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Here in North America the NHL playoffs are now in full swing and perhaps you're inspired to play some rocking organ! With GB on the iPad we get some great keyboard sounds with nifty screen controls! N
Here in North America the NHL playoffs are now in full swing and perhaps you’re inspired to play some rocking organ! With GarageBand for iPad we get some great keyboard sounds with nifty screen controls! Not only can we use these keys in our songs that we’re recording, but as I explained in a recent tutorial, live use is also a possibility!
GarageBand is a great way to quickly create music on your iPhone or iPad. We show how to get started with one of Apple's best software offerings. Use the track controls in GarageBand for iPhone. Each Touch Instrument has a set of track controls that lets you adjust its volume level, pan (stereo) position, and effect levels. You can also solo the instrument to hear it by itself, quantize or transpose the recordings on the instrument’s track, and change the master effects.
Setup and Equipment Needed
There are a few things we need.
- Controller Keyboard with power supply - There are many to choose from and I use an Axiom Pro 61. You will definitely need the power supply as the iPad does not provide power through it’s dock port. If you want to use the Korg Nano series, you will need a USB hub with power supply.
- Camera Connection Kit - Our keyboard controller communicates with GB through this device.
Axiom Pro 61
Apple's Camera Connection Kit
Controls
Each instrument has it’s own layout (organ with drawbars, synths with filter controls) but also there are some functions just above the keyboard and these will vary with the instrument selected. For example, “Sustain” will be on piano but not organ, organ will have the “Rotary” switch for the Leslie, all depending on the instrument.
Although we’re going to be using a keyboard controller, if you want to use the onscreen keyboard, you get different controls for how your screen keyboard responds. On the far left is an “Octave” plus and minus. A middle button for “Glissando”, “Scroll”, “Pitch” which vary again depending on the instrument selected and the right side has a “Scale”, “Arpeggiator” and “Keyboard Layout”.
“Glissando” lets you slide across the keys like a real keyboard would. Think of the piano player using the back of his hand and sliding up or down the keys.
“Scroll” allows you to play a note and while holding it, slide the keyboard up or down. Useful if you need to get into different octaves of the on screen keyboard quickly.
“Pitch” is a like a pitch bend wheel but lets you pitch up or down between notes simply by sliding your finger. Great for the vintage synths!
“Scale” is great for solos if you want to try different sounding scales in a piece of music. Once you pick the scale you want to use, the keyboard becomes more like a single row marimba minus the #/b keys. If you use a kb controller, you will still have all the notes available but you can learn what notes are used by playing them on the iPad and matching them on your keyboard. You’ll soon be playing “Klezmer” with ease!
“Arpeggiator” is your freedom to play multiple notes with one chord held down. You can choose note order, rate, and octave range. Great for dance tunes or your version of “Teenage Wasteland”! Unfortunately, the arpeggiator does not work with a KB Controller.
“Keyboard Layout/Velocity/Key Controls” - You can choose how you would like the onscreen keyboard to be set up with choices for one or two keyboards and octave range.
“Velocity” on and off is simple enough but you also can control the velocity range depending on the instrument (no velocity for organ since there is none!) left to the middle of the screen.
“Key Controls” simply turns on and off the view of the middle button for “Glissando”, etc.
There is also a hidden feature that is very cool and similar to an aftertouch on a KB controller. Load in the “Vintage Lead” preset under “Synth Lead” and strike a note. Now move your finger up and down that note... instant filter sweep!
Keyboard Controller
Plug your keyboard into your Camera Connection Kit and make sure it’s secure as I find it can pop out easily. If it does, you may need to restart your iPad to get control again. Open up GB and navigate to the “Keyboard” instrument. Once this opens you can then select from pianos,organs, synths, etc. by tapping on the instrument in the middle of the screen. You can even store your own presets.
Again, think of the iPad screen as the controls for the organs drawbars or synths filters. Unfortunately GB won’t record this data during recording. Pitch bend and Mod wheels will respond on your controller as will velocity and after touch. Also, there are no ways to assign a KB controller’s sliders or knobs to say, organ drawbars or synth knobs, although I did find my “master” slider with MIDI CC#7 controlled instrument volume.
