Guitar and Garageband


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If I get a guitar, will it work if I plug it straight into the Mac?

I have heard it works, but the results are not too good. Can someone please place a file on here of how it sounds without any kind of amp in between.

Is there any cheap pre-amps out there that will make it work properly?

Thanks.

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It'll work, you can do this with any recorder. I've done it on my 4-track a few times, but it has a specific guitar in line. On a normal line in, it will pretty much sound like what an electric guitar sounds like straight off the body.

You can buy effects to plug into the line before it hits the input, or get something like a Line 6 Pod (~$300 if I remember correctly) to make it sound better.

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you need either a direct box or a audio interface. m-audio sells the mobile pre which is a usb device that can accept guitar level signals and also microphone signals. it goes for around $150.

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all you need is a 1/4" to 1/8" adapter and you can plug it into your line-in on your mac.

you do not need a DI, audio interface, or a pre-amp, but you must understand that plugging it in directly like this will make you realize what your guitar truly sounds like. a cheap guitar is probably going to sound cheap.

an audio interface would just do what the 1/4" to 1/8" adapter is doing so it would be a waste of money. a DI is basically the same thing. converts unbalanced 1/4" line inputs to balanced xlr (which you can't use) usually. they have di's that do unbalanced rca outs too though. also useless for your situation.

you can buy a preamp or some effect pedals to get different sounds out of your guitar. the line6 pods are nice for emulating amps and adding multiple effects all in one unit.

all-in-all you are going to need a 1/4" to 1/8" adapter. they're usually around a dollar at radioshack, heh

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Right, the adapter it is.

I thought Garageband changes the effects of the guitar?

it defintely does... and it does it quite well for plugging directly into the mic input on the mac... all i am using right now is the 1/4 to 1/8 adapter from radio shack as well... although from playing with it the last couple of days i do now definitely plan on buying a pod

heres a little example of the guitar and bass plugged directly into the mic input (yeah the guiatar was slightly out of tune) but as you can see it does not sound that horrible at all...

the zipped up mp3 is 1.9 mb in size and can be downloaded here...

http://www.dirtydigitaldesigns.com/GarageBand_GUITAR.zip

i think garage band is just really, really good for laying down ideas and structures for songs and taking it from there... which is what me and my drummer did with the example above just a few days ago

Edited by DirtyLarry
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Thanks DirtyLarry! That is exactly the type of stuff I was looking for. Soundin' good!

Now I have a choice.......Guitar.....or 20GB iPod.

I would want the guitar, but my current cd player is on its last knockings. I think I will get the guitar and wait for the 4th gen iPod.

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Thanks DirtyLarry! That is exactly the type of stuff I was looking for. Soundin' good!

Now I have a choice.......Guitar.....or 20GB iPod.

I would want the guitar, but my current cd player is on its last knockings. I think I will get the guitar and wait for the 4th gen iPod.

no problem! and thanks ;)

and as far as the guitar, i play bass for my band, but i can play some guitar, so i actually just picked up a gibson epiphone at guitar center for 99$ on sale... the way i saw it was the guitar since it is going through garage band is just really another "interface," and the more expensive gibson i was eyeing up had the same exact humbucker pickup, so since i viewed it as an "interface" and it had the same pick up i did not see the sense in buying the more expensive guitar... and actually i can attest, my friend has a beatiful custom gibson sg that is just an awesome guitar, really as nice as a guitar can get, and although you can hear the difference in garage band when going through the mic input the way i currently am, it truly is a minimal difference at best, and you can always make up for the difference with playing with garage bands presets...

so good luck with your choice, but i think for now i personally say get the guitar (and oh yeah if you dont have one one of the 99 keyboards they offer on the apple site) :D ... i have only tried this last week with hooking up the guitar, and since then i cant put garage band down! you can always get the ipod later on for storing your songs you made (Y) good luck though and if you have anymore questions just let me know and ill do my best to help out!!

