This got me to thinking. What gear I would buy, in order to put together a flexible Mac based home audio recording studio?
Okay, here it is; The amazing $1000 Mac Audio Guy home studio gear list.

First you will need some microphones, whether you’re a guitarist who needs to mic your amp or your acoustic guitar or if you’re a singer, or even if you’re a drummer, you’ll need some good mics. The most versatile, most rugged and the one mic I’d take to a desert island is the Shure SM 58. Note that the SM-57 and the SM-58 are nearly identical mics . The SM-58 has a spherical windscreen whereas the SM-57 does not. The windscreen makes the SM-58 a little better to sing into because it takes care of a lot of vocal pops. Shop around and you can find a SM-58 for $99. Next I would recommend getting a pair of matched condenser microphones. Condenser mics are generally more precise mics and are great at capturing the nuances of a performance, however they are fragile and require a phantom power source, so condensers are more likely to be used in the studio, rather than onstage. To stay under the $1000 dollar budget I chose the Audio Teknika AT2020 as a good condenser for about a $100 and I put two on our list and I actually was able to get some headphones thrown in as a package deal. The reason you want two matched condenser mics is so that you can do stereo recording, for a drum kit, for example. There are some other good condensers in this price range, the AKG Perception 1000, the M-audio Nova, a couple from Blue Microphones, and from MXL, you can shop these microphones and see if you like the sound of one over another, but for the purposes of simplicity and a value I’ll go with the AT2020 for my list.
So i’ve spent a third of the budget on three Mics. Now, if you are a keyboardist/composer, you may want to substitute a MIDI Keyboard controller like the M-Audio Keystation 61 for one of the mics, but for the purposes of this article I’ll consider your instruments as separate from the studio budget.

Next we need an audio interface to get the audio from the mics into your Mac. There are a bunch of two channel interfaces out there ranging from $150-$500, but I’m going to go with an audio interface that is also an analog mixer. The Alesis Multimix 8 FW or the Multimix USB2.0 mixer/interfaces are a great bargain. For $300 you get an eight channel mixer with four pro-quality mic pre-amps and it acts as an ten channel in and two channel out audio interface, either over Firewire or USB 2.0. I would choose the USB 2.0 model simply because I have more USB inputs than Firewire inputs on my Mac. So I killed two birds with one stone by adding the Alesis Multimix 8 USB 2.0 to my list at $299.99. But wait there’s more! The Alesis Multimix ships with Cubase LE music software that you can use in addition to GarageBand on your project. But wait there’s ever MORE!! By shopping around, I found I could get the Mulimix, an AKG Perception Mic and a table mic stand and cable package from BSW http://bswusa.com/ for the same $299.99 price! So now I’ve got four Mics and a interface/mixer for just under $600. Yeah Baby!

If you’re going to be recording you’ll need some headphones and some reference monitors (speakers) Reference monitors is just a fancy name for speakers that are supposed to be more accurate than home speakers. First off, I’l add Sony MDR-7506 headphones to our list. These are very accurate professional headphones and at $99 they are a bargain. And so that only leaves us $200 to buy speakers. If I want to stay under my budget, I have to to go with a Bargain. The Alesis M1 ACTIVE 520s are a 75W bi-amped active speaker for $199 a Pair. And that just squeaks me under my budget at $993.99, enough for a six pack left over. .

(Note on my shopping cart figure they didn’t total up the two AT2020s so that’s why it’s a hundred dollars too low.)

Okay, so I was able to put together a studio for under a thousand, but to be honest I would have spent about another $200. I would have spent an extra $100 over budget and purchased the KRK RP5 monitors for $300 a pair. And then add another $100 for Mic stands and cables and we’re really at $1200. However, with some clever comparison shopping online you may be able to get everything for a little less or get cables thrown in as a package deal.
So there you have it, the amazing Mac Audio Guy $1000 dollar studio (give or take a little.)

(Figure 1)
Click the pencil icon to the right of the Instrument Generator to edit the DLSMusic Device. In the DLSMusic Device edit window, make sure that QuickTime Music Synthesizer is selected as the sound bank, and then close the edit window.

