The Killer App of the decade?
- Garageband Jam Pack 4 Symphony Orchestra Music
- Garageband Jam Pack 4 Symphony Orchestra Free
- Garageband Jam Pack 4 Symphony Orchestra 1
- 4 Tips for Using Jam Pack 4: Symphony Orchestra Instruments Orchestra Harp In addition to the bowed strings, Symphony Orchestra includes a concert harp. The characteristic sound of the harp, produced by plucking the strings, is frequently used in Romantic music.
- GarageBand Jam Pack: Symphony Orchestra, Virtual Intrument Bundle from Apple in the GarageBand series. Product presentation.
By Tweak, revised for GarageBand 3
Alas, when we buy a computer, we are used to getting simple little applications like stripped down wave players, picture grabbers, and calculators. Windows XP upped the ante last time by offering a rather full-fledged Windows Media Player. Oh boy, we can listen to MP3s without forking over for some other program. The Apple came out with iTunes and they really blew the WMP away, with legal downloadable music. Now they have stuck the knife in and twisted it with GarageBand. Sure, passive entertainment like listening to music is important on a computer, but active entertainment is much more vital. Up till now, freebie active entertainment on a computer has been playing games, writing letters and books, drawing pictures, online chat and maybe making a photo album. Apple has upped the ante. You can now create your own music, out of the box, without buying another piece of software. This changes things, and is this sense the inclusion of GarageBand is a revolutionary event.
Apple has released a v1.0.1 update for the GarageBand Jam Pack 4: Symphony Orchestra. Changes: This update addresses isolated issues with the sound quality of some Software Instruments when used with GarageBand 2, Logic Pro 7, or Logic Express 7. Within the Apple Folder, there are three folders: 'Apple Loops for GarageBand,' 'iLife Sound Effects,' and 'Jam Pack 4 - Symphony Orchestra,' which I recently purchased. So, for example, just to get to that Symphony Orchestra folder, the path would be /Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/Jam Pack 4 - Symphony Orchestra.
You can't buy Garage Band by itself. it is part of the iLife '06 bundle that comes free on new Macs and under a hundred bucks for those who are already registered Apple users. This is a no-brainer if you own a Mac. It is almost impossible for me to think of a reason not to get it, aside from poverty. Even then, all the more reason to get it as the results can rival those made on Logic and Digital Performer. To be sure, all the bells and whistles are not here in Garage Band, but the important ones are here.
What GarageBand is Not. Its not a dorky little freebie application that you will use once then put aside. Sure it looks simple and it is simple to use. But the results are outstanding and are right up there with what you expect, audio wise, with a full-fledged sequencer. It also doesn't sound as bad as most garage bands I played in.
What GarageBand is:
- It's a Sequencer that applies full MIDI editing for software instruments
- You can construct songs with Apple Loops, Software Instruments, or Audio tracks
- An Audio recorder with as many tracks as you want
- An effects generator with plenty of onboard plugins and the ability to use 3rd party Audio Unit plugins
- An Audio renderer that pipes your song files right into iTunes (where you can burn them to CD)
- A soft synth engine with several tone generating models which is also capable of using 3rd party softsynths and samplers just like the big boys.
- Its easy to use and it sounds excellent. Repeat that one, OK.
GarageBand supports drag and drop importing of audio files/loops from any directory on your Mac. You can also record and overdub quickly, and monitor through effects processors if you want. With an modern audio interface, there is very little latency, as you would expect. The supplied audio instruments come from a variety of sources. Peeking in the GarageBand library reveals Logic EXS instruments and samples at the core of many of them. Other instruments are based on different tone 'generators' (synthesizers) such as modeled analog and digital (FM) synthesis, electric piano, clav, and tonewheel organ models. Very Cool: You can even program your own sounds from these models and save them as presets. Don't like the supplied analog synth patches? Well, dude, roll your own. I imagine soon the web will be flooded with GarageBand presets to exploit every nuance of these generators. I have not figured out how to add EXS instruments to GarageBand, except through Kontakt, which will import them in its engine. GarageBand can use the Kontakt, Battery, Atmosphere, Reaktor, FM7 engines and I think any softsynth that adheres to the Core Audio (Audio Unit) standard. This was quite a pleasant surprise.
Built-in effects
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The supplied instruments range from OK to excellent. Some of them have that GM-like ring to them, which is not surprising, but others sounds fantastic. The Grand Piano is very nice and the EPs and Clavs are phenomenal, and sound like there may be an EVP88 and EVD6 hidden in the background. The loops sound really good too. There are the now obligatory dance and trance loops and various others. While you get enough to get started, there's not nearly enough for serious loop composition. You can import acid loops. However to get the most mileage out of acid loops you may want to first convert them into Apple Loops. That way, they can be entered into GarageBand's easy to use database making them a snap to find.