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macs don't have a "mic in" they have a line in. mic ins boost the signal since they are much quieter than a line source. well at least the laptops don't because they have built-in mics. i don't know about the desktops.

and garageband is essentially like a line 6 pod in that it has various amp/speaker combo emulators. i doubt they sound as good as the pod, but they will make playing your guitar through garageband an enjoyable experience.

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What will be the difference between the mic and the line-in?

None, I just personally have a mic in the mic port, so my bass goes in my line in, but it used to go in my mic port. But, Macs only have a line in according to ^^.

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No. I can't afford a tutor yet. I think I will attempt to learn myself - I have quite a few friends who 'know' about guitars so maybe they can teach me a thing or two.

I know its better to have a tutor to teach you the advanced stuff etc, but cost is an issue at the moment - being a student and all that lark.

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I have to prioritise my expenditures now. The Mac came first - Just spent ?730 on a Mac and printer.

Next will come the guitar (?150)

Then the iPod (?270)

Then a 20.1" TFT screen (?600)

Then a new 3.0Ghz PC (?750)

Ohhhhhh gonna take sooooooooooo long. I just hope I win ?2000 from somew:(re. :(

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it defintely does... and it does it quite well for plugging directly into the mic input on the mac... all i am using right now is the 1/4 to 1/8 adapter from radio shack as well... although from playing with it the last couple of days i do now definitely plan on buying a pod

heres a little example of the guitar and bass plugged directly into the mic input (yeah the guiatar was slightly out of tune) but as you can see it does not sound that horrible at all...

the zipped up mp3 is 1.9 mb in size and can be downloaded here...

http://www.dirtydigitaldesigns.com/GarageBand_GUITAR.zip

i think garage band is just really, really good for laying down ideas and structures for songs and taking it from there... which is what me and my drummer did with the example above just a few days ago

Did you plug in the bass and the guitar at the same time? or seperate times and then mix them together on Garageband? I think it would be so cool if there was a USB adapter that created 2 seperate line ins that made it so you could control each guitar's effects seperately.

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Did you plug in the bass and the guitar at the same time? or seperate times and then mix them together on Garageband? I think it would be so cool if there was a USB adapter that created 2 seperate line ins that made it so you could control each guitar's effects seperately.

one at a time i plugged them in. i put them each on a separate track then mixed accordingly in garage band. i am pretty sure there is something like that usb connector you are talking about. i just saw it on apple's website yesterday, which means you can get it cheaper somewhere else ;)

if you go to the apple store and check out products, i think there was a category called music recording or something like that, the usb connector thing should be in there (Y)

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DirtyLarry: That track sounds awesome, but I have a question. I'm not a musician (used to play drums though), but my friends are, and since I'm getting my new PowerBook (Or G5) here soon, they were wondering if I'd do some "cheap" mixing for them, just basically what you said GarageBand is for, throwing things together and seeing how it sounds.

Anyways, on to my question: How did you do the drums? Are those real or just loops in GarageBand? If they're real, I have a ton of music equipment, so did you set up mic's in certain areas on the drums all into a amp and then feed the line-out to your Mac (seems most logical), or how did you do that? Guitar, Bass, Vocals, those all seem easy, the drums are the hard part.

Thanks.

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DirtyLarry: That track sounds awesome, but I have a question. I'm not a musician (used to play drums though), but my friends are, and since I'm getting my new PowerBook (Or G5) here soon, they were wondering if I'd do some "cheap" mixing for them, just basically what you said GarageBand is for, throwing things together and seeing how it sounds.

Anyways, on to my question: How did you do the drums? Are those real or just loops in GarageBand? If they're real, I have a ton of music equipment, so did you set up mic's in certain areas on the drums all into a amp and then feed the line-out to your Mac (seems most logical), or how did you do that? Guitar, Bass, Vocals, those all seem easy, the drums are the hard part.

Thanks.

Hehe Thanks.

As far as the drums, they are technically "real"... but they are played through a USB Keyboard (the 150$ one on the Apple Website) as a Software Instrument in Garage Band. With the Keyboard, one key will be the Kick Drum, another key will be the Snare Drum, another the High Hat, so on and so on.

