Ultimate GarageBand Beginner's Guide: Pro Sound in Your DAW

foreign professional sounded music we're being guy Colin and today we are kicking off a

brand new series called the ultimate GarageBand beginner's guide this series is going to walk through everything you

need to know from the very first time you open up GarageBand until you have finished recorded mix and mastered your

song and it's now ready to share with the world we're gonna go through GarageBand itself we're going to go

through what gear you might need and then we're actually going to record mix and master a short little song Together

throughout this series it's going to be awesome we're going to cover everything to get you going so that you can create

professional sound of music and GarageBand the key is having kind of a system and a workflow that you

understand and knowing what your tools are and how to use them so in today's video I actually just want to start out

by explaining a little bit of GarageBand giving you an overview of GarageBand and showing you how GarageBand has

everything that a Pro Studio has and how you can access that inside GarageBand so that as you get into this you have have

confidence that you can create Professional Center music and GarageBand before we even jump into GarageBand

together though let's actually just listen to a short snippet of a song I just recently mixed in GarageBand

[Music] instead of pushing it away [Music]

I don't think of it foreign [Music]

[Applause] not too bad right and that's all GarageBand as you saw those GarageBand

drums and GarageBand amps and the base samples GarageBand the processing the eqs those are all Garage Band this is

all being done inside GarageBand the key here is our intentionality with it it's amazing what you have access to inside

GarageBand so don't feel limited by GarageBand as long as you're intentional and you approach it with a professional

process you can create professional sound of music and GarageBand even if you're just starting out and speaking of

starting out the first time you open up GarageBand you're probably going to see something like this now we'll talk about

all these pieces in an upcoming video so for today right now I'm just going to create a track because what I really

want to talk about is showing you all the pieces in here a brief overview and connecting it to what you would see in a

Pro Studio so you can understand that you have everything here that you need to create professional sound of music to

get yourself going to get that song idea out it's amazing what all is in GarageBand and so let's start by talking

about really quickly the two prime processes of putting out music music production the first is the recording

piece that is recording it getting the right tones getting the right performance the second is processing it

that's shaping the sound so it sounds big and clean and clear and professional if you've ever recorded anything you may

have noticed that it isn't as simple as you record drums in your record base and record your guitars and vocals and then

it just sounds great and you're done unfortunately there is that whole other piece of processing and that's really

mixing that's the bulk of mixing there is mastering in that as well but we're going to focus on mixing for today and

you have everything you need for both sides of that in GarageBand you have pieces for the recording and you have

pieces for the mixing and processing so let's talk about recording first so when you first walk into a big Studio

most studios are going to have multiple drum kits because you want to get that right drum sound and recording and

mixing drums is an art in and of itself but built in a garage band right off the bat you have a bunch of different drum

sounds so right now this is the Retro rock drum kit not a bad sounding drum kit but let's say it doesn't work for

your music maybe you want to try the Manchester drum kit totally just change that sound so you

have these pieces to help you get it right at the source it's like having a billion drum kits in your room but it

doesn't stop at drum kits you also have if we create a software instrument here you have organs right so it's going to

default here to an electric piano that's a great sound it could also be a organ here we go this classic rock organ you

actually have like the sliders you can really perfect and tweak the sound imagine walking in and having access to

you know a Steinway grand piano you have all these different pieces that you can just quickly pull up and play around

with different sounds and tones and try to get something that's that Vision in your head out on the paper and that's

what all those different elements in a Pro Studio are about except that you don't have to learn all the miking

techniques and all these like really complex things for these elements now if you want to add acoustic guitar on it

you're going to need to learn how to mic it we're going to cover that kind of stuff in this course in this series if

you will it's basically a course and so don't worry about that we're going to talk about recording things in the real

world as well but just right off the bat think about how many different sounds you have here so you can in addition to

having all these sounds layer them on top of each other and that's a really big piece of the recording process so

you get your drum sound then you can layer on your bass and you can really focus on just getting a great Bass

