below:
Personally, my favorite is the ‘Big Room’ preset in the platinum reverb setting.
However, I would say that for the most part, I just use the regular reverb plug-in that comes apart from Garageband’s interface at the bottom of the smart controls. Not every instrument has one, but if it does, make sure you use it a little bit.
One thing that’s important to mention is to avoid washing out your sounds, which means adding too much reverb to every single instrument. Ideally, you should only be adding reverb on the tracks that need it the most.
Another benefit to using this type of plug-in is there are more parameters for individual reverb, rather than just setting it around “4,” you can adjust other parameters, such as “pre-delay,” the “reverb time,” “highcut,” “spread,” including the “dry” and “wet” settings.
2) Use Ambiance to Change the Style of Reverberation
This is another Garageband tool I find pretty useful.
Reverb is a very specific tool that changes the way sound reverberates throughout a room, including even the size of the room, however, the ambiance is more about the type of reverberation.
For instance, a building with concrete walls with no windows will sound different than a church filled with wooden benches and large glass windows.
Thankfully, the ambiance setting is not too complicated, it’s just a matter of turning it up or down, depending on how much you want, so I typically set it at around 3-4 on the interface.
Additionally, if you tend to use too much ambiance, you’ll end up making the sound bleed into other channels.
For instance, in one of my tracks, I used ambiance on the left and right guitars, with each guitar, panned respectively in the opposite directions. Using too much ambiance will cause the sound to reverberate so much that it will begin to sound like the track is in stereo, rather than mono.
If you don’t know the difference between mono and stereo, I suggest checking out this article here on mixing in mono.
3) Using Delay to Thicken Up the Instrument or Add Effects
Delay, like reverb, is one of the most popular effects to use, and for good reason.
It can perform a lot of different functions, including as a thickening agent for the instrument, or it can be used as a pure effect, for instance, using enough so the sound echoes and creates a chill introspective vibe.
Similar to reverb, you have to be careful you don’t add too much delay on too many different tracks, because you’ll end up with what people call a “washed out” sound, which just means way too many effects, to the point where the effects have actually destroyed the dynamics of the song.
When it comes to using delay on my instrument tracks, like reverb, I prefer to use the regular delay knob that comes in the bottom right corner of Garageband’s interface in the smart controls.
Usually, what that knob does is it increases the “wet” setting of the particular type of delay you have set up in the plug-ins.
Garageband comes with 5 types of delay, including Tape Delay, Stereo Delay, Delay Designer, Echo, and Sample Delay.
Each one is different from each other in subtle but impactful ways, however, we won’t explore the differences between them in this tutorial.
I would opt for the stereo-delay and use the following settings, the Stereo Delay’s “1/4 Note Dotted,” pre-set.
In my article on 8 Tips For Garageband (That You’ve Never Heard Before), I talked about delay a little bit more, including how it’s best to match the delay setting to the actual notes to your song. You can do this with a delay calculator that I listed in the article I just mentioned.
4) Using Panning to Spread Out The Instruments to Create Room for Them in the Mix
Panning is a technique that’s kind of tangentially related to increasing the quality of your instruments because it’s not actually going to increase the sound quality of the tracks, but it will increase the quality of your mixes.
For instance, one thing that I like to do is pan one guitar to around +20 and then another guitar to around -20, with maybe a bit of compression on the one guitar and not so much compression on the other.
You can read more about panning in this article here. Like I stated in the article, I like to put every instrument in its own place and have almost nothing sitting in the exact same part of the mix.
Each instrument sounds best, in my opinion, sitting in its own part of the mix.
5) Using Compression to Highlight the Quiet Sounds and Minimize the Loud Sounds
Garageband Wants To Install Your Download Of Instruments And Sounds Music
Compression is the game-changing plug-in.
Over the years, it has easily become one of the most over-used dynamics processors, according to The Engineering Handbook from Bobby Owsinkski. Compression is used all over music now, on each individual track, the mix buss, and so on and so forth.
