Apple on Thursday released the next iteration of Logic Studio - an advanced digital audio workstation suite. GarageBand users who've hit the ceiling of what they can do with that iLife. May 24, 2016 #3 If all you need to do is record a handful of audio streams, I can't say there is a big advantage to doing that in Logic. Garageband is very capable of handling that kind of project and even includes powerful tools like flex editing to fix imperfections in your audio recording.
Apple Logic Pro Tips & Techniques
- GarageBand is a terrific (and cheap!) music tool, but when you've reached its limits, take a look at what Logic Pro X adds to the mix.
- Logic Pro X vs GarageBand: Interface The first thing you notice when opening both apps is that they look practically identical. This is a deliberate choice from Apple, positioning GarageBand as a.
- Sep 30, 2016 Garageband is free and comes with a sweet selection of software-based guitar effects, a great visual drum machine and clean, accessible interface. Logic, on the other hand, costs a cool £149.99.
Integrate your Logic Pro X tracks with GarageBand iOS and open up a world of possibilities
Apple’s GarageBand iOS app has some surprisingly advanced features like clip launching and glitch effects that are not yet present in Logic Pro X. In this month’s Logic workshop we look at how to transfer your Logic Pro X projects to GarageBand iOS before going on to spice up that track using the Live Loops and Remix FX features that are exclusive to GarageBand. Lastly, we look at how you can send this enhanced project back to Logic and tweak the results.
The Ins & Outs
Screen 1: Sharing a Logic project with iOS GarageBand is as easy as choosing the Share / Project to GarageBand for iOS. Your project will be bounced to a stereo audio file and uploaded to iCloud faster than you can make a cup of tea.To avoid any compatibility issues, begin by making sure that your versions of iOS GarageBand and Logic Pro X are fully up to date. Load one of your existing projects in Logic. To share this with GarageBand iOS, drop down the File menu and click Share / Project to GarageBand for iOS (Screen 1).
From the pop-up dialogue, choose your iCloud GarageBand iOS folder as the location and then save your project. When Logic exports your project to GarageBand iOS it bounces the entire project to a stereo audio file wrapped in a GarageBand project extension. The upside of using a bounce strategy is it is incredibly fast to get the idea you are working on uploaded to iCloud and into GarageBand. Once the upload is complete, go to your iOS device, open GarageBand and, from the My Songs browser, choose the Logic project you just shared. You should now see a GarageBand project with a single stereo audio track that is the bounce of your arrangement from Logic.
Garageband Vs Logic Pro
Now that your project is in GarageBand let’s explore some of the unique features that haven’t yet been added to the Mac OS version of Logic.
Live Loops
![Garageband Vs Logic Garageband Vs Logic](/uploads/1/2/6/0/126019755/275833871.jpg)
GarageBand has a really fun and simple clip-launching feature called Live Loops. This essentially takes the bundled Apple Loops library and allows you to arrange the Live Loops in an Ableton-style clip-launching matrix. A column of Live Loops can be launched in the same way you can launch multiple clips using Scenes in Ableton. To begin experimenting with Live Loops go to the Sound Browser (the icon next to My Songs) and, in the pop-up window, slide the tab at the top of the screen across to Live Loops. Here you have a selection of factory Live Loops collections organised by genre. Choose one of the pre-installed Live Loop sets or alternatively start from a blank set using the ‘New’ option.
Once you have chosen a Live Set, GarageBand will switch the UI into the Live Loops grid view and you can toggle between this and the normal Tracks view using the Grid button on the Control Bar.
To trigger Live Loops, simply tap them and they will launch in sync with the project timeline according to the Time Snap setting in the top-right corner of the grid. Alternatively, you can play a collection of Live Loops by tapping the launch button at the bottom of a column of loops. You can add new loops by opening the Loop Browser and then dragging a loop from the Browser into an empty slot. You can perform a number of editing actions on the Live Loops by going to the bottom-left corner of the UI and toggling the Edit button on. Now you can pinch to zoom the Live Loops grid, or press and drag to move Live Loops to different slots. You can also perform a number of editing actions by pressing and holding on a Live Loop and choosing an edit option from the pop-up menu.
Screen 2: You can record Live Loops into the GarageBand linear timeline; the timeline underneath the Control Bar helpfully displays where the events were recorded.Once you have a few Loops assigned in different columns you can record a live arrangement simply by pressing record and play in the transport, then launching Live Loops as the track plays. As the arrangement is performed, GarageBand provides a miniature track display at the top of the Live Loops Grid view to show you where these loops are recorded on the timeline (see Screen 2). Pressing the Grid button will return you to the main Track view. Here, you can view the arrangement you have just recorded on a linear timeline.
Remix FX
Another exciting feature that GarageBand has which Logic 10.3 lacks is the Remix FX suite. The Remix FX are a wonderful selection of tempo-synchronised effects that are perfect for manipulating your entire mix. Press the FX button at the top of the UI to display the Remix FX area. The UI is divided into three sections: the two X/Y pads on the left and right, and a centre section. The X/Y pads can be configured to control different effects by tapping the effect name at the top of each pad and choosing the desired effect. In the centre section there are three buttons for Reverse, Scratch and Tape Stop and two sliders for Gater and Downsampler effects (Screen 3).