Integration with Logic Pro
GarageBand 3 the latest version as of this writing, works great with Logic. If you have Logic 7.2, the conversion is fantastic. With earlier versions of Logic you might get an alert that some of the newer GB plugins are missing. Its quite nice to start a song in the easy GB interface then as the song gets more complex, load it into Logic where you have your advanced tools. I have used GarageBand 3 with many different 3rd party audio unit soft synths and they all work and convert to Logic without a hitch, including the giant libraries like the East West Symphonic Choir, Kontakt 2, RA, and many more. Even the presets you save on 3rd party synths show up in Logic's directories. Nice. All the Jampacks show up in Logic of course, so anything you create and save in GB is also available in Logic, whether it be a song, plugin setting, preset for a virtual instrument, or a directory of audio loops.
New features in GarageBand 3
The big thing is the ability to make Podcasts, both audio and video, using the iLife '06 package. New sound library that podcast makers will love is included. Its a simple matter to import your movie files from iMovie or QuickTimePro. Adding audio was never easier. Naturally, you can use all of GB's virtual synths and effects to add spice to your composition. It's so easy that those using Final Cut Pro and Logic might have to think twice on whether they might get the job done more efficiently with GB and iMovie. Its a wonderful way to start as a newbie and a great option for a professional doing a short project.
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Problems with the Band
As of version 3, there are few issues that I can find. Of course, loading huge software instruments like Atmosphere's Hollywood Studio Hybrid Strings (245 mb) will take several seconds to load, same for big Kontakt instruments. Once they are loaded they do fine. In the first version of GB, I did manage to invoke the 'spinning wheel of death' a few times with GB, carrying out some intensive operations. So I was left wondering if there are some leaks in what must be a vast underground series of audio pipes under the application. The leaks appear to be fixed. GB3 is strong and stable. Waves plugins initialized aggravatingly slow in GB1. I am happy to report you only have to endure this once in GB3, the plugins are cached to allow for speedy initialization.
There are some things you just can't do with GB. You can't record and play external MIDI instruments; this is a software MIDI environment only (that does not require a MIDI interface if you don't want to play notes in with a keyboard). However as of GB3 you also can now use multiple outs on your audio interface. You can move your audio loops to different drives to free up space on the system drive.
The Fun Factor
There is no doubt in my mind that is more fun to record in real time with GB than any other sequencer I have used. Being able to monitor effects while recording is nice. And there are killer effects. Many of them have a familiar ring to them, and I suspect at least some of them are Logic's plugin technology in the background. And there are some that Logic does not have, like some great guitar amp models that are 1st class all the way. Plug in the guitar and you can wail, with no add-on boxes or V-Amps. My wish is that there are more of these models.
Naturally, for those who want to expand their sound collection the easy way there is the GarageBand JamPack which includes more than 2,000 additional Apple Loops, over 100 new Software Instruments, more than 100 additional effects presets and 15 guitar amp settings. Now we are talkin' serious. I now have all 5 Jampacks. They are all great, and I advise getting them all if you can afford to. This is my personal favorite.
Apple GarageBand Jam Pack 4 Symphony Orchestra
With a symphony orchestra in tow, you just may have to spring for bigger quarters. But if you’re planning to conduct your own orchestra, you’ll want better acoustics anyway. Using Jam Pack 4: Symphony Orchestra and GarageBand (or Logic Express 7, Logic Pro 7), there are virtually no limits to the types of sophisticated music you can create. Taking advantage of the prerecorded Apple Loops (more than 2,000 in Jam Pack 4), you can compose everything from classical music to movie soundtracks. Or you may want to lend some symphonic power to your pop, rock or hip-hop arrangements.
Concluding
I really like GarageBand. Anything that makes the job of recording music in real time more fun and easier has my vote, and this statement is aimed at pros as well as newbies. You don't have to enable tracks, set outputs, set inputs before your record, you just hit cmd/option.N to make a new track then press R. Things have gotten too complex in the sequencer world, even for those who know what they are doing. It is refreshing to have an application that simply does it and is built as elegantly as GarageBand. And the price! Who in their right mind can complain. It's the music making deal of the decade for those who already run OS X on Macs.
Links
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Other Articles on Sequencers by Tweak
Jam Pack 4: Symphony Orchestra ****
APPLE LOOPS
GarageBand may not be considered a serious piece of recording software by some, but in reality it does most of what the majority of us actually need from a sequencer, and Apple Loops, far from being gimmicks, have lots of applications in songwriting and even in the creation of original music. Building whole songs from 'cut and paste' elements may seem a bit of a cop-out, but many pieces of TV music are already made that way and, after hearing this library for myself, I can understand why this is possible — the quality is seriously impressive.
