Coursera Introduction to music production Create a Project in garageband

1. Most Common DAW Software
Record audio in DAW using
GarageBandcoursera.org
Before Recording Remember
1 Create the necessary track and name it. This track
will be mono or stereo depending on the input.
2 Set your levels, turn down gain, plug in instrument,
turn on phantom power if you use microphone, bring
down level of active speakers.
3 Enable the track for recording. If you monitor
recording there is a chance of getting feedback from a
microphone if you use so be very careful.
4 Turn on click and count off so the player can be in
time
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L E S S O N 2 A S S I G N M E N T
Hi fellow reader
I am John Soulakellis from
Greece Athens. This
presentation is for the course
of Introduction to Music
Production from coursera.org
I will cover the topic of
record audio in DAW using
GarageBand
Thank you,
for having the time to read my
assignment
Logic Pro
Ableton Live

2. 2
RECORD AUDIO IN DAW USING GARAGEBAND WEEK 2 ASSIGNMENT
Create the Project
Open GarageBand Application and choose what
project you want to create. In this example I
will record an acoustic guitar, so I select New
Project > Acoustic Instrument > Choose
Here we name our project Test and save it
in a folder named New Songs Inside
GarageBand folder.We can also set tempo
Key and Signature but if we don’t, we can
change them later.
Projects’ Save Location
)
The 1st
screen that opens is
this. Before making any
recording we have to
tweak some settings to
achieve the desired result.

3. 3
RECORD AUDIO IN DAW USING GARAGEBAND WEEK 2 ASSIGNMENT
Settings
Open Preferences Window
From the taskbar we select GarageBand
and then Preferences or we press the
shortcut key combination if we know it.
Set Bit Depth
In the Advanced tab we change the Audio
Resolution to Good, Better or Best.
In details we can choose
Good : 16 bit record – 16 bit export
Better : 24 bit record – 16 bit export
Best : 24 bit record – 24 bit export
In this example i will choose the better
option because i know from the beginning
that i want to export my recording to a CD ( 16 bit Depth is the standard CD quality) and
also having the recording in the highest possible quality.
Select Input Source
To set the input source for a
microphone: In the Track Info pane,
we choose built-in microphone mono
or an external microphone in a USB
port or audio port if we have
connected.
We can also set the Recording Level
from the slider. The default 83% is a good option if we want to be sure that we will not
have any distortion during the recording process. Also if we want to listen the recording
as we play we set Monitor to On but this option may introduce feedback.

4. 4
RECORD AUDIO IN DAW USING GARAGEBAND WEEK 2 ASSIGNMENT
Check the Levels
We start play the instrument to check if
the levels are OK. If they are too low
we bring up the Recording Level slider
a little more. We check again if we hit
red values we bring it down a little. As
soon as we have a good input signal we
are ok continue.
We go to Taskbar > Control and we enable Metronome so the player can be in time during
the recording, and Count-In which will count 4 beats before the actual recording happens
so the player can be prepared. After all these steps we are ready to hit the record button.
Count-In & Metronome

5. 5
RECORD AUDIO IN DAW USING GARAGEBAND WEEK 2 ASSIGNMENT
Recording
During Recording
As we recording we can check current bar position, level signals and if we
complete our recording session we press the stop button.
If we want to fine speculate the signal we
enable the Editor pane by double click on
the recorded sample or by going Taskbar >
Control > GarageBand > Show Editor
Enable Editor Pane

6. 6
RECORD AUDIO IN DAW USING GARAGEBAND WEEK 2 ASSIGNMENT
Enable Cycle Function
If we want to record in a loop so we can have
multiple takes of the same session we can toggle
Cycle region on which is next to the metronome
button and we set the cycle region to the number of
measures we want to cycle. I selected 4 in the yellow
bar above the recorded sample.
Record Multiple takes
As soon as we start the recording again, we can record multiple takes over and over
again without the need of stopping the session and creating new track for every new take.
When we are
satisfied with our
multiple takes we
stop the recording
session as usual.

7. 7
RECORD AUDIO IN DAW USING GARAGEBAND WEEK 2 ASSIGNMENT
After this we can see in yellow little bubble the current selected take and in parenthesis
how many takes we have taken. According the picture below we have 4 takes with the
1st
selected.
Change selected Take
We can change the selected take by
pressing the yellow bubble at the starting
point of our recorded sample. Also we
can delete unused or selected takes as
shown in the picture.
Saving our Project
As soon as we are satisfied with the
result we must save our progress. To do
this we go Taskbar > GarageBand > File
> Save or we hit the shortcut key
combination if we know it. After this we
can continue editing our samples
Speculate Project Location
After we saved our project, if we go to
the save location we see that our
project has increased in size but there
is no other file of our recorded sample
which has four takes. The .band file
actually is a folder which has all the
settings and recorded samples inside.
This is done automatically from garage
band so we don’t accidentally save a
project inside another project so the
operating system thinks and treat it like
it is a single file.

8. 8
RECORD AUDIO IN DAW USING GARAGEBAND WEEK 2 ASSIGNMENT
Export a take to MP3
If we want to export a take (or all the song if we
have multiple tracks) to an MP3 file, we go
Taskbar > GarageBand > Share > Export Song
to Disk
Export Quality
We select Compress with MP3 Encoder
and Higher Quality which will create an
MP3 file at 192kbps quality. If we want
more quality we change to AAC Encoder
and select Highest Quality at 256kbps.
This will be .aac file format and in some
machines may not be compatible so for
better compatibility we choose .mp3
If we want to make an uncompressed file
that will be in CD quality we uncheck the
Compress button and hit Export. In this
example i choosed MP3 with Higher
Quality settings.
Project Location
After the export we can see
that we have a second file in
mp3 format.
We can mail it as attachment
copy it open in and edit it in
another DAW etc.

9. Inside .band file
I know this step wasn’t necessary but i wanted to show you inside the .band file so
you can imagine how difficult will have been to have a lot of projects running and a
lot of recordings.
Hope you like my presentation and remember before the recording to do the necessary
steps so you can have a wonderful free of troubles recording session.
Thank you for your
time!
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