Using “Smart Instruments”
One feature I wish GB would allow is the use of “autoplay” but controlled via the KB controller. But there are some interesting ideas you can do by combining the “autoplay” feature and your keyboard. For example, select “Smart Keyboard” and choose one of the 4 “autoplay” modes. You then will see 3 bars with a chord on the top bar. The bar with the chord plays both left and right hand accompaniments, the middle bar is right hand only and the bottom is left hand bass. If you hit the top bar, you could solo on the KB controller. The middle bar could allow you to try bass combinations such as G-G/F-G/E or perhaps a piano bass line with a distinctive melody. Be careful though as the sustain is used most likely and can mush up your sound in the bass line. Using the bottom bar would allow you again more right hand solos or your own accompaniment.
If you want any electric or acoustic bass instruments, you will need to use “Smart Bass”. Using the acoustic bass gives a feature that is hard to emulate on the KB controller unless you get good with the pitch bend wheel... sliding your finger along a fretless neck. Simply select Acoustic Bass, switch the “Chords” to “Notes” and tap on the screen. It adds some realism to the bass line and with some practice, can give some convincing results. Further editing can be done on GB on your Mac.
“Smart Guitar” is very similar to the smart keyboard and bass features with one additional feature. If you use your KB Controller, you can strike chords on your keys!Now you can use the “autoplay” feature for arpeggiated chords and “strum” chords on your keyboard. Great too for having ostinato picking patterns with multiple chord changes.
Recording Tips
First and foremost... PRACTICE! Yes... I said that again as I did in the last tutorial. GB on the iPad does not allow editing like GB on a Mac . Not even MIDI editing for wrong notes. Maybe in version 2... BUT... you can slow down the tempo, unlike the Guitar/Audio recording section, and speed it up after. If needed later, you can open up the song on your Mac and edit it there. You also can save time by recording repetitive parts and then looping them. Simply record your part, double tap on the track region and select “Loop”.
If your timing is not that great or you need to tighten up a section, “Quantization” will help. Simply tap on the top right “Mixer” in the Track view and select your quantization value. Use the fastest value you played. For example, if a lead synth line played as fast as 16th notes, use the 1/16 Note value. Quantization will also affect all of the tracks regions in a section! But... you can have different quantization on each section if a part gets moved from one section to another. Confused? Yeah... me too at first. If you quantize a part in Section A to 1/8 notes but then move it to Section B that is quantized to 1/16 notes, the new part will show “Multiple”. This is something I seriously hope Apple fixes as it’s frustrating if you need multiple quantizations within a section.
Also, don’t be afraid to record a part and try different instruments as your song may take on a whole new flavor choosing a clav instead of a piano for example. Try duplicating the track with a similar synth but with a different filter cutoff and panned hard left and right. Or use two totally different synths. Bass lines can get really fat with this idea! Slow your song down and play in your own idea of an arpeggiated pattern... speed up and loop!
Stay tuned for more GarageBand for iPad tips and tutorials. Till next time...don’t drive your neighbors nuts with the Minimoog playing Axel F or Tom Sawyer synth leads.
The quantizer function is an incredibly useful feature in Garageband, and I use it on pretty much every track.
In this tutorial today, I’m going to show you how to use the Quantizer function to its best capability, not only for MIDI music but also for actual real-time recordings.
Explained simply, Quantizing is the method by which the sound is processed so it falls more in-line with the beat and the overall rhythm of the track.
In other words, it allows us to alter the notes after the fact, to make the music more “on-time.”
To further illustrate what I’m talking about here, check out the two images that I’ve created below.
In the first one, we can see that the MIDI notes fall slightly off the grid, which means they’re a bit off-time.
In the following image, we can see that the MIDI notes have been pulled exactly on to the grid. That, essentially, is what we’re doing when we quantize music.
When I first started using this software, I used to go through each MIDI note, select it, and manually push it on to the grid line, until I discovered that with a few clicks of the Trackpad, you can just do it automatically without wasting so much time.
Without further ado, let’s get right into it.
How To Use The Quantizer Function
The Quantizer function is in the bottom of the Garageband interface within the section of the DAW that’s called the “Smart Controls.” It’s the section pointed out in the image shown below:
Let’s say that you’ve created a track, whether it’s MIDI or a traditional recording.
If you want to bring up the Smart Controls, including the part where the Quantizer function is visible, you can just double-click on the MIDI/Audio region and it’ll bring up the Smart Controls in the bottom of the screen.
You can also hit the ‘B’ part of your keyboard, or click on the dial in the top-left-hand corner of the DAW.
