iLife® '09 Portable Genius

Chapter 9. How Can I Make My Song Sound Great and Then Share It?

Recording a song is half the battle won, but if you want to grab your listeners by the ears and not let them go, you'll need to edit and mix the song as well. GarageBand provides powerful tools for editing both Software Instrument tracks and Real Instrument tracks to remove unwanted parts and change the pitch. You can then mix the song by changing the volume, panning, and effects of both individual tracks and the master track that controls the song's overall sound. When the song is finished, you can use it in the other iLife applications directly from GarageBand; but what you'll probably want to do is export the song to iTunes, give it a full set of tags, add lyrics and artwork, and then share the song with friends or the world via the Internet.

• Editing a Song

• Mixing a Song

• Sharing a Song

Editing a Song

To edit a song, you'll need to pick out the tracks you want to work on, either individually or together. You can then open a track in the Track Editor and edit it. You can change Software Instrument tracks extensively, even changing the pitch and velocity of individual notes; for Real Instrument tracks, including Electric Guitar tracks, your options are more limited, but you can move sections of audio, delete them, and change the track's tuning or timing.

Muting and soloing tracks

When you edit a song, you'll often need to focus ...