Garageband anyone?

[kyleseglin]

Hi all..

I recently got involved with garageband.. Ive been making beats and songs and all using the midi features combined with real instruments and im curious if anyone has any tips or anything as to how i can make the songs sound "professional". i play them back on my ipod a lot of times on random mixed in with "real" songs from actual albums and the quality of the other songs is so much better than mine. is there any way to get that professional sound from garageband? are there things i dont know??

[Yontsey]

Try applying some compression to your tracks. Unfortunately, GB isn't a professional app, but it's nice for quick little projects, so you don't have a whole lot of options to do.

It also helps to have good mics for your real instruments.

I prefer Logic Pro 8, but a lot of people that I work with use Pro Tools or Adobe Audition.

Good luck!

[kyleseglin]

hm i have logic express but i have no idea how to actually use it. i guess my next question would be what makes logic or protools "professional" and garageband not professional?

[remoteCONTROL]

get a good mic to record the real instruments. learn some basic recording techniques...like doubling guitar tracks, messing around with panning, etc. garageband can sound just as "professional" as protools or logic. one thing that might help is messing around with the master track. there is a bunch of presets that they give you...its somewhere on the right side of the screen. what specifically do you want to have sound "professional"?

[drewxmagid]

Pro Tools LE 8 DO IT

[AloneWithMusic]

haha wish i could help, sadly its most likely going to be expensive

[brandnew741]

hm i have logic express but i have no idea how to actually use it. i guess my next question would be what makes logic or protools "professional" and garageband not professional?
The flexibility, power, and plug-ins of a professional DAW such as Pro Tools are what gives it an edge over something like GB. The audio editing capabilities come to mind specifically in Pro Tools. Its incredible what you can do with it whereas in GB you are limited in editing, processing, etc.
Most songs on your ipod were probably recorded at expensive studios using hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment and its hard to compensate for that with a simple home studio setup using GB.

[The Boathouse]

/thread

It's like saying, "How can I jump as high as that Olympian high jumper while wearing my sweet Vans and having run high school track (varsity) for a few seasons?"

It just can't quite happen...

[Bruised26]

I only use Garageband for demos, unfortunately I dont have money to get a good program. It wont get you anywhere, though.

[we are cured]

you can do a lot more with garageband than most people think. there are plenty of eq's that you can play around with. it's obviously not going to have the capabilities that a logic would have, but chances are you're a beginner when it comes to recording and that a program like logic or protools will confuse the shit out of you.

my recommendation is to get a nice interface (i've had a firepod for three years and i love it) and some decent mic's. the options are plentiful but i'd start with a reasonable condensor and a shure sm-57. good luck and have fun.