(Figure 2)
Click the Save Instrument… button and name your new instrument “GM DLS.”
Go to the tracks column and change ALL of the software instruments to GM DLS.

(Figure 3)
Now when you play the song the General MIDI track will send Program change commands to the GM DLS instrument and play back the proper General MIDI instruments using QuickTime’s built-in GM instrument set. Here is what the newly mapped song sounds like. (Example 2.mp3)
By using your newly created GM DLS instrument you can import and listen to any General MIDI song as it was intended. While General MIDI songs are never perfect, at least by going with the General MIDI mapping you have a good place to start if you want to edit the instrumentation or the arrangement.

The first step in the process is that you need to have broadcasting source software. PC users have a simple WinAmp plug-in that most users use. But for Mac users this isn’t an option. While there are several DJ programs like Tracktor that support streaming, by far the easiest to use and most prevalent piece of software is Nicecast by Rouge Amoeba ( http://rogueamoeba.com/nicecast/) . Nicecast cost $40US for the fully functional version. But it’s well worth the money in saving you time and headaches. Simply put, you need to purchase this software if you want to broadcast from your Mac.

For the purpose s of this article I’ll presume that you are using Nicecast. After installing Nicecast and opening it the first window that you will see is the Broadcast window. This is the start and stop button for your broadcast, so you will want to keep this window open at all times when broadcasting.

Okay, listen up! Here is the is the biggest misunderstanding regarding Nicecast and internet broadcasting: You CAN use Nicecast’s built-in server to broadcast, but in 99% of the cases you DO NOT want to use the built-in Server. Here’s why: Unless you have a serious connection to the internet(and I mean T3 or better) you wont me able to serve very many streams. The math is simple, if you want to run a 96kbs stream, the bandwidth required is 96Kbs per listener. So your typical high speed 600 or 700kbs DSL connection can support seven listeners in the best case scenario, add overhead for NAT, shared devices, Gateways ,yadda yadda yadda, and you can see that running your own server probably won’t work. I will show how to configure Nicecast to use an external server so that you can broadcast to more listeners.

Getting a Shoutcast server

This brings us to the second piece of software in the chain. A Shoutcast DNAS server. Either you or the land/ club owner in Second Life will have to rent usage of a streaming server. There are two “brands” of servers out there; Shoutcast and Icecast, Shoutcast being a free piece of software from NullSoft and Icecast which is open-source software. I’ll use the Shoutcast server for this example. Like I said earlier, either you or the venue owner needs to “Rent a Stream” which is to say, a streaming server. If you search Shoutcast in Second Life you can find several vendors that can rent you the use of a server on an hourly, weekly, or monthly basis, and you can pay for these in Linden $. A typical 100 listener, 128kbs server rents for about $4000 Lindens a month. If you are a freelance musician or DJ in Second Life having you’re own streaming server is a huge advantage in terms of control, if you can justify the overhead. If you are a club or venue owner, haveing your owndn streaming server will allow to attract more artist and visitors to your venue and will allow you control of the music on your land.You can also search the internet and find Shoutcast streams for about $30-50US a month. Once you or the venue owner has rented a Shoutcast server you will be provided with the following information:

a URL with port number (in the form http://XX.XX.XX.XX:XXXX or http://hostname.com:port #) this is the URL that you will need for the land settings or to send internet listeners to.
A Host server IP ie. XX.XX.XX.XX
A port number ie XXXX
And a Password
You’ll need this information to configure the Nicecast Broadcaster.
You may also receive an admin login and password for configuring the Shoutcast server. which in most cases you won’t need to mess with. Warning: any changes to the default Shoutcast configuration should be undertaken with great care.

Configuring Nicecast

The next step is to configure Nicecast to send the audio from your Mac to the Shoutcast server. In Nicecast, go to Show Server under the Window menu or hit Command 2. Next, click on the drawer icon either in the upper left or right of the Server window
Once the Drawer is open, click on the + sign in the lower left of the drawer.

This will add a server called Untitled Server and a configuration form will open in the Server window. In the Name field, type in a name of your choice for your server.
Next select Shoutcast as the Server Type. In most cases leave the Account field blank. Type in the password that came with your Spoutcast server info. Fill in the Address field with the IP address or hostname of your Shoutcast server (Do not include the http://.) Fill in the port number from your Shoutcast server info. Leave the Mount Point field blank and leave the Public URL field set to Automatic. Next click on the radio button to the left of your server to activate it. You can now close the Server window.