The drummer from my old band was the one who laid out the drum tracks, so thats why they sound pretty damn good, cause he actually plays the drums. LOL The thing is though you can Quantize (referred to as Fix Timing in Garage Band) your tracks in Garage Band as well, so even if you are a little off beat, you can the have Garage Band make you be perfectly on beat as long as you were pretty close to being on beat to start off with. So I can even play the drums too, although in real life all I can do is hold a very basic beat! For example I know we used the 1/16 Swing Quantize just to tighten up the drum tracks he laid out, and hence they sound perfect. I have even heard some people argue that they are actually to perfect and lack the human touch... To them I say well at least it is on beat HAHA

To get into some more detail with the Drums, the way I always do it is when i first start recording a track, is I first figure out the general tempo of the song itself. Lets say it is 100 bpm. I then just make a single track on put a simple High Hat on that track, dropping on every 1/8th note, so I have something along with the click to reference as the tempo when recording. Then we laid down all of the guitar and bass, all just to the highat running, no drum beats yet. After that was laid out we made another Software Instrument track of the Drums again, and laid down the Kick and Snare. Then made yet another Software Instrument Track, and laid down the Drum Toms. Then made yet another Software Instrument track, and laid down the Crash Cymbals, and any other various drum sounds if needed.

Once the beats were on time and completed, I then duplicated the Kick & Snare Track so I had 2 tracks of the same thing. I deleted the Kick from one of the tracks, and then the Snare from the other, so now the Kick and Snare were on their own separate tracks. The reason for laying everything out on their own tracks is you can though Fine Tune and EQ each individual drum sound... for example add the Bass Clarity EQ to the Kick Drum by itself, and then fine tune each EQ for each individual drum sound, and really get it sounding pretty good. All in all we only played around with that for maybe 20 minutes, so you can definitely get it sounding really, really good if you take the time to do so. So I think when everything was said and done we had 10 tracks in Garage Band just for the drums themselves.

And you are 110% right, the drums are definitely the hard part when trying to record them live... Honestly I cant imagine trying to mic up real drums using Garage Band and getting a really good sound without having the right interface for the mics to hook up into the Mac itself. I have been in bands on and off for the last 15 years now, and the only way when doing actual live recording of drums to get them sounding really good is to Mic each individual piece of the drum kit, which I was I chose to do what I said above and break down the USB Drums into separate tracks, just "faking" that way of recording real drums. If you record live drums with just 1 or 2 mics, you are always going to have either to much highs or to much lows. The drums are always a pain in the arse. However if your friends do just want to use your services for just laying down ideas, then I think they can definitely do that for sure as long as they realize if they record live drums it will not be the best sound at all. It really is easy to pick up the drums on the USB keyboard though especially if you or the person using it alreayd can play the drums, so I do recommend trying that too (Y)

I hope this helped out, let me know if it did. if you have any more questions I would be glad to help out anywhere I can, so feel free to PM me or whatever. I also highly recommend picking up the USB keyboard to you, and anyone else for that matter, who plans on even playing around with Garage Band. Apple even sells a 99$ one, which is almost exactly the same as the 150$ one I got, and I would have gotten the 99$ one myself but they were out of stock for like 3 weeks when I ordered it and I did not have the patience to wait.

Good Luck, enjoy Garage Band, and again anything else I can help you out with let me know (Y)

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Amazing reply, and so very thorough... I'm printing this out, just for a reference guide! :p

I couldn't imagine the drums were made in GarageBand, they sound too "real" I guess, I didn't imagine thinking they were done with software instruments.

I never considered buying a keyboard, mostly because I'm musically challenged (even as a drummer, I couldnn't keep a steady beat... lol), but I may give it a shot while I'm at the Apple Store just to see if I can cut it :p

I'll post any questions if I can... sadly I'm on a PC right now since my old Mac went kaput, so no GB love until I get my new one.

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i could tell they were synth drums. i suppose someone musically minded can always tell :p

but you could get cheaper keyboards if you dont have the money but they are small. i used a 16 key keyboard for like ?40 which had buttons to go up and down octaves.

I used windows and cubase/sibelius though

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