Garageband Tutorial – how to use Garageband on iPad & iPhone

The instruments are where the fun stuff happens, so let’s take a look at what’s on offer.

Keyboard

We’ve already touched on the Keyboard, but there’s actually quite a lot of sophistication in this seemingly simple instrument. Just above its virtual keys is a row of buttons that determine how it responds to user input. Starting from the left, the octave buttons jump to higher and lower parts of the keyboard. Sustain is like a sustain pedal on a piano, so enabling it makes notes ring out after the key has been released. This control is a switch that can be left either on or off, but it can also be used as a button to momentarily reverse its setting. For example, you might want piano notes to be sustained for most of a performance, but to cut them off each time the chord changes.

The centre button determines what happens when you glide a finger across the keyboard. The default is glissando mode, which behaves in the same way you’d expect from a physical keyboard. Scroll mode lets you shift the keyboard to the right or left to reveal lower or higher notes. Pitch mode isn’t available for piano and organ sounds, but it appears for the other categories. It creates gliding pitch bends that follow your finger movement around the keyboard. It’s even possible to have two or more notes that follow independent trajectories – something that’s impossible with a conventional MIDI-based instrument. Enabling pitch mode also unlocks the ability to change the tone of some sounds by sliding a finger vertically along the key.

If you’re struggling to hit the right note, tap the Scale button and select a preset scale. Major and Minor are the most common types, but there are lots of others available if you fancy something a bit fruitier. The button on the right makes the keyboard wider or narrower, and has an option to show two rows. The remaining button that resembles five little steps is the arpeggiator. Turn it on and hold down a few notes and you’ll hear rippling cascades of music, locked to the tempo of the track. You’ll find various additional setting to vary the speed, direction and range of the notes.

Drums

This instrument is simpler. You can see a drum kit, and all you have to do is hit it. It takes a fair amount of coordination and practice to play conventional drum patterns, but there’s lots of fun to be had channelling Animal from The Muppets and just going nuts. If you’re ready for a little refinement, try hitting different parts of the snare drum to hear its various sounds. The same works for the hi hat and ride cymbals. There’s a choice of three acoustic kits, plus three vintage drum machines.

When you come to record, it’s worth thinking about whether you want GarageBand to correct the timing of your performance – this is true for any instrument where you’re performing on the touchscreen. By default, the app shifts each note so it’s locked to a grid of 1/16th notes, which means a bar divided into 16 subdivisions. However, you may want to lock to a different grid, or keep the timing of the original performance. To do so, tap the Instrument Settings button (an icon resembling three sliders), followed by Quantisation, and choose a grid resolution or select None. This setting isn’t applied permanently, so you can go back at any time to adjust the Quantisation setting for a particular instrument.

Smart Guitar

Smart Guitar showcases some of GarageBand’s best tricks. There are four guitar types to choose from, and three ways to perform with it. The default is Chords mode, where the fretboard is split up into eight chords. You can then tap individual strings, swipe a finger to play the chord or pick out arpeggios by tapping rhythmically across the strings.

Turn the Autoplay dial from Off to one of the four numbered positions and the strings will disappear, leaving just the eight chords. Now the app will play the individual strings for you, leaving you just to pick the chords. Each guitar type has its own set of phrases, but you can mix them up by recording using one guitar type and then switching to another for playback.

Of the eight chords shown, the fifth one from the left will be the Key that you set in the Settings menu, while the others are related chords that work well in that key. If you know a bit of music theory you might want to change these chords, which is done via the Settings menu – an Edit Chords button will appear when a suitable instrument is selected. You can specify some complex chords, such as diminished, augmented and Sus4, and change the bass note. This can really lift the harmonic landscape beyond plain old major and minor. Note that the Autoplay modes only have limited support for these more complex chord types. To hear them in full you’ll need to turn Autoplay off and strum the strings yourself.

The third mode in Smart Guitar is Notes, which gives you a conventional fretboard to play with. While the other modes are ideal for rhythm guitar parts, this is the place to perform solos. You can bend strings and perform vibrato by wobbling a finger on a fret. If you’re struggling to the right notes, hit the scale button and specify the scale of your composition (usually major or minor). This will hide all the notes that aren’t in that scale.

Smart Bass

Smart Bass is almost identical to Smart Guitar, except for having a different set of sounds and Autoplay phrases, and having four rather than six strings. It’s worth noting that the upright bass can perform sliding notes by running a finger along its fretless fingerboard. The app isn’t entirely authentic, though, as it jumps to the nearest note when you first tap on the fingerboard.

Smart Strings

This leads us onto Smart Strings, which is our favourite instrument in the app. In Notes mode there’s a choice of bass, cello, viola or violin, and each one shows a virtual fingerboard that allows notes to glide up and down in pitch – perfect for suspenseful cinematic glissandi, or for adding some vibrato to a performance.

Hold down the brass-coloured button, just under the strings on the left, to unlock extra performance techniques. Tapping a string performs a pizzicato note, while a short sideways poke performs a staccato bowed note. Gentler, persistent movement plays a legato note, which you can make louder or quieter by varying the speed of movement.

The same three playing styles are also available in Chords mode, as long as the Autoplay function is disabled. Chords mode works in conjunction with the same set of chords that appeared in Smart Guitar, including any custom chords you defined. However, rather than strum strings, chords are divided into four areas, each of which produces a different voicing of the chord. Poking and jabbing at these controls can produce some fantastically realistic and evocative string arrangements.

If you prefer for the app to generate musical phrases for you, turn to one of the Autoplay settings and tap a chord. You can access additional phrases by tapping the word Cinematic and trying the other styles available.

Smart Keyboard

Smart Keyboard works along similar lines, although it doesn’t have a separate Notes mode as the Keyboard instrument has that covered. It includes the same arpeggiator and sustain functions, and being able to apply these to some pre-defined chords is a lot easier than the trying to pick out notes on a normal keyboard.

Another great feature is the ability to control the virtual left hand (for low notes) and right hand (for higher notes) separately. This works particularly well for the Autoplay phrases. A popular trick in pop music is to use the same phrase repeated in the higher notes but change the bass note to give each iteration a different colour. Conversely, you could try changing the chord of the upper notes but keep the lower notes stuck in the root key. If the virtual left and right hands do move together, try staggering when they change so there’s a bit of push and pull to the chord sequence. All of these techniques can breathe life into an otherwise formulaic chord sequence, taking it beyond what’s normally possible with auto-accompaniment features.

Smart Drums

If your fingers tire of stabbing away at the Drums instrument, Smart Drums should provide some relief. It creates drum performances for you, based on a grid with volume on the vertical axis and complexity on the horizontal. The various components of a drum kit can be placed anywhere on the grid, and you can create variations in the performance by recording movement to their grid position. There’s the same choice of three acoustic and three electronic drum kits as in the Drums instrument.