There are a couple more settings that you should do in Nicecast. Make sure the Broadcast window is open or open it by going to Window>Show Broadcast or typing Command 1. Under the Source button you can choose which application you’re going to source your audio from. Nicecast will allow you to stream just about any audio from your Mac, but for testing and getting familiar with Nicecast, I suggest setting this to iTunes so that you can play music from your music library into Second Life. Read the Nicecast documentation to customize your source audio settings. Under the Info button you can fill out information about your “Radio Station” that you want your listeners to see. Don’t worry about the Titles button at this time. Under the Quality button you MUST set the Bitrate to same as your Shoutcast server. Set the Sampler Rate to 44.1 and the Channels to Stereo and leave the CPU slider in the middle. Under the Share Button, the URL of your stream will be there automatically. This is the Address you can give internet listeners or post to your Website. And finally there’s the Effects Button. The Effects button brings up the Effects window, where you can add audio effects and useful plug-ins like the voice-over module to Nicecast. I’ll refer you to the Nicecast documentation to use this window, for now you can close the Effects window. Okay, you are almost ready to broadcast, now we have to configure SL to receive the broadcast.

Configuring Second Life

At this point, you are configured to send your stream out to the internet., but to bring it into Second Life we need to configure the land to receive the broadcast. Launch Second Life and go to the land where you are going to be broadcasting to. In the case that the land or club is owned by somebody else, they will have to configure the land or if they already have a land stream changer, you may be able to enter the information from the Shoutcast server into the changer. In the case that you own the land, select About Land from the World Menu. In the About Land window click on the Media tab. Enter the URL with the port number of your Shoutcast server into the Music URL field. You can close the About Land window if you’d like. Now it’s time to do a test broadcast.

Starting your Broadcast.

With Second Life still open, switch to or open Nicecast. Click on the Start Broadcast button. You may get a “Quit and Relaunch” dialog if you have iTunes open, If you do, just click on the Quit and Relaunch button to relaunch iTunes. Next you should see the red on air light appear and when you start playing a song in iTunes you should see the level meter in the Broadcast window moving and you should see the name of the currently playing song. All of this confirms that you are sending a stream to the Shoutcast server. You may at this point be hearing both the source song and a slightly delayed version of the same audio through Second Life, this is good, it means you’re successfully broadcasting.. Go to the Control menu in Nicecast and choose Mute. Now, switch windows to Second Life. You still should be hearing your music. If not, make sure your media player is enabled and that you’ve hit the play button. If there is somebody else in your same location ask them if they can hear the stream. It should be working at this point. If not, here is a short troubleshooting list.

Trouble Shooting

I can’t address every problem you might encounter, but here are some of the common errors and their solutions.
If you get an “unable to connect to server” message in Nicecast, make sure that you entered the Shoutcast server info correctly in the Server window and that the server is activated.
And restart the broadcast.
If you are on air in Nicecast, but can’t hear in Second Life, check the land setting to make sure the correct music URL is entered, then, check that your media player is enabled and you’ve hit the play button.
If the Second Life stream sounds garbled or slow or fast, make sure your Shoutcast server and Nicecast are set to the same bitrate.
I sincerely that you got your stream up and running at this point. Be sure to take the time to read the Nicecast documentation thoroughly. And IM me, VJ Shojo, in Second Life to come listen to your show.

We are going to assume that we are recording a simple mono or single channel microphone for the purpose of this tutorial, But the tutorial works just as well for any stereo audio source such as a turntable or a mixer.

First off, we need to get audio into the computer. There are several ways to get audio into your mac: You can use the analog inputs if your Mac is so equipped or you can use either the Optical Digital(SPDIF) input, or the Firewire or USB inputs via a Digital Audio Interface.

Lets look at the analog inputs first. Most newer Macs have 1/8″ stereo analog Line in and Line out Jacks, older iBooks being the exception. Often using these inputs is the simplest and most expedient way to get audio into your Mac  you can hook-up most audio devices using a male stereo mini to dual male RCA adaptor cable. This is great if you want to use a turntable or mixer as an audio source. When you use the analog inputs on your Mac you are using the Macs own internal analog to digital convertors, while these are actually pretty good nowadays using an external audio interface is usually preferable.