![How to quantize garageband iphone How to quantize garageband iphone](https://media.idownloadblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Edit-Note-GarageBand-iPhone.jpg)
Once you’ve brought up the Quantizer, you can see the parameters, which there are two, the type of note and how strong you want the quantizer to function.
It’s really not too complicated.
While the options are based on traditional musical notation, for instance, 1/16th notes, 1/4 notes, and 1/8th notes, etc, you don’t have to have an understanding of music theory or standard notation to use the function.
When Quantizing Drum Tracks, I pretty much always have it set to 1/16 notes, and then I slide the meter all the way to 100 to pull the notes exactly on the grid.
Essentially, that’s what the Quantizer does. It pushes the notes back or forward until they snap exactly to the grid.
The intuitive part of the Piano Roll is the fact that the grid-lines are split up so it matches, mathematically, the traditional time measurements of standard notation.
Explained in another way, if you look at how many grid-lines there are between the 1 and 2 in the Piano roll, you’ll notice there are 16 grid lines.
If you set the Quantizer function to 1/16 notes, that means it’s going to snap each note to the closest grid line exactly, which is much better if you have a ton of different notes in each bar.
On the other hand, if you only play one note per measure, the 1/16 function wouldn’t be as useful. Let’s say, hypothetically, there is one note per measure, and it’s right near the beginning of the bar.
In that case, it would be best to use the 1/4 note function. However, with all of that said, I find that the 1/16 note option is pretty much always the setting you want to have it at, but I’m sure this depends on for what instrument you’re using it for.
Using the example of 1/1, if you select this option, the Quantizer Function is going to snap each note so it falls exactly on the Grid Line for each new beat, (1, 2, 3, 4,) and not the grid-lines that fall between them. This looks like the image shown below.
If you use the 1/2 (Half-Note) function, it’ll snap each note to the Grid-Line on every beat and the beat between each beat. Check out the picture below:.
Select the Quarter note function, 1/4, and it’ll bring the notes to every quarter grid-line.
Select the 1/8 note function, and it snaps the notes to one of 8 of the closest grid-lines.
I hope you’re able to get the picture from here. ***Keep in mind, each of these images is the same melody, just quantized differently.
It’s really just as simple as that. The Quantizer function isn’t very sophisticated, but it is extremely useful.
Using the Quantizer With Actual Recordings (Not MIDI)
This function is just as useful.
In fact, it’s of incredible value. If you’ve recorded a performance and a note is just slightly off-time, you can go into Garageband’s Smart Controls and push the note over just a tiny bit to make it perfect. It’s pretty amazing.
Click on your Audio Region, the Blue Region, and then hit the Region button.
First things first, you want to check the box that says, “Enable Flex.” This allows us to actually make changes.
Down in the Smart Controls, we can see the Quantizer function, and we’ll set it, again, to 1/16 notes.
Once you’ve done this, you’ll notice that Garageband will drop a bunch of different lines in the Smart Controls between the soundwaves that represent your recording.
From here, you can simply use your Trackpad and the cursor to manually move notes around.
Match up the beginning of the soundwave with the grid-line, as what’s seen below, and voila, you’ve got a piece of music that is more on time.
How To Quantize Garageband Ipad 1
Drawbacks Of Quantization
An important thing to note is that the Quantizer function, in the eyes of some musicians/engineers, can have the unintended consequence of eliminating the “soul” of the music.
In other words, human performances of music will regularly have mistakes and imperfections, which is kind of what makes the music more human and impactful.
If every note is constantly on key and every note is exactly on time, the effect of this is that it doesn’t have the same amount of humanity.
Whether or not you agree with this, I don’t know, but it’s something to think about.
Using the example of Punk Rock or even Jazz Improvisation, quantizing everything is likely going to make the music seem way less cool to fans of these genres.
With hip-hop and modern rock, and regular pop/dance music, this is less the case, as listeners of this music typically care a lot less about the production methods.
For other editing features, including pitch correction, check out my article on auto-tune and pitch-correction, as well as my post on editing tips.
In these articles, I run through how to use Garageband’s pitch correction features, and in the editing article, I explain some of the most useful commands and editing functions Garageband has to offer.
If you need a video tutorial, I have one at the link shown below.
I run through the exact same principles laid out in this article, but you can hear how things sound after using the quantizing function.
YouTube Video Tutorial
Conclusion
How To Quantize Garageband Ipad Pro
I hope this short article was helpful to you. Do me a solid and share this on social media with your producer friends.