14 DAY TRIAL // Apple posted an official announcement yesterday confirming the availability of GarageBand for iPhone and iPod touch. The music app had been previously confined to the iPad’s big 9.7-inch screen.
I managed to get the word out in the neck of time, just as I was leaving the office yesterday, but I didn’t get the chance to let our audience know what else was new in GarageBand 1.1.
In addition to making it a universal app for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, Apple included a bunch of new features and enhancements that make the music-composing software even easier and more fun to use.
For instance, you can now create custom chords for Smart Instruments, and reset a song key without transposing original recordings.
You get support for 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures and you can transpose songs in semitones or full octaves.
Apple also threw in some new quantization options for recordings. These include, straight, triplet and swing.
A new audio export quality setting for AAC and AIFF (uncompressed) can be found, and there’s an arpeggiator available in Smart Keyboard now.
Finally, music fans get adjustable velocity settings for Touch Instruments and a bunch of other enhancements, including automatic fade out and improved audio import options.
“GarageBand turns your iPad, iPhone and iPod touch into a collection of Touch Instruments and a full-featured recording studio — so you can make music anywhere you go,” says Apple.
“Use Multi-Touch gestures to play pianos, organs, guitars, drums, and basses. They sound and play like their counterparts, but let you do things you could never do on a real instrument,” according to the iPhone maker.
GarageBand 1.1 is compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation) and iPad and requires iOS 4.3 or later.