Audio interfaces range from the $40 iMic interface, to various USB mics and headsets with built-in convertors, to high end interfaces such as the $500 Apogee Duet interface or Multi channel interfaces like the $700 Prosonus Firestudio. Depending on the interface, these can have USB, Firewire or even optical connections to hook-up to your Mac. The advantages that these interfaces offer are things like higher quality sampling rates and bit depths than the Mac’s built-in audio and they can also offer such features as direct monitoring and digital effects. For the purposes of this tutorial we’ll look at a USB Headset and a iMic USB interface.

Once you have an audio source hooked up to your Mac, the first stop in the recording process is the sound control panel. To go to the sound control panel, go to system preferences under the Apple menu and click on Sound. Click on the input tab and you will see a list of connected audio devices on your Mac Our list has the Internal Microphone, Line-in audio (the Built-in audio), iMic USB audio system, and C-Media USB Headphone Set . We’ll select the C-media USB Headset. Next we want to set our initial Audio levels, to avoid distorting our audio recording later on. Speak or sing into your microphone at a loud level, or start playback of your audio device. Adjust the input levels using the input volume slider so that the input levels are at about 80% of the sound input indicator bar.
While we are in the Sound control panel. We’ll want to set an output device. Click on the Output tab. And we’ll choose Internal speakers as an output device. Click on the red close button to close the Sound control panel and save your settings.

Next, we’ll need to open an audio recording application. GarageBand comes with all new Macs as part of the iLife suite and even if it didn’t come with your Mac, you should purchase the iLife suite just for GarageBand even if you’re going to do occasional audio recording on your Mac. We’ll note that there are many free and inexpensive audio recording applications available for you Mac including the open source application Audacity available at http://audacity.sourceforge.net. But for the purposes of this tutorial we’ll just address using GarageBand ‘08.

To do an audio recording using GarageBand, launch GarageBand. Again for the purposes of this tutorial, we’ll chose Create New Music Project and we’ll name our project “Recording test” and click on the Create button. In the GarageBand Window we’ll close the Keyboard window if it appears, since we don’t need that at the moment. Goto the GarageBand menu and select Preferences to open GarageBands’s preferences. Click on the Audio/MIDI tab. We’ll make sure that Built-in Output is selected under the Audio Output Selector, and that C-Media USB Headphone Set is selected under Audio Input. We could have selected from any of the devices that are connected our Mac or could have just used the system stings to use whichever device is selected in the sound control panel. While still in the Preferences window, we want to check our recording quality settings. Click on the Advanced tab. Notice the Audio Resolution selector. The selector has three options Good, Better and Best. We’ll choose Better to record in 24-bit resolution but export at 16-bit resolution for standard CD resolution files. Click on the red close button to exit the preferences panel and save our settings.

Next we’ll select New Basic Track from the Track menu. With our new track highlighted we’ll click on the “I” or track info button in the lower right hand corner of the GarageBand window. In the bottom of the Track Info pane You’ll notice an Input source selector: Ours is showing Stereo 1/2 (C-media USB Headphone Set) and since there is no need to make a stereo Recording of a Mono voice, we are going to select Mono 1 (C-media USB Headphone Set.) We’ll also leave the Monitor selector to Off to avoid any chance of feedback. Next, we want to check our recording levels again. Although they should be good from our system settings it never hurts to double check levels. Make sure that the Automatic Level Control checkbox is NOT checked. Speak or sing into your microphone at a loud level, or start playback of your audio device. Adjust the input levels using the Recording Level slider so that the input levels are at about 80% of the track’s level volume meter. Once your level is set, you can click the “I” button to close the Track Info Window.