Screen 3: Simply hit record and interact with the Remix FX controls to add gestural effects manipulation to your arrangement.Once you’ve become familiar with the Remix FX controls you can record your manipulations by simply hitting record in the transport and interacting with the FX controls. Go back to the Track View and at the bottom of your arrangement you will now find an FX track with a region containing your automation.
Hands Off
Now that we have added to our project with some of GarageBand’s unique features, let’s bring the project back into Logic. Save the song by pressing the My Songs button; the song should now be automatically uploaded to iCloud and ready for you to retrieve on your desktop computer. On your desktop open Logic and reopen the Logic project you started with. On opening the old project you will get a prompt saying ‘There are changes in the project shared to GarageBand for iOS, do you want to import these changes?’; click ‘Yes’. Logic imports the new content you added in GarageBand underneath your original Logic arrangement. You should now see that all of your Live Loop tracks are at the bottom of your arrangement with the Remix FX track beneath them. The great thing about this is that you can work on a project in Logic, share it to GarageBand, use the GarageBand features that work really well on the touchscreen and then import just those changes back into your existing project quickly and with very little effort.
Now that your Remix FX additions are inside Logic you may wonder how to edit them and further tweak the automation. Unfortunately, there is currently no good answer to this. The Remix FX insert currently has no UI and no normal automation parameters. However, there are a few workarounds. To edit the automation data, open the List Editor. Here you will see the different automation parameters. Their values can be edited in this view. The other way to edit the Remix FX automation is to double-click on the FX automation region to bring up the Piano Roll editor. Next, turn MIDI Draw on to reveal the Remix FX automation in the MIDI Draw area. Use the Next Controller button to the left of the MIDI Draw area to incrementally move through the Remix FX automation parameters.
In general, I don’t like alternating back and forth between different bits of software when creating a piece of music as it’s often fiddly and time consuming. However, I think Apple have done such a good job with the Logic-to-GarageBand-to-Logic workflow that it’s well worth exploring. If you have reached a creative brick wall, then transferring a Logic project into iOS GarageBand to experiment with some different options could be just the thing to get the creative juices flowing. I definitely enjoyed experimenting with the Remix FX and Live Loops whilst writing this article and I can see myself adding my own Live Loop sets to GarageBand to personalise the experience a bit more.
Published September 2017
High-quality, free music production software is hard to come by. Unless you’re willing to shell out the big bucks for Ableton Live, FL Studio, or Logic Pro, you’re pretty much stuck with either GarageBand or Audacity.
To be clear, both of these programs have been used successfully by thousands of musicians to create all kinds of music. Rock? A capella? Electronica? Hip hop? It’s all possible, and both are technically free (not freemium). But which one is right for you?
The Pros and Cons of Audacity
First things first: Audacity is a digital audio editor, not a digital audio workstation. It’s mainly designed to manipulate audio data instead of helping you organize lots of different audio bits into a coherent whole, although you can certainly do that if you want to.
Audacity is free and open source, and has been since its debut in 2000. It’s old and well-maintained with lots of history and a large community of users, so you can be sure it won’t disappear overnight. Even if the current developers move on, new ones can always step in and/or fork the project and keep it alive Open Source Software and Forking: The Good, The Great and The UglySometimes, the end-user benefits greatly from forks. Sometimes, the fork is done under a shroud of anger, hatred and animosity. Let's look at some examples. Read More .
![New garageband vs logic New garageband vs logic](https://s.aolcdn.com/dims5/amp:debfdb79e188721ccaf5b33dce61491ce885b7ce/t:1200,630/q:80/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogcdn.com%2Fwww.engadget.com%2Fmedia%2F2011%2F10%2Fjrv3iphone4suspfwhtremindersprint-1317754622.jpg)
On the whole, Audacity is less stable than GarageBand. Most users never run into any issues with it, but edge-case users may experience crashes here and there, especially when extending Audacity with third-party plugins.
Although Audacity is a powerful music production tool, it comes with a learning curve. Whereas the interface is simple and easy to pick up, the sheer number of effects and settings can be tough to wrap your head around if you don’t have any background in audio engineering. Expect to spend several days getting comfortable with the software.
If audio manipulation is what you need, Audacity pretty much has it all: level meters, multi-track recordings, sample rates up to 384KHz and 32-bit depth, true export in lossless formats like AIFF and FLAC, unlimited undo and redo, procedural audio generation, change pitch and tempo, noise removal, and dozens of other built-in effects. It also allows for more fine-tuning of tracks than GarageBand (like applying filters to a region instead of entire tracks).
One big downside for music production is that, as of this writing, Audacity does not support MIDI recordings. You can only import, edit, and export MIDI files.
