Lesson 2:
Working With Real Instruments
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Tutorial
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If you sing or play a musical instrument, you can connect a microphone or an electric musical instrument to your computer and record your performances in a Real Instrument track. Each recording appears as a region in the track. You can add effects to a Real Instrument track, and edit Real Instrument regions in the track editor.
What You'll Need
To work with Real Instruments, you ll need to have each of the following items on hand:
" Enough free hard disk space to record to (stereo CD-quality recording requires about 10 MB of disk space per minute of recording)
" A microphone to record voices or acoustic musical instruments, or an electric musical instrument you want to record
" Audio cables to connect the microphone or instrument to your computer
" Optionally, an audio interface to connect the microphone or instrument to your computer
Before You Begin
To make it easier to follow the lesson as you work, print the lesson before you start.
In many of the tasks shown in this lesson you need to choose menu commands. In the lessons,
and in the GarageBand Help, menu commands appear like this:
Choose Edit > Join Selected.
The first term after Choose is the name of the menu in the GarageBand menu bar. The term (or terms) following the angle bracket are the items you choose from that menu.
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Connecting Musical Instruments to Your Computer
Some microphones can be connected to your computer using the audio in port, if your computer has one. You can also connect microphones and instruments using an audio interface.
Some audio interfaces let you connect multiple microphones or instruments to your computer and record them on different channels. Audio interfaces are available in a variety of formats,
including USB, FireWire, PC card, and PCI formats. If you plan to use an audio interface, be sure your computer supports the format of the interface.
You may also want to connect speakers or monitors to your computer to hear your songs play back with greater audio quality than possible from your computer s speaker. A variety of monitors and speakers are available, including speakers you can connect directly to your computer's audio out port, through a USB port, or using an audio interface.
If you connect an audio interface to your computer, you set the audio interface as the audio input device for GarageBand. Before setting the audio input device, be sure to install any necessary driver software for the audio interface.
To set an audio interface as the audio input device:
1 Choose GarageBand > Preferences, then click the Audio/MIDI Interfaces tab.
2 In the Audio/MIDI Interfaces pane, choose the audio interface from the Audio Input pop-up
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