Composed
I launched Garageband for the first time in a few years. That’s how it seems to me, anyway. I played around with the application at some point in the past but it never became the focus of a personal music hobby. Recently, I was asked by a client to either find or provide some background music for an animated presentation. I find it very difficult to find free music loops online (most of them are now either shareware or “linkware”, and this client is usually not willing to accept those kind of terms) so I decided to give Garageband another try.
The most immediately useful things for me are the music loops. The default install didn’t include very many, but the application immediately asked me if I wanted to “complete” the application installation by downloading additional content from Apple. This turned out to be about a gigabyte worth of additional free music loops. This was very helpful.
The other thing that really impressed me is the music editor. The application will generate a “sheet music” view of the current track (a pre-packaged loop or a recorded software instrument) that can be very easily manipulated. As a former musician (does anyone ever stop being a musician?) I definitely favor this view. The controls are intuitive (arrow keys to raise or lower a note or move it to a different measure) and very responsive. Track editing was similarly easy to figure out. In a matter of a few hours I was able to put together a music track that should serve the needs of my current project. The experience has also rekindled my interest in computer-aided musical composition. I might have to think about this after my portfolio website is completed.