14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has officially released GarageBand for iPad, the company’s music making application originally available on Mac OS X as part of the iLife suite of media-centric applications.
The simplest way to describe GarageBand is “a collection of Touch Instruments and a full-featured recording studio” all in a 400MB application that costs a mere five bucks.
Immediately downloadable from the iTunes App Store, GarageBand lets iPad owners use Multi-Touch gestures to play pianos, organs, guitars, drums, and basses, as well as use Smart Instruments, which make it easy for those with no musical knowledge to sound as good as pros.
“Plug an electric guitar into your iPad and play through classic amps and stompbox effects,” reads Apple’s description.
The app allows music fans to use the built-in microphone or a guitar to record, or capture their performance.
Once they’ve settled on something they like, users can mix up to eight tracks to create a song.
According to the company headquartered at 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California, functions for composing and editing a song include the following:
• Arrange and mix your song with up to eight tracks using Touch Instruments, audio recordings, and loops. • Trim and place musical regions exactly where you want them to play. • Use the Mixer to fine-tune each track’s volume – solo or mute any track, or adjust pan, reverb, and echo. • Use over 250 professionally prerecorded loops as a backing band to your song.
Creations can just as easily be shared on various social networks with a few taps. Projects can also be transferred to a Mac for further editing on the full version of the GarageBand application for Mac OS X.
GarageBand for iPad works with iPad 2, as well as with the original tablet running iOS 4.2 or later.