Garageband – iPhone App of the Week
This is a regular feature of the blog looking at various Apps available. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive.
This week’s App is Garageband.
GarageBand turns your iPad, iPhone and iPod touch into a collection of Touch Instruments and a full-featured recording studio — so you can make music anywhere you go. Use Multi-Touch gestures to play pianos, organs, guitars, drums, and basses. They sound and play like their counterparts, but let you do things you could never do on a real instrument. Enjoy a full range of Smart Instruments that make you sound like a pro — even if you’ve never played a note before. Plug an electric guitar into your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch and play through classic amps and stompbox effects. Use the built-in microphone or a guitar to record, or capture any performance. Then mix up to eight tracks to create a song you can share.
£2.99
I have already reviewed Garageband for the iPad and was very impressed.
As with a lot of Apple apps this one looks gorgeous, great graphics and a nice interface. Of course if you have used Garageband on the Mac then there is an element of familiarity that will ensure using the App is easier than learning another one completely new. As a podcasting app, I don’t think Garageband is quite there, however it is one of the cheapest multi-track recording apps in the App Store, so you can forgive it, its foibles.
Apple have gone and made the app universal so it will now also be able to be installed on the iPhone or the iPod touch. So if you have the iPad version you can get the iPhone version for free.
Like the iPad version Apple have done a really nice job in designing an easy to use interface.
There are lots of instruments to choose from.
I was particularly impressed with the Smart Keyboard that allowed me to create some quite nice tunes without too much effort (or musical ability).
One enhancement since I last reviewed Garageband is now been able to send your project to your Mac.
Send a project to your Mac and open it in GarageBand to continue refining your song
When I first looked at the iPad version this wasn’t possible.
Again for me, as with the iPad version, the key feature I will be looking at is the Audio Recorder for recording podcasts and short audio recordings.
Recordings made on the iPhone using other apps have been of quite good quality, thinking Audioboo here.
It is a huge download in excess of 500MB so if you have an 8GB or 16GB model you may find you don’t have the space for it!