Performance getting your in time and in tune so it was really locked in with the drums then later on guitars then layer

on vocals and you can focus on one thing at a time and then mix them all together to sound like one cohesive song So now

that I'm bringing a mix in so layering pieces recording it getting all the right sounds that's all recording then

we have the processing the mixing of it and if you imagine with me a big mixing console we have all the little knobs and

all the faders well you have those pieces inside GarageBand as well so for example here

you that fader right the slider at the bottom of mixing console that's this volume fader here so you can bring the

volume up and down right here you also have the pan knob so this is to pan it off

into your left ear and your right ear you have that right here built into GarageBand but beyond that you all those

billion other little knobs that you'd have on a mixing console we have access to that through something called plug-in

so if you go to your smart control window here down here you'll see plugins and if we pop this open here we have

something like EQ so that is one of the key tools for the mixing process it's what a lot of those little knobs are is

little EQ points and we actually can shape those same kind of points right here in GarageBand with a very intuitive

easy to use great sounding EQ built into it it's more or less exactly the same EQ that's built into logic right here on

GarageBand so if you want to add brightness so it's really really bright and shiny sounding you can do that if

you wanted to make it you know have a lot of low end here in the bottom we can add in a lot of low end just imagine the

base and the treble on your car stereo you have access to all that right here so EQ is a huge part of that mixing

processing the second is compression now I will acknowledge that the compressor built into GarageBand leaves something

to be desired but fortunately GarageBand actually lets you add in third-party plug-ins so other companies can make

plugins that you can add into GarageBand and there's some great free ones out there like La La by analog Obsession now

this might look intimidating but this is an emulation of a very expensive piece of analog Hardware you can have it in

Garageband for free and all you really need to learn to use is these two knobs right here to get compression dialed in

on your sources and that's the way the pros use it they're just dial in with two knobs so you have access to tools

like La 2A style compression which is what this is this is free from analog Obsession in GarageBand and then the

last couple pieces that mixers have on our console is to Route out to effects so to send it off to add Reverb or delay

things like that and we can do that right here so for example you'll see right here there's Master Echo and

master Reverb so that's two effects that you can dial in just right here on the track itself but you can also add in a

plug-in so if we go down here we have multiple Reverb sound it's like the Platinum verb here right these are

different Reverb sounds that sound really great they're actually the same as what's in logic they just look a

little bit different here and so you can dial in Reverb you can also dial in delays so a stair delay is a really cool

effect and we have access to all that right here in GarageBand completely free and it's the same as what you'd have in

a Pro Studio and literally in some cases it's the exact same as what they have in logic it just might look a little bit

different but it's the exact same reverbs and delays and eqs and even compression so GarageBand has what you

need you can create professional Sound of Music in GarageBand and that's what this series is going to be all about

don't be intimidated by this video everything that we've talked about here we're going to go more in depth on in

future videos so stick around with me every day this month I'm bringing you a new short video going through little

bite-sized pieces of the recording and mixing process so that you understand everything from the first time you open

GarageBand to you're exporting your final mastered song you have it all right here and I want to help you with

that I want to give you even more I've actually put together the ultimate garage fan guide it's completely free

from the link in description below and it walks through everything that we're covering throughout the series so you

can quickly reference back to it anytime you need and it will actually go more in depth on little pieces here and there as

well so be sure to grab it for free from the link in the description below it's really going to help you out to make

sure that you're starting out on the right foot don't waste time just kind of pedaling around trying to figure it out

this will help you from the first time you open GarageBand until you are done with your song everything you need to

know to get going so grab that guide for free from Link in the description below before we go I want to hear from you do

you have any questions about GarageBand as I'm getting into the series I'm going to try to answer as many as I possibly

can so let me know in the comments below if this video is helpful be sure to like comment subscribe and I'll see you

tomorrow with another video one thing at a time [Music]

[Music]