GarageBand

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GarageBand
Image:Garageband 2.jpg GarageBand 2
Maintainer:	Apple Computer
Latest release:	2.0.2 / July 25, 2005
OS:	Mac OS X
Genre:	Digital music creator
License:	Proprietary
Website:	www.apple.com/garageband/

This article is about the software application. For information about other music-related topics, see Garage band.

Image:GarageBand.png

GarageBand is a software application that allows users to create a piece of music. It is developed by Apple Computer for their Macintosh computers.

The application is not aimed at professional musicians, but is intended to help amateurs produce music easily. The application comes with 1,000 pre-recorded sampled loops, and 50 sampled or synthesised instruments which can be played using a MIDI keyboard connected to the computer, or using an on-screen keyboard. Additional loops and instruments are available in the four GarageBand Jam Packs, separate products offered by Apple Computer; each expansion pack costs $99 USD and adds more than two thousand loops and dozens of virtual instruments.

GarageBand can only be purchased as part of iLife, a suite of applications intended to simplify the creation and organisation of users' digital content. In addition to GarageBand, iLife includes iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iTunes.

The application was announced during Steve Jobs's keynote speech at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco on 6 January, 2004; musician John Mayer assisted with its demonstration.

Version 2 was announced at the (2005) Macworld Conference & Expo on January 11, 2005. Major new features included the abilities to view and edit music in Musical Notation form, to record up to 8 tracks at once, and also to fix timing and Pitch of recordings. It shipped, as announced, around 22 January, 2005.

GarageBand was originally developed by Emagic, developers of the professional musical program Logic Audio, which was acquired by Apple in July 2002.

Limitations

While GarageBand can be used to produce professional-quality recordings, the software has limitations that in practice make this difficult. Significantly, tempo and key signature cannot be changed within a song. Automation of effects parameters is also absent, as is a MIDI out capability.

Apple's Logic applications form the professional counterpart to GarageBand.