Putting together multiple audio sources and tracks can be cumbersome with Audacity’s primitive interface. And unlike GarageBand, Audacity doesn’t come with any pre-recorded material (e.g., loops) to help newbie music producers get started. But if you’re only going to record individual tracks (e.g., vocals, instruments) and align them together without much per-track editing, Audacity can be more than good enough.
Lastly, since Audacity is cross-platform, you can work on a single project on any Windows, Mac, or Linux device. This proves useful if you want to collaborate with someone, or if you just have an eclectic collection of workstations.
To learn more, check out our essential Audacity tips 7 Audacity Tips For Better Audio Editing On a BudgetWant to move beyond simple cut-and-crop jobs? Knowing just a few Audacity tips can make your audio-editing life a whole lot easier. Read More and creative uses for Audacity 10 Creative Uses For Audacity That You Probably Haven’t Thought OfMany people use Audacity for podcasts or music mixing, but that's not all it's good for. Read More .
The Pros and Cons of GarageBand
The best and worst part about GarageBand is that it comes bundled with all Macs. If you have a Mac but no GarageBand, you can download it for free in the Mac App Store. It’s great because it’s high-quality software with no price, but bad because you need a Mac for it.
GarageBand is a digital audio workstation, not a digital audio editor. While it can record and edit all kinds of audio sounds, it’s main job is to help you arrange and combine all of your individual audio sources into a single audio creation. It’s still a useful piece of music production software.
Unlike Audacity, which is open source and in the hands of its community, GarageBand is proprietary and in full control of Apple. Expect to wait 2–3 years between major updates, and if Apple ever decides to pull the plug and stop supporting GarageBand, you’ll have no choice but to shrug and move on. GarageBand puts you at the mercy of Apple.
One good thing about that, however, is that GarageBand is robust and runs very well since it’s designed and coded for a very specific platform, plus it has the developmental backing of one of the most successful companies in the world. Basically, it “just works” and rarely crashes.
GarageBand has a smaller learning curve than Audacity. The biggest hurdle for any newbie will be learning the interface, which is somewhat complex but reasonably intuitive. Once you get over that initial hump, it’s smooth sailing from there — you’ll only need a few dedicated hours to get comfortable with it.
And since it’s developed by Apple, you’ll feel right at home if you’re used to the general design of Mac-style apps. If you’d like to share and work on your audio projects with other non-Mac machines, GarageBand may not be for you since it is Mac-only. There’s also a mobile version of GarageBand that lets you produce music on your iPad A Quick Look At The iPad As A Music Production ToolWhen deciding whether one can justify the purchase of a tablet, rarely does 'music production' factor into the decision-making process – but it should. Read More .
Garageband Vs Logic Pro
GarageBand supports MIDI recording and editing out of the box, and comes bundled with lots of pre-recorded loops and synths that you can use to make music, even without any instruments. On the whole, GarageBand is more convenient to use if you’re going to have a lot of loop sequences and track splices.
So is it worth buying a Mac just for GarageBand? Not really, unless you’re planning to buy a Mac for many reasons of which music production is just one. If that isn’t the case, you’re better off spending a fraction of that money on a professional digital audio workstation for whatever operating you’re already on.
To learn more, check out our guide to using GarageBand How to Use GarageBand: A Step-By-Step GuideGarageBand is a powerful audio recording and editing software for Mac, but getting started is tough. This tutorial will show you how to use GarageBand. Read More .
Our Recommendation for Free Music Production Software
Garageband Vs Logic X
GarageBand is flat-out better for beginners to music production. Not only does it support MIDI recording and editing, which is arguably the easiest way to get started as long as you have a MIDI keyboard, but it comes with lots of pre-recorded material and is better at walking you through the entire process of music production.
Audacity offers more power as far as audio manipulation is concerned, but isn’t so easy when it comes to organizing lots of tracks and loops. We recommend it for longer audio pieces with fewer tracks, such as podcasts, speeches, audiobook narration, voiceovers and commentaries, etc. It’s also better if you want to edit on non-Mac machines.
Download:Audacity (Free)
Download:GarageBand (Free)
Download:GarageBand (Free)
Regardless of which you choose, both are great music production software for beginners The Best Free Music Production Software for BeginnersIf you're just starting out making your own music, here's the best free music production software money can't buy. Read More .
If neither suit your needs, check out these GarageBand alternatives The 6 Best GarageBand Alternatives for Music Production on WindowsHere are the best alternatives to GarageBand, Apple's popular music production software, that you can run on your Windows PC. Read More and Audacity alternatives Need to Record & Edit Audio? 4 Audacity Alternatives to TryAudacity can be a fantastic audio recording and editing tool, especially because of its cross platform and open source nature. However, there may be a number of reasons why you do not wish to use... Read More . Regardless of what tool you end up using, be aware of these tips for optimizing audio files 5 Tips for Optimizing Audio File SizesIf you've ever wanted to reduce the size of an audio file but weren't sure how to do that without impacting the quality of the recording, here's everything you need to know. Read More .
Which music production software do you use? Which side of the GarageBand vs. Audacity argument do you come down on? Share your thoughts in the comments below!