Introduction to Music Technology

The DAW Project – GarageBand
Working with a Digital Audio Workstation

This exercise will give you the opportunity to work in a more typical recording studio environment, allowing you to create, edit and mix multiple audio and/or MIDI tracks.

DAWs are very powerful music applications and can take a very long time to learn well. These exercises should be considered an introduction to this class of music applications.

Learn more about DAWs at Wikipedia.

Instructions

The Audio Exercise will be done in GarageBand. Your exercise should contain at least 3 tracks - one voice, one music, one sound effects. The more tracks you include the better.

Some possible "themes" for this exercise include a commercial, a public service announcement, a narration, a poem or a scene from a movie or game.

Here's an example commercial from a previous semester.

The voice track can be recorded in the lab or you can use a recording from the web. If you don't have any ideas for a voice track you can download this file into your folder. (Right-click on the link and choose the appropriate command from the popup menu. Note: this audio file will have to be edited in places, giving you some practice in editing in Audacity.

The music track can be audio or MIDI - either a GarageBand or ACID XPress audio loop, a MIDI loop (i.e. a software instrument loop in GarageBand), or an audio or MIDI recording of you playing something on the KRONOS. We will demonstrate in class how to create audio and MIDI tracks in GarageBand.

The sound effect track should be audio - as we did in the Soundtrack Project. (You can also create a MIDI sound effect track using the sound effects provided in GarageBand.

1. Open Garage Band and create an Empty Project.
2. When asked which type of track to create, choose Real Instrument if you're creating an audio track or Software Instrument if you're creating a MIDI track
3. On a audio track (Real Instrument) you can record from a microphone or the KRONOS as well as place loops from the GarageBand loop library. The ACID XPress loops library will also be available.
4. Choose 2 bar Count-In from the Record menu.
5. Check the position of the playback head - the long vertical line that you see on your screen. Make sure it's set to the position where you want to record.
6. When ready, press the Record button on the transport or press "R" on your computer keyboard and wait for 8 beats (2 bar count-in.)
7. Continuing adding either audio or MIDI tracks as needed.
8. When your tracks are all recorded, mix and set the stereo positions of each track using the volume and pan controls found on each track.
9. Try adding some effects to the Master Track to enhance the overall sound of your recording, This step will be demonstrated in class.
10. When your project is completed, open the Share menu, choose Export to Disk and choose MP3 and the appropriate Quality setting to save your recording.