Now we are ready to record. Make sure that our new track is record enabled. This is indicated by the red record enable button. When you’re ready to record, click on the record button in the transport controls. To stop recording, click the play button to stop the recording and playback or click the record button to stop recording but continue playback. This is convenient if you only need to record vocals in certain parts of a song, for example. But in most case you’ll want to click the play button to stop recording. You can now click the Goto Beginning button to go to the beginning of the track and click the Play button to hear the playback of your recording.
We’ll address editing your audio in a future tutorial, but for now we want to show you some of the saving and exporting options in GarageBand. First off, save your project often to make sure you don’t lose any of your recordings or the changes you’ve made to your project. To save your project, click on Save under the File menu or use the Command and S key shortcut.

To export your recording you have several options under GarageBand’s Share menu. We can; Send song to iTunes, Send your song as a Ringtone, Send Podcast to iWeb, Export song to disk and Burn song to CD. Lots of options. The simplest is to save your recording (or song) to disk. With the Compress checkbox unchecked simply click Export to save your recording as a standard 16-bit AIF file to disk. If you check the Compress check box and it will bring up the audio compression options including the ability to export as an AAC (Apple Proprietary) file or as a MP3 file for playback on many devices.

In addition to the export to disk option, you may find the Send song to iTunes option useful. By using the send to iTunes option you have the same options to save your file either compressed or not but you also have the option to add meta data to the file and the file will automatically be added to your iTunes music library. After you’ve exported you audio file and Saved your project you can close GarageBand.

That’s how to do basic audio recording on your Mac using GarageBand ‘08.

1. Basic recording and stereo editing. An example is transferring an editing your vinyl collection or a radio program.
2. Basic MIDI and audio multi-tracking. An example would be using Garage Band to compose a song.
3. Professional level MIDI and audio multi-tracking. An example would be live multi-track recording or video soundtrack work.

Over the next few weeks I’ll post a three part series that will provide a basic overview of what hardware and software you will need for each of these types of recording. Hopefully this will provide you with the information you needt o get started with whichever type of recording that you want to do.

Part 1. Basic Recording and Editing

For basic audio recording most Macs have an 1/8″ stereo audio input (iBooks are the notable exception and I’ll get to them in a minute.) and an 1/8″stereo audio output. These are usually on the back of the machine and are marked with picturesque microphone and speaker icons. Theoretically you can either plug in a line level signal or a computer type mic into the input and record at CD (16bit 44.1 KHz) quality. In reality due to all the radiant energy inside the computer case and the quality of the analog to digital converters the quality is somewhat less that “CD quality” but is for the most part acceptable.
One of the most common questions I encounter is “How do I record onto my iBook?” Your iBook comes with a built in mic (the little hole on the upper right hand corner of the display) however the built-in mic is acceptable for voice recognition but not much else. In order to do any serious recording on an iBook, you will need an audio interface. Audio interfaces start at less than $50 and can go well into the thousands. But for basic recording the $40 iMic from Griffin Technologies (http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/imic/) is an excellent choice. Even for Macs with built in audio inputs an external audio interface will be an improvement in quality both because an audio interface can record at a higher data rate (often 24bit 96Khz) and because they are less susceptible to interference from the internal computer components.
In order to monitor sound from your Mac you need to either connect powered speakers, headphones or a stereo amp and speakers to the sound output jack. You can set the sound output level either in the sound control panel under system preferences or from the speaker icon on the top menu bar of your Mac.
For basic recording in OS X the first thing is to confirm that you have audio coming into your Mac. To do this open System preferences under the apple menu and go to the sound control panel. Select the input button and you should see a list of all the sound input devices available to you. Select sound input to use the computers built-in audio or select your audio interface from the list. And if you have a mic or some other audio source (turntable, tape deck) you can use the input volume slider to set up your audio to the proper recording level (about 80% on the level meter.)
Besides having the capability to get audio in and out of your Mac you need some audio recording and editing software. Although Apple doesn’t include this software with OS X, there is an excellent freeware audio editor called Audacity, which is available at: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Sound Studio from Felt Tip software is an excellent shareware program and is available at http://felttip.com/ . Commercial audio editing software includes Peak from Bias at http://bias-inc.com/ Spark from TC Electronics at http://tcelectronics.com/ and DSP Quattro at http://dsp-quattro.com. For recording vinyl records a program called Final Vinyl ships with the iMic and a program called CD Spin Doctor ships with Roxio’s Toast Titanium 6 software. After setting up the correct recording levels in the Sound control panel you can launch your audio recording and editing software and record your audio.
Without going into a lot details about editing, I should address recording at higher sampling rates. If you are using an audio interface with 24bit 96Khz capability there are a couple things to be aware of. First take into account that 24/96 files are almost tree times as big as a 16/44 file, so managing your disc space and speed may become an issue. Also with 24/96 you must monitor your audio through your audio interface your standard Mac audio out wont work in most cases. And finally while it is generally a good idea to edit and manipulate your audio at the higher sampling rate, you probably want to export your final audio as a 16 bit 44.1 KHz aiff file. Once you have the file at 16/44 you can use programs like iTunes or Toast to burn audio CDs or compress your files into MP3 format.
Of course since you went to all the trouble to record your audio , you want to make sure that it is safely aarchived. Most audio editing applications allow you to save a “Project” file this file usually contains the raw audio file that you recorded along with a record of your edits and changes. It is a good idea to save these files and include them in your archiving /back-up scheme (You DO have a back-up scheme,. Don’t you?) In additition to your project files maintain an archive of your edited 16/44 files with some sort of file naming scheme that tell you what the file was, when it was recorded and which version it is.
In the next part I will talk about what you need compose and record music on your Mac.

