Apple Training Series: GarageBand 2 [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

1.

Adjust the volume levels of the individual tracks to balance the sound of the different instruments.

2.

Adjust the pan positions of the individual tracks to place them in the correct location in the stereo field.

3.

Find and fix any musical imperfections like timing, velocity, or performance. (This may require editing in the Track Editor, or re-recording a section of the song.)

4.

Add and adjust effects to enhance the sound of individual tracks, or the whole song.

5.

Create dynamic volume and pan changes over time using the Volume and Pan curves on individual tracks and the Master track.

1.

Press the Home key to move the playhead to the beginning.

2.

Press the spacebar to play the first half of the song.

As you listen to the tracks, notice the levels of the guitars, shaker, and tambourine.

3.

Press the spacebar again to stop playback.

The default volume level is a good starting point for your lead instruments. Instead of raising the guitar volume to make it louder, let's lower the other tracks accordingly.

Note

Adjusting track volume is like adjusting water temperature in a sink with separate cold and hot controls. If you are running both hot and cold water, and you want to make the overall temperature hotter, you can just turn down the cold instead of turning up the hot. The same goes for volumeinstead of making a track louder to hear it better, you might need to turn the other tracks down a bit.

Let's start with the shaker and tambourine tracks. They both seem about twice as loud as they need to be, so let's lower them to half of their current volume.

4.

Click-drag the Volume slider on the Tambourine track to the left, so that you lower it by half the distance to the left.

The new Volume slider position should be about one-third from the left edge of the Volume slider.

5.

Repeat step 4, only this time adjust the volume of the Shaker track.

6.

Move the playhead to the beginning of the 7th measure and listen to the mix with the new shaker and tambourine levels.

Both the shaker and tambourine are now at a more natural level in the song.

7.

Move the playhead back to the beginning and listen to the first half of the song again.

As you listen, try to figure out which tracks are still too loud.

Did you hear anything that stood out as too loud? How about the third Drum Kit track? It seems too loud to me, and it's drowning out the guitars. The nice thing about drums is that they don't have to be loud to be appreciated. (No offense intended if you happen to be a drummer.)

Let's lower the Drum Kit tracks. Since they are all different drum parts, the tracks will need to be different levels. The first (highest) Drum Kit track sounds OK at the default level.

8.

Click-drag the Volume slider on the second Drum Kit track to a little bit below half on the Volume slider.

9.

Click-drag the Volume slider on the third Drum Kit track to the middle position on the slider.

10.

Click-drag the Volume slider on the 4th Drum Kit track to the middle position on the slider.

11.

Listen to the first half of the song to hear the Drum Kit tracks at their new levels in the mix.

Notice the difference in the overall song now that the drums, shaker, and tambourine are lower in the mix.

When you are doing a rough mix, you need to adjust only the levels of the instruments that seem too loud or out of place. The additional tracks, like the Bass and Hollywood Strings, will be adjusted as needed after the tracks are panned.

1.

Locate the Acoustic Guitar 1 track.

2.

Click the first dot to the left of center on the Pan wheel to place the sound of that track just to the left of center.

Now let's pan the second guitar track to just to the right of center.

3.

Locate the Acoustic Guitar 2 track and click the first dot to the right of center on the Pan wheel to place the sound.

If you compare the pan positions of the two guitar tracks to the picture of the band, you'll see that the controls for each track point to the actual instrument.

Using the picture as a guide, let's set the panning controls for the rest of the tracks.

4.

Pan the Tambourine track to the second dot to the right of center.

5.

Pan the Shaker track to the second dot to the left of center.

6.

Pan the Hollywood Strings track to the third dot to the right.

7.

Pan the Electric Bass track to the third dot to the left.

8.

Play the first half of the song from the beginning to hear the rough mix.

So, what did you hear this time? Did it sound like the same old song, or did you hear the different instruments (tracks) performing from different places in the stereo field?

Take a closer look at the guitar tracks for a moment. You're probably wondering why I doubled some of the regions but not all of them. I was going for a live performance feel, where one guitar starts, the other joins in, and they mirror each other (not easy to do live). Then the first guitar drops out to let the second lead, and then they play together again, alternating from time to time. The idea is to give the feeling that this was performed by two real guitar players playing on separate tracks from different locations onstage, instead of sounding like a bunch of Software Instrument loops on tracks in the Timeline.

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9.

Play the entire song from the beginning and listen with your trained ear to the different guitar tracks as well as the other tracks.

Did you notice that the bass seems out of place so far to the left? Some ears are more sensitive to bass than others. However, anytime you pan the bass too far from center, it has a tendency to sound a little strange. Low, bassy sounds feel better if they are closer to the center of the mix, regardless of where they might be on the stage.

10.

Change the pan position for the Electric Bass track to one click to the left of center.

11.

Press Cmd-S to save your rough mix.

1.

Click the Lock button on each of the Drum Kit track headers.

The Lock button turns green to indicate that the track is locked.

2.

Press the Home key and then the spacebar to play the song from the beginning and render the locked tracks.

A Render window appears to show you that the tracks are rendering. When rendering is complete, the window closes automatically.

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