Once the installation has been carried out from the two DVDs, containing around 10GB of material, you'll find that you have over 2000 orchestral loop elements that can be used in GarageBand 2, Logic Pro 7, or Logic Express. There are also over 30 sample-based orchestral instruments, which Logic users can load into EXS24 or EXS24P (though some of the clever mod-wheel/pitch-bend tricks may not come over with the samples). The loops are mainly solo instrument phrases covering a number of classical and film styles, and all the ones I auditioned sounded smooth and lush, with exactly the right character and an appropriate amount of added ambience — I can envisage many of the parts sitting nicely in pop songs or soundtracks. In addition to the vast range of loops, there's also a great selection of sample-based orchestral instruments divided into strings, brass/woodwind, and keyboards/percussion, again with a suitable ambience added at source.
All the main orchestral instruments are represented, and the sounds have a mature, mellow quality which contrasts with some of the strident samples that I've heard from other libraries. The strings are particularly good, though it's hard to fault the wind samples either. There may not be a great depth of multi-velocity sampling going on (usually just two layers), but the sounds just seem to work together, which is really all that matters. Furthermore, the designers have made full use of the modulation and pitch-bend wheels to add expression to specific instruments — for example, the orchestral oboe changes timbre depending on the mod wheel position and eventually produces staccato notes at the extreme mod wheel position. The pitch-bend wheel sets the starting volume, so it can be used to dynamically control notes. I did manage to get some of the loops to click by wiggling the mod wheel excessively during playback, but reloading the instrument seemed to cure this problem.
The pianos and harps also sound the part, and while this pack may not give Vienna Symphonic Library a hard time, it's incredible value, both for its loops and its sample-based instruments. Only some audible sample looping (which would probably go unnoticed in a real composition) prevents me giving this the full five-star treatment. As it is, it's a worthy four. Paul White
Apple Loops 2-DVD-ROM set, £65 including VAT.
Apple Store +44 (0)800 039 1010.
Garageband Jam Pack 4 Symphony Orchestra Music
Sonic Boom Box ****
APPLE LOOPS
This is a cost-effective Apple Loops product from Ultimate Soundbank which, rather than being too tightly themed, sets out to give the users a broad palette of styles, both in Apple-Loop form and as software instruments that can be used within Apple's GarageBand software. The Apple Loop section, which also works in Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro 7, Logic Express, and Soundtrack, comprises over 4000 loops, both instrumental and percussive, and these are augmented by in excess of 220 software instruments.
Garageband Jam Pack 4 Symphony Orchestra Free
The collection comes on a single DVD and requires 4GB of hard drive space for installation. Included instrument genres encompass drums, percussion, basses, guitars, and a large number of synths, as well as some more traditional instruments. A lot of the rhythm loops are aimed at contemporary dance and hip-hop styles, but there's also some traditional pop/rock material as well as riffs and phrases played on guitar, bass, wind, strings, and synthesizer/keyboard. The blurb on the back of the box says that 'your composition will sound as good as a professional record in a couple of seconds'. Personally, I'd say this claim errs on the side of exaggeration, but I have to agree that the quality of the material provided here rivals that of far more costly sample CD libraries.
While many of the Apple Loops products I've looked at so far concentrate on a specific genre, Sonic Boom Box could be considered the Apple Loops equivalent of a workstation synth, albeit with a dance-music bias, and as such it's a good starting-point for your collection, especially if you work in diverse pop genres. The loop material is nicely produced, rarely needing additional processing to make it sound good, and while the included instruments are pretty simple, they still manage to sound strong and 'right for the job'. I particularly like the quality of the percussion and rhythm loops, though some are a bit too 'off the wall' for my taste — words like 'chemical' and 'acid' come unbidden to mind. In all, there's some great stuff in here and it's certainly easy to get the basis of a groove together to stimulate your creativity, which is where I think these packages score best. If you like variety and have a penchant for loops that are a bit 'out there', Sonic Boom Box is a bargain. Paul White
Apple Loops DVD-ROM, £66 including VAT.
Time + Space +44 (0)1837 55200.
+44 (0)1837 55400.
Downbeat Leftfield ****
MULTI-FORMAT
The Loopmasters Origin Series, of which this library forms a part, aims to offer 100-percent copyright-free loops, multisamples, and single sounds in a value-for-money format. All the CDs in the series include WAV loops, REX 2 files for all the loops, and some Propellerhead Reason instrument patches. As suggested by the title of this CD, the collection of samples here were all recorded at lower tempos (100bpm and slower), while the musical content is both dark and somewhat quirky — hence the 'leftfield' tag. The library totals some 700MB of data, with 275 REX 2 loops, 700 WAV files, and samples for 21 different drum kits included.
