User Reviews: GarageBand

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  • I love this app but plz add!

    So first of all you guys did a great job on this app but I would love it if you added more guitars so like a Stratocaster and more pedals because I actually play guitar and when I am away from it I like to play guitar related things so this is my go to app for that so I want the full experience of more pedals for all guitars and it would be nice if you added a ukulele and I would love it if you added more frets for the guitars on iPad but I don’t know what model my iPad is but plz add more frets, a few more guitars, more pedals, and I would love it if there was a way to palm mute or mute strings and a way to tune down your guitar while playing the app. So my overall review? I love this app but I just wish you could add a few more things so if you are a musician and you don’t have an instrument this will help and it’s fun too so devs at Apple keep up the good work and maybe make a shooting game on here because you guys are legendary so you could easily make that but anyway everyone I highly recommend this game!
  • Let’s Do It!

    This is a fabulous app that is an absolute Must for writers/arrangers who get stuck alone (not good) at airports, parking lots, Etc ..
    The sounds are absolutely fabulous! I could pick nits and say that on cannot press the drum-stick into the drumhead depressing just enough to tighten the next strike to a different semi-tone ... but I won’t. It is great for mapping out numerous tracks of a song in your head with symphonic strings or Japanese instruments (of which I had never heard) but which sound very Celtic. It is a candy store with invisible, one -way lids: they keep the candy clean but you can reach right through and grab whatever you need for the next part of your song!
    It is absolutely almost all of the “Jetson-type“ musical things about which I dreamt as a child. Everything for a complete rainy afternoon at my fingertips! If you can imagine it, most likely you can write it on this with the use of myriad tools. It’s learning curve is practically idiot proof – as attested to buy my ability to use it with such ease. Get this wonderful app and open up all the windows you can find As You Need and use them: choose a few at the beginning and find out how incredibly wonderful it is as you add on to your knowledge and your abilities.
    I am waiting to hear that someone has used this for an entire movie score ... it will not be long in coming – if it hasn’t already happened!
    Thank you for presenting this app to all of us to use it! It is almost God-given!
  • Names

    I like to change names around. I use this app to make ringtones. I had a song named x and I changed it to y. I named another song x afterwards, but when I dragged it into garageband it plays song y. Bruh. So I changed the name of the song in iTunes before using it in garageband. Big deal. I change the names of my ringtones around too. I had a ringtone named a in the past. I either deleted it or changed its name into something else. I made another ringtone which I want to call a. “The name is already taken.” T-T-T-WHUH?! No it’s not! Where? I looked around. Don’t see any files named a. I looked online for help. Google thinks I’m trying to start a band but my band’s name is taken. I’m not trying to start a band I’m just trying to makes ringtones and name them after tarot cards! Why is it that making ringtones is so tedious with apple anyways?! Just make it so we can make songs from ‘Music’ into ringtones! Then I wouldn’t be here complaining about garageband which I wouldn’t normally use in the first place! If naming wasn’t a problem I’d give this app anything but a 1, but for some reason naming IS a problem! Now what do I name my files after? Organs in the human body??? I got a 3 in ap bio which wasn’t good enough to transfer credits for college! Why is naming files of all things what I have a problem with???
  • Love it

    I have everything I need to make music professionally, but I find myself using GarageBand iOS for most of the music I make. My best inspiration usually comes to me when I’m away from my studio, so it’s good to have something to get it down when I’m out, like writing down a note. I can transfer it all to the computer when I’m finished and touch it up there, but I like using the touchscreen over a mouse for editing. Many songs need very little work by the time I move them over.

    Studio software, like LXP and FL, have so many options, I find myself getting distracted looking for the perfect sounds for so long that I forget what I wanted to create. GarageBand iOS has a lot of instruments to choose from, but not enough to feel lost in.

    There are some things on my wishlist that I’d love to see in a future update:

    • If you want to make the length of your notes even, you have to do it individually. It would be nice if I could select all of the notes, or at least all of them on the same key, and snap them to the line at the same time. I can select all to change their length, but when they’re all different lengths, I’m still stuck selecting them individually.
    • A sidechain plug in would be ideal.
    • Automation needs a looping option instead of just copy and paste.
    • If you change the octave/semi octave of a note, it still sounds like the original octave when selecting the note while editing.

    Thanks for the all the hard work!
  • Hardstyle, and better sound quality

    Please add more hard hitting instruments such as hardstyle or hardcore kicks like in a sound pack or something with hardstyle synths like sub zero project or d-sturb. Also, it would be good if you guys added punchy basses for psytrance. Basically garage band needs more music packs and it would be great to see an option with eq tampering and more effects for a single track. Sort of like FL studio but more simple. What would also be great is better sound quality, one main reason why I don't think I should use this app full time is because of the sounds. All of the keyboards and instruments seem that they need more treble and clear tone. Also we need more instruments in a project instead of 30 only. If this version of GarageBand had more tracks and higher BPM (for French core and hardcore) this would be a permanent option for me and I wouldn't have to pay extreme prices for an over complicated DAW. In conclusion, please add hardstyle, French core, and hardcore kicks (and synths). Make the sound quality better. And more effect tampering and eq tampering. Please read this.
  • Pretty Good...