This week I’m starting to tackle a little more complex subject than usual.
I’m working on a soon to be released Cell phone game (or as it’s known in the industry, a mobile entertainment project) and due to the paltry memory of some cell phones the music has to be delivered as a General MIDI file. No, General MIDI isn’t a French military officer; it’s the file format that we’ve come to know and hate from the animated Gif School of web design. The trouble with this project is that the original soundtrack was created in GarageBand. And I need to deliver a MIDI version of the thing. The reason is that as a WAV file the 30-second intro song would be well over 200K even at 8KHZ 16bit Mono. Whereas, the Midi file will be a modest 8K in size.

So the problem (challenge in suit speak) is to export MIDI from GarageBand. Impossible you say, “Everyone knows that GB can’t export MIDI.” Au Contraire, Mon fere!

Doable, yes. Easy Not so much. In fact this process involves at least three separate pieces of software. The first is an innocuous Audio Unit that’s included with GB called the DLS Music Device. The second is a freeware utility called MidiO (for Midi out) and the third is a MIDI sequencer like the relatively unknown shareware product, Easy Beat or a commercial product like Trackion, cubase or Logic Express.

First let’s attack composing for General MIDI in GB. A few of us already know that there are 126 General MIDI software instruments hidden within QuickTime. What if you could use them in GB? Well you can! I’ll try to make this as brief as possible so pay attention. If you open the Track info window for a software instrument in GB, you can scroll down the list of generators to the DLS Music Device. And if you click on the pencil icon for that device, it’ll bring up the interface for the DLS Device, such that it is.

Once there you will find a Sound bank menu that has a pull down menu that should say QuickTime Music Synthesizer by default. You may have some other items in this menu, if you have by chance come across some Sound Fonts in your travels, but I’ll get to these in a minute.

Right now let’s concentrate on the QuickTime Music Synthesizer (sounds sexy, doesn’t it?) If you were to play your MIDI controller at this point you would hear an acoustic Grand Piano. One that quite frankly sounds much worse than GB’s default Piano Software Instrument, but wait there’s more! The secret lies in your Midi controller’s program change command. Uh oh I hear brains frying. If you have a MIDI keyboard that’s worth any thing there is some way for you to do MIDI program changes. Which means you can change the Quicktime Music Synthesizer from its default piano sound to say something like a trumpet, which is sorely missed in the standard GB software instruments.

Read your keyboard’s documentation to see if your keyboard has a Program Change control. If it does your in luck. To overcome GarageBand’s glaring omission of a trumpet instrument, all we have to do is set our Program Change number to Number 57 and viola! Trumpet.

This seems to be an answer to many a GarageBand prayer. But wait because there is still evil afoot. If you record your newfound trumpet in GarageBand and then save the song you might be in for a surprise when you reopen the song. Your beloved trumpet has turned back into a piano. Bummer Dude!