A good chunk of the collection is made up by a mixture of over 100 live and programmed drum loops recorded at 100bpm, 90bpm, and 80bpm. There is some good stuff amongst this lot that would suit anything from hip-hop through to chill-out. The sounds are nicely produced and not over-processed, with some of the percussive elements lending a darker feel to the grooves created. The tone is not lo-fi gritty, but it does conjure up a 'serious' hip-hop mood, so think Nelly or Snoop Dogg rather than Goldie Lookin Chain or The Beastie Boys — although you could get to the latter with suitable extra processing. A separate folder of percussion loops, drum fills, and other drum 'extras' is also included.
Aside from the drum loops, the rest of the collection provides a diverse set of instrument loops and sounds. These include a folder of bass loops (plus a small collection of Reason NNXT bass patches) whose moods match the drum loops very well, so there is plenty of scope for mixing and matching between these. A further folder of 'instrument' loops is subdivided into guitar, keyboard, pad/atmosphere, strings, vocoder, and woodwind (dominated by solo sax lines) groups. This is a pretty mixed bag. For example, the keyboard group includes a good number of chilled Rhodes loops while, in contrast, the pad/atmosphere set provides a mixture of both chill-out and much darker moods. Two further folders complete the collection. Firstly, a sound effects folder contains various bleeps, bloops and other noises — all very disturbing. Secondly, the Vibes & Atmos folder contains a mixture of bed-style pads and sound effects, plus a collection of turntable scratches.
In use, there is plenty to get your teeth into in this collection, and the loops from the various groups can easily be mixed together to produce a complete musical arrangement. The single hits, REX 2 loops, and instrument patches (for Reason users) add extra flexibility. For styles moving from Zero-7 chill-out through to darker hip-hop moods, Downbeat & Leftfield has plenty to offer. The only downside is that, while the material is all very useable from a musical perspective, I'm not sure there is anything radically new offered here. That said, the sample set is competitively priced and certainly does offer good value for money. John Walden
WAV, REX 2, and Reason CD-ROM, £39.95 including VAT.
Time + Space +44 (0)1837 55200.
+44 (0)1837 55400.
Platinum Essentials *****
Garageband Jam Pack 4 Symphony Orchestra 1
AUDIO+WAV
This title aimed squarely at fans of West-Coast hip-hop has been produced by Keith 'Clizark' Clark, a man who already has 10 million record sales to his name having worked with such names as Snoop Dogg and the Eastsidaz. The single split-format disc acts as both a normal audio CD and a WAV CD-ROM (all samples are duplicated in both formats), and the audio comprises 20 construction kits followed by a small group of additional synth samples.
The construction kits cover tempos of 93-103bpm, and each track begins with a mixed track featuring MPC-style sampled drums, bass, synths, and some guitars — this lasts less than a minute. Most of these mixes exude an understated yet powerful menace which would be well complemented by the kind of smoothly murderous rapping that Snoop Dogg has nailed. The rhythm programming is beautifully done, creating that head-nodding momentum that so often seems to separate the hits from the 'B' sides — the fact that Clizark has made this difficult task sound so easy here should leave no-one in any doubt as to his production chops!
Although the style of all the tracks is quite sparse, this is definitely part of Clizark's trademark sound, and you'd have no trouble transforming any of these mixes into a finished production with just a bit of editing and the addition of some vocals. The solid basses doubtless account for some of this gravitas, especially as they have been shrewdly chosen to complement the kick drum in each case. However, it's the meaty drum sounds which really carry each track and which are the obvious highlight of Platinum Essentials to my ear: just the right amount of attack to sound punchy, just the right amount of mid-range and sustain to provide body, and just the right amount of low end to anchor everything firmly. You could spend a great deal of time trying to obtain drum sounds as good as on even one of these construction kits, and you get 20 different sets here. If they had Desert Island Discs with sample CDs, including this one would be a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned!
Clearly, then, I was delighted to find that all the drum loops and single hits from each full mix were included in each construction kit. However, I wasn't quite as delighted to find that this was pretty much all that was provided in the way of separate elements — none of the guitar licks, synth pads, and other pitched samples which had helped round out the mixed tracks so successfully. Anyone expecting a more traditional construction-kit format would justifiably feel a little cheated. The small selection of synth multisamples at the end of the CD help make up for this a bit by including ten rather nice sets of 'one note per octave' bass-synth samples, which are pretty much to the standard of the drum sounds. However, the other synth sounds are a wash-out, and don't sit well against the rest of the library content.
If it weren't for the bargain UK price, I'd be rather in two minds about giving Platinum Essentials as a whole our top star rating. On the one hand there are drum sounds here which would outshine many five-star releases; on the other, the incomplete track breakdowns, measly 32-minute running time, and wafer-thin documentation leave me with a sneaking feeling that someone's having a laugh! The bottom line for me, though, is that the drums and basses are worth the mockery, and at this price that's got to mean five stars. Mike Senior
Split-format Audio CD & WAV CD-ROM, £32.95 including VAT.
Time + Space +44 (0)1837 55200.
+44 (0)1837 55400.