One of the reasons for its widespread use is because of how good it is. When it comes to using Compression, and you’re new to it, I would recommend just trying out some of the pre-sets.
For instance, if you need a guitar part to sound a little bit better, just add a compressor and check in the pre-sets for the “Acoustic Guitar” pre-set, or maybe the “Rock Guitar” pre-set.
If you want to read more about compression, I suggest you check out my article here.
Regarding the pre-sets, they usually need a little bit of fine-tuning to get them to sound good, for instance, adjusting the “Acoustic Guitar” preset by increasing the threshold a little bit, in addition to the ratio, and then the gain by a lot.
Like I said above, however, if you’re new to it, just try some of the pre-sets to figure out what sounds good. Additionally, read the article I just mentioned to you, because I really did my best to explain it in a way everyone can understand. It even took me a little while to figure out what compression actually was.
6) Using EQ to Clear Up Unwanted Noise and Emphasize Desired Sounds
I would argue that the Channel EQ is the next step to really increase the sound quality of some of your instruments. There is a lot to learn about it too, in my opinion.
More seasoned engineers and producers will tell you that using EQ is super easy, but I find it pretty difficult because there are a lot of options. If you want to read more about Channel EQ, I recommend checking out this article here.
Additionally, I have an article all about using Channel EQ on guitars, which you can check out at this link here.
When using the EQ, just ask yourself what about the instrument you don’t like? Is there too much low-end? Does it sound kind of muffled and muddy? Or are there weird hissing sounds, crashes, almost like a high-pitched “tst” sound, like a drum cymbal?
The channel EQ is what you can do to clear out some of that noise. Personally, I’ve really grown to enjoy using it, because I find that using a bit of Channel EQ is the difference between having a guitar part that sounds awful and a guitar part that sounds great.
For instance, I use the Channel EQ to eliminate some of the low-end and mid-range on a guitar part.
The other day, when I mixed a nylon string guitar part, I scooped out the range between 20-100 Hz, dropped the low-mid-range around 200Hz, increased the EQ around 500Hz-3000Hz, as well as 5000Hz to 9000Hz, and it made all the difference.
In the image above, you can see what the I did to make the nylon string guitar sound a lot better.
You can check out the final song at the following link:
7) Replace Bad Instruments with Superior Plug-Ins
In worst-case scenarios, the instrument might be so bad that you have to simply replace it. I’ve found this to be the case with Garageband’s stock-guitars.
I’ve played guitar my entire life, so listening to Garageband’s acoustic, rock, and nylon string guitars makes me cringe, however, the nylon-string is definitely the most superior out of all of them.
If you don’t know how to install plug-ins yet, I recommend checking out my article on installing plug-ins here. The article runs through where to find plug-ins, how to install them, as well as some of the best ones to use.
Furthermore, I have another article that lists what I think are some of the best instruments available for Garageband users, including some plug-ins, some stock instruments, and some settings.
For example, if you don’t like the stock guitars like me, you can go ahead and download DSK’s Dynamic Guitars, which in my opinion, are far superior to what Garageband has to offer.
Additionally, if you don’t like the Saxophone that Garageband has the same way that I don’t, you can grab the Saxophone plug-in from the same company, DSK.
The 4Front Piano is also better than Garageband’s stock piano, so that’s worth checking out as well.
Head over to Vst4Free to find more plug-ins. The website has a ton of different options, including guitars, bass, piano, synths, arpeggiators, and so on and so forth.
It’s worth mentioning that the following plug-ins are free. Once you find yourself in a position where you can start buying plug-ins, you have a whole new world of options available to you.
YouTube Video Tutorial
Conclusion
Garageband Wants To Install Your Download Of Instruments And Sounds Video
That’s all for this tutorial today, I hope you found some of this helpful, if you did, do me a favor and share it on your social media, whether it’s on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or any other platform.