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Tool Review: GaragebandKristin Caja, Nikki Klein, Charles Reeves, Cat SchnurDraft 1Welcome to your first look at GarageBand! ?As we begin work on the compilation of our Digital Storytelling Projects we must consider carefully which software will be most beneficial to our final product. ??A large portion of the project revolves around its audio component; recording voice and in most cases incorporating background music. ?GarageBand is a program designed to aid in ease of audio compilation whether it is recording voice through your computer’s internal microphone, importing music and other audio files from outside sources, or even creating your own music. ?To begin we must address the fact that GarageBand is a software made solely for Mac computers. ?The program comes pre-programmed on all Apple computers and is available for download on the app store for $4.99 for iPads and iPhones. ?If you are a PC user, never fear. ?There is a Mac lab in the library where you will be able to access this program if you so desire, and we recommend you do. ?Within the software there are many tools for the user to choose from including instruments for composing music such as piano, electric guitar, keyboard, acoustic guitar, and audio recording. ?While these functions are certainly interesting, we’ve found that the feature most prevalent to the Digital Storytelling Project is the ability to record podcasts. ?Podcasts permit the compilation of voice recording, complete with specialized features which perfect the tone of your voice, along with background music, and even visual aspects such as photos and video clips. ?This function allows for quick and professional sounding audio; reducing the time spent on audio while simultaneously improving the quality of sound. ?All files created in GarageBand are saved as aiff files but can be converted to virtually any file format, such mp3, for use in other programs, even to be opened and manipulated on your PC if need be. ?For those who like to kill two birds with one stone, learning to use the podcast function on GarageBand will ease your troubles when attempting to create a podcast for our book review. ?Overall, the podcast and voice sections of the program are user friendly and incredibly relevant to the task at hand.Garageband has many options, but the only two that are necessary for our project are the voice and podcast options. The voice section allows you to record vocals, specialized with recording options optimized for male and female voices. To record the vocals you simply press the record button and speak loud and clear, and when you’re finished just push the stop button (Figure 1). 114300-22860000Figure 2. The basic layout of vocal option shows optimization for both male and female voices. Click the record button in the green circle to start recording, and then the stop button will appear in the red circle to click when you are finished.While this could provide enough to make a basic audio file for the project the podcast version allows for a better quality project. The podcast version has the same specialization of male and female voices, but allows for photograph overlays and background music (Figure 2). Figure 2. See the similar layout of the podcast version, but the addition of “jingles” and photo layers. Note, Record and stop buttons are all located and work the same.Recording voices works the same in this mode, but to add background music or photos you simply select audio or photos and drag your picture, song or sound from Garageband or iTunes libraries, or from your pictures on the side bar to the track of the center of the screen (Figure 3).0-68580000Figure 3. Adding background music and photos is as simple as clicking and dragging the track or photo from the side bar.If you make a mistake don’t worry, deleting tracks is as simple a clicking the track and pressing delete. This will also be helpful for the book review project by preparing a way to make quality podcast for our books. This simple way to record vocals and add music, or even photographs, means that you can make your whole project in one spot, but there are no ways to add transitions for pictures so it isn’t recommended to use it for the whole project. However, this is still a great way to consolidate the audio aspects of the project.It’s also pretty easy to find the help window on GarageBand, when GarageBand is open simply go up to the tool bar and click on the “help” option. From there a set of options will appear and the first one will be “GarageBand help”, after clicking on that the help window will open. The help window is neatly organized and easy to navigate. It has two tabs at the top of the window, the first is “get started” and the second is “browse help”. It automatically opens in the “get started” window which is helpful if you’ve never used the GarageBand app before. This takes you through the seven major components you are likely to use on GarageBand. Such as recording an instrument, recording a voice, or uploading a ring tone. Each section is broken down into several easy steps and most of the sections have a short tutorial video at the start if you would prefer to see how to record a voice instead of reading how. If you have a more specific question or are having a specific problem you can click on the “browse help” window. After clicking on that button several options come up on the left side of the screen such as “create a podcast”. If you click on one of these options several more detailed options come down from it. If you click on one of those options the right side of the screen fills up with instructions on how to do whatever it is you are asking to do. For example if you click on the “Create a podcast” then “create an audio podcast” then “add and edit marker regions” you will get a help screen that gives you step by step written instructions as well as screenshots to help you add or edit a marker region. If you are having a more specific problem there is also a GarageBand website that has more detailed questions, specifically more tech related questions, such as file format, and a forum where people are asking and answering questions.In conclusion, GarageBand is a great tool to create the audio part of digital stories. ?It's resources, such as voice recording and mixing of music and voice recordings, allow all audio components of the digital story telling project to come together using a single program. GarageBand is automatically installed on Mac computers, and can be downloaded as an app on an iPad or iPhone are some of the highlights of the program. However since it is only accessible to Apple products and the visual aspects are not as impressive as the audio recording it isn’t perfect. Overall, GarageBand’s podcast and vocal sections can be extremely helpful for the story telling project. ................
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