Category Archive: GarageBand

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GarageBand tips, tricks and hacks

Updated Audiounit effects

  By glacial23 | 6/12/2007 - 9:37 pm | GarageBand, New Stuff, Software, synthesizers Leave a comment

I’ve finally uploaded an improved version of the Shortwave Emulator AudioUnit I put together last month. I think it’s a considerably better likeness of shortwave radio. I switched from a bandpass filter to a resonant lowpass filter. I actually used this version at an impromptu gig shortly after releasing the initial version.

And here’s another new effect – The Glacializer. It’s a rough approximation of Chris Carter’s Gristleizer, as heard on many Throbbing Gristle recordings. It seems that Sonicbirth’s oscillators are rather clicky at the low speeds they’re running at here, so be warned, and try not to run it too loud.

You can grab either of these in AU or Sonicbirth format at the Software page.

Hmmm, looks like KVR is bringing back their Developer Challenge. I’ll have to try to come up with something for it. Anyone have any ideas?

Free AU ports going Universal

  By glacial23 | 6/11/2007 - 8:38 am | GarageBand, General, synthesizers Leave a comment

ApulSoft is now doing Universal binary versions of his free AU ports. So far it’s just Crayon Filter by Betabugs, and Big Tick Audio‘s Cheeze Machine (but that one’s a biggie, because it’s a damn good string machine).

Now if he does daHornet and the C3 compressor, I may not need to use my trick for running GarageBand in Rosetta

Update(6/13/2007): C3 compressor has been ported. w00t!

SonicBirth is now OSS!

  By glacial23 | 3/21/2007 - 3:38 pm | GarageBand, General Leave a comment

SonicBirth, which is sort of like SynthEdit for OS X, has been GPL’d. This is almost as good as the Quartz Composer for AudioUnits idea I posted about a while ago. Now there’s no excuse for hundreds of new bizzare synths and effects for the Mac to start showing up.

Announcing – MIDILights

  By glacial23 | 1/4/2007 - 10:15 pm | GarageBand, General, New Stuff, Quartz Composer 2 Comments

I’ve finally finished a Quartz Composer composition that I’m comfortable sharing with the world. It’s a rendition of the clavier à lumières, a kind of light organ from 1915. As MIDI notes come in, it renders the QC view in the appropriate color for the note. So if you’ve been wanting to do a version of Scriabin‘s Prometheus: Poem of Fire, this will come in handy…
It’s nothing too fancy, other than the painstaking process I had to use to get something approximating a MIDI note number from QC. I may post about that later. Check it out and download it here, free.

Update: Download link was b0rken. I’ve fixed it, and as a bonus, added a standalone .app version for those who haven’t installed the OS X Developer Tools. Many thanks to SteamSHIFT for pointing out the brokenness.

GarageBand 4 features?

  By glacial23 | 1/3/2007 - 2:35 pm | GarageBand, General 2 Comments

MacWorld San Francisco is coming next week, and it’s pretty likely that iLife is going to get an update, with GarageBand getting revved to version 4.

Here’s what I’d like to see in a GarageBand update:

  1. The ability to have multiple projects open at the same time. iMovie HD 6 can do this now, why not GB too? It would be nice to cut and paste loops between projects without stashing them in the library as a workaround.
  2. More automation than what there is now (volume, pan, and the modulation/expression stuff on Software Instruments) – This probably isn’t going to happen (Apple do want people to move up to Logic, so they can’t give GB everything…). There are a few ways to fake this a bit, which I intend to demonstrate in a future article here later this month.
  3. Allow opening in Rosetta (or have some other kind of workaround to allow PPC-only AUs on my MacBook Pro, or pay apulSoft to Universalize all his ports). Even if this doesn’t happen, my previous instructions should still apply.
  4. Something like Quartz Composer for developing AudioUnits would be extremely cool – like an easy to use SonicBirth (I tried it a bit, but didn’t have any luck). It would probably lead to a glut of AUs along the lines of all the SynthEdit-based VSTis for Windows out there, but that’s a chance I’m willing to take. This probably outside the scope of iLife, but it would be killer inside, say the Leopard Developer Tools.
  5. Heck, I’d still like to see Apple come out with the “Asteroid” device that caused all the rumor site controversy a few years back. I have extreme doubts that this is going to happen, since the project was supposedly scrapped, but it would have been nice.