GarageBand : The Missing Manual (Missing Manuals)

Rating:
Summary: Great Manual for a Great Program
Review:
Garage Band may be the coolest and most powerful of the Apple iLife applications. It allows virtually anyone to create an at least decent-sounding musical composition. However, it is not simple and its many features allow for quite sophisticated and complex compositions suitable for professional level use. Yet, Apple provides only minimal on-screen help material.

Hence, the need for a book like Garage Band: The Missing Manual. This is another of the O'Reilly Media Inc. Missing Manual series, and like all the many others I've read, this is a well-written, content-filled volume. O'Reilly should write manuals for creators of all full-featured applications as they have the formula down for doing it right.

This volume is written by David Pogue with his usual combination of substance and style. The presentation is systematic, yet friendly, and with handfuls of wit. The book has two main parts and an appendix containing a mini-music crash course, a menu-by-menu description of Garage Band, and a list of keyboard shortcuts.

Part 1 covers the basics of using and understanding Garage Band - how to install and set up, and how to understand the concepts of tracks, loops, editing, and recording. Emphasis is made of the two types of data input used by the program, so-called digital recordings and MIDI. Each is handled differently by the program and care is made throughout the book to explain how to deal with each. Like the rest of the Missing Manuals he's authored, Pogue uses a hands-on approach to describe and explain how to produce quality output from the program, He weaves music theory concepts with program feature descriptions and gives helpful suggestions to the typical user how best to use the program's features to make music your family will be proud hearing.

In Part 2, Pogue explains how to publish your output and use the results with iMovie, iPhoto, and iDVD, He covers more advanced topics as well, like troubleshooting and extending the program with available plugins and compatible software. References to the more professional level features of Garage Band are noted but not covered in any detail, as most users will never touch these features.

O'Reilly's website (www.missingmanuals.com) has tutorial samples and shareware programs to download and use while going through the chapters. This book is a fine value at $19.95.

Rating:
Summary: Easy to read, beginner to advanced topics, well done
Review: GarageBand is great fun and so easy it doesn't come with any kind of manual - without this book I was able to easily throw some loops together and create "music". Even my four year old daughter was able (with a minimum amount of help) to put together some piano, guitar and drum loops that sounded great. However, after the cool-factor wore off, GarageBand went back into a dusty corner of the Applications folder, until I picked up this book.

The value of this book is in the descriptions and explanations of GarageBand's features for the the Non-musician (I.e. Me). This book uncovers plenty of useful tips and suggestions to get the most out of GarageBand. I had great fun playing with the effects, now that I know what they mean - besides, it's fun to be able to use "flanger" properly in a sentence.

Rating:
Summary: Sophisticated compositions
Review: I have several friends in the Los Angeles amateur music scene. Amateur because none of their bands are financially self-supporting. One perennial complaint is the cost of recording a professional, high quality demo CD. Which they can then take to a label or directly sell copies of.

GarageBand offers a way for them to drastically lower the cost of recording. It gives them a means of becoming digital composers as well as actual musicians. While Apple proudly released GarageBand with little hardcopy documentation, Pogue shows us here a convenient supplement. He pitches it squarely at musicians, not programmers or sound engineers.

Thus, there is nothing discussing signal to noise ratios, oversampling or the maths behind sound compression algorithms. Whereever possible, he tries to speak the language of musicians. He does not patronise you just because he has a technical background and you might not. But be warned that the book is not trivial. GarageBand is shown to offer a lot, but only if you concentrate and visualise the possibilities it gives your music.

Rating:
Summary: Even a Genius sometimes hits the wrong key...
Review: Let's face it. We've all hit the wrong key or combination of keys at some point or other in our computer past, and sure as we breathe, we'll do it again, and again. It's the "oops!" factor. David Pogue (a little more about him later) understands this phenomenon. So, he adds to this brilliant book, from time to time, just what to do when something goes wrong. NO ONE ELSE ADDS THIS!!!!! This is important. When it is past midnight on a sunday and you are feverishly finishing off your musical masterpiece, and your finger slips...no sweat, Dave's there to the rescue. Now, about David Pogue. He writes, and writes, and writes about Macs and Mac programs. He's written tons of great books and tons of great articles over the years. He is also a brilliant musician who is happily converted to thinking about Garageband as the way to go in the future for both Beginners and Pros. The book is easy to grasp and a great guide through the fun and excitment of Garageband. That he gives enough of a damn about your mental well being as you work within the program, as well, says a lot about who he is, and, is a very strong reason for you to check out and use this guide.

Rating:
Summary: Tight and well organized
Review: This book is small, but you can't fault it for that. The coverage is thorough, the exposition is tight and the use of graphics is restricted to just what is necessary to support the text. I particularly liked visualizations like the one on page 70 where the computer keyboard is related to a piano keyboard in a clever and effective form. Nice going on this one. The Missing Manual books can be inconsistent but this one is great and definitely worth it for the price. A must buy for GarageBand users.