    I like this app a lot and I honestly think that once I get better at producing music, that this could be a go to for me until I get to a professional stage in my career. The only problem is that there aren’t a lot of sound packs to choose from and it kind of gets boring after a while hearing the same sounds over and over again in almost all of your songs. So I think there should be more sound packs to choose from and that there should be more loops as well cause anytime I look through there it’s always very repetitive and boring. I also think there should be a quick tutorial cause I’ve had a lot of friends delete this app just because it was hard to navigate through and figure out what was what and where they could edit certain loops or some of their own samples at. It doesn’t have to be suuuper long but it should just go over the basic aspects of the app and where everything is at so that it’s easier for new producers to find stuff. Overall I’d recommend downloading this app cause it’s worth the while (at least until it gets old and boring but I still get on sometimes) I almost forgot to add that I also think it’d be a nice feature if you were to add a hidden loops list where you can remove loops from the general list and specific genres and things so that whenever you’re looking for some good loops you don’t come across the ones you know you’ll never use or just don’t vibe with.
  • ...

    I’ve been using this app for almost four years now, during a time which I knew close to nothing about music. After playing around for a solid year, this gave me a good grasp on the central workings of music, from a steady beat to more classical elements. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the amount of pack additions, especially in the last year or so. However, I do have some critiques.
    1: I know it’s possible on some other interfaces, but there must be a way to look at the tracks and the instrument at one time. Going back and forth hasn’t been the best experience for me.
    2: this is a little petty, but the loops need to be organized better. The fact that I have to look up ‘piano’ instead of just putting it into an instrument is ridiculous. Also, adding onto this, there should be more loops of different time signatures.
    3: This is probably the worst of my critiques; where is Macne nana. I’ve heard of rumors that she was created by GarageBand, (hence the Mac) and I’d love it if there was any sort of text to song audio that could be used, especially if it worked the same as the sampler, or maybe even the smart drummers.
    Overall, this app is probably the best mobile music creation app I’ve used. The rest cost money for what can be done for free here.
  • Recording Sections Limit Usefulness

    I was told GarageBand is a great free Apple app that’s easy to use to start recording my podcast. Free, easy to use, Apple app, yes, but not that great for podcast recording. When I set out to try out the various features offered like adjustable line-in mic, monitor, and noise gate along with pitch controls and such I was very excited. The letdown came when I was ready for my first take. I wanted to make sure I could "spit my truth" for my full 15 minutes of fame. Now, I’m not a musician so I don’t think in terms of tempo, bars, sections, and time signatures. Unfortunately, GarageBand only allows 26 sections at 8 bars each, and adjusting tempo and time signature was no help at all. After ~4 minutes of recording I realized I had used almost 12 sections which gives me a maximum recording time of 10 minutes. Now I’m sure that’s phenomenal for musicians nailing down a riff, bridge, solo, chorus, or massive vocal track, and I’m not foolish enough to think that this app isn’t specifically designed for musicians. Yet, I still think there’s a slight loss of functionality, and opportunity to expand GarageBand’s reach by not allowing unlimited recording and the addition of a timer or stopwatch for those who are not adept at music’s timing system. Voice actors, storytellers, life coaches, podcasters, etc. could all benefit from the simplicity and functionality of the GarageBand app with a few simple tweaks.
  • Ok I have some problems.

    By: ——————

    So I think this app is pretty good but when it comes to making your own stuff there is a bad bad problem. I have no problem with creating stuff already made but today me and my mom wanted to create our own song on it and I used a lot of the loops. And then finally when I was about to hit record button, THE APP TOOK ME OUT OF IT AND I LOST ALL OF MY PROGRESS. (It crashed) It took me almost an hour just to get some of it done. And now all of the progress is gone and I really think that you need to fix that because if that’s gonna happen to every single time you make a new song by yourself that’s not created all ready, then you’re gonna have a lot of people saying the same thing. Maybe you can fix that bug in another update! Please do it because I am very mad at the game and I don’t want that to happen ever again.

    Overall i give it a three-star because the app allows you to still create songs that great so I gave you five stars for that but then I’m like im about I create my own song and then that happened so that’s why I took away 2 stars. But I still hope that you guys can make GarageBand way better than it is right now but I don’t mean that in a bad way because I already said that I like it I just don’t like it too much because it crashed. so please fix that because I don’t want this app to be on my bad app list for the rest of my life.
  • Apple PLEASE read!

    Hello my name is Caleb.
    I’ve been using garage band for many years now and I’ve always loved it from the start however there is a problem that I’ve run into recently that I hope you can fix. It’s a strange problem actually but garage band still deserves 5 stars anyway. So when I started using garage band there wasn’t as much content as there is now, less then a third probably. I was easily inspired to make music and could make neat catchy tunes every other day but now it’s harder to do that because there’s SO MUCH content it’s overwhelming because besides the five main things (guitar, vocals, drums, strings, and piano) there so many sounds like synths, bass, leads and such that I never know where to begin and I lose all interest in my creation, but I think that if you put a “sample” button on each sound so that we can hear just a single note at middle C or -1C for bass that would instantly get rid of the problem. Most of the time I know what sound I want but I can’t find it and I have to select a sound, play my song, and see if it’s the right one which takes to long with there being hundreds of choices. There might be this sound sample feature already and I just don’t know how to use it but if not please consider adding it. It would help so much and I’m sure I’m not the only one who would thank you.

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