Here is probably the coolest GB trick I Know. When you record your trumpet, hit a quick note at the beginning of your track and then do your Program Change as GarageBand is recording the track, this way the Program Change command is recorded in the Software Instrument track and will be there when you reopen the song. It is magic, No?

If you take it even further, you can record several Program Changes on a track. So not only could you have the number 57 trumpet but also the number 60 muted trumpet on the same track!

To find the program change numbers for all 128 General Midi instruments, Just Google General Midi Instruments and you’ll have a bunch of list to choose from.

While we have the track Info window open you might want to save a Software Instrument Called “DLS Device.” Make sure that you have the DLSMusicDevice selected in the Generator pull-down menu of the Track Info window.

Click Save Instrument button and save the instrument as “DLS Device.” And now you have an additional 127 software instruments for use in GB. Cool or what?

Okay, Okay I’m running out of time here, but there’s one more really cool thing about the DLSMusic Device. The DLSMusic device also plays Sound Fonts. What are Sound Fonts? Try Thousands, yes, thousands, of FREE downloadable software instruments. Whoa dude! Just search Sound fonts on the Web and you’ll come across more sounds than you can download in a lifetime. Take any of these .SF2 file and throw them into your Library> Audio>Sounds> Banks folder and they will be available to the DLSMusic device for use in GB. That ought to keep you busy for a while! Or at least until next week when I show you how to export MIDI files.

DLS and General Midi Part two, GarageBand’s Best Kept Secrets.

Last week I introduced you to the DLSMusicDevice which allows you to compose General MIDI songs within GarageBand. In part two of this series I’ll show you how to export your General MIDI compositions from GarageBand.

GarageBand is a powerful program but one of its most glaring faults is that it only allows you to export your music to iTunes. If you want to export a tune that you’ve composed using software instruments or the DLSMusicDevise you options are limited. The first and easiest method is to buy Logic Express and import your GarageBand composition into Logic express and then export a MIDI file from Logic Express. Of course if you have Logic Express it raises the question as to why you would compose in GarageBand instead of its big brother. For me, it’s a matter of simplicity. I like to sketch out my ideas using GarageBand as a “quick and dirty” tool then export the tune for polishing in a more sophisticated program. But I digress.

The second, and somewhat harder method of exporting MIDI from GarageBand involves the use of an Audio Unit plug-in called MidiO. MidiO is a freeware utility from RetroWare and can be downloaded from: http://home.comcast.net/~retroware/. Don’t worry I’ll post the link in the Noise section of MacAudioGuy.com. This plug-in will allow you to export a garageBand Software Instrument track as a MIDI stream. What this means is that you can only export one track at a time and you will have to a have some form of MIDI sequencer in order to record the MIDI stream. Kludgy? Sure, but you get what you pay for. So in order to use MidiO, you have to have some sort of MIDI Sequencer program. I like a cool shareware program called EasyBeat. Which is available from: http://www.macility.com/ . The next step is to set the generator of the track that you wish to export from GarageBand to MidiO.. Also set the MIDI output to MDI Virtual source in the edit window. Make sure that no tracks in GarageBand are set to record ready, because you’re likely to create a MIDI feedback loop. It’s far too easy to create a MIDI feedback loop with MidiO so be very careful. Next set EasyBeat or your MIDI Sequencer to use the MidiO as a MIDI Source and then set the sequencer to record. Once the MIDI sequencer is recording then hit play in GarageBand. If you’re lucky and did every thing right you should now be recording MIDI from GarageBand. Once you’ve recorded the stream, you’ll have to repeat the process for each track you want export and then you will have to offset the tracks so that they all start at measure one in your MIDI Sequencer. This process sounds more difficult than it is, but after a couple of tries, you’ll find it becomes at least tolerable.

Okay so now you’ve exported your software instrument tracks from GarageBand and have them as MIDI tracks in your sequencer. How do we turn them into a General MIDI file? The good news is that most sequencers make this fairly simple. In the case of Easy Beat, all you have to do is set the tracks instrument to an appropriate General MIDI instrument, and then after you have set all the instruments, export a MIDI file. And again if you’re lucky you will have a General MIDI file of your song.

Exporting MIDI from GarageBand is much more difficult than it should be, but now you know that it is possible, if your willing to jump through a few hoops.