GarageBand & Arts Festival
Audio
For ambient sound effects (rain, thunder, walking, raindrops...) here:
Or you can can freely download generic audio as an appropriate musical accompaniment here:
I have collated more resources here with ways to access audio, including sites that host music/sound effects all of which can be downloaded free of charge.
If it's a professionally recorded song, you can BUY it from iTunes or Amazon et cetera, it will only cost you a dollar.
Trim an audio clip
If all you want to do is trim an audio file you can do that by trimming in QuickTime, that is by far the easiest and simplest way.*
Edit Audio in iMovie?
Understandably, GarageBand can feel a little daunting as a audio editing tool, many teachers have found that 'cheating' and using iMovie for audio editing can work surprisingly well. You do need to drop in a generic image first, as iMovie won't let you add any audio until there is an image/video there first.
When you're happy with the audio mix you can export the audio, choose file, then choose Audio Only.
Fade out in iMovie...
Remember to fade out the audio at the end to avoid an abrupt finish! Unfortunately this little feature is not easy to find... Drag the little dot at the end of the audio clip to control the length of the fade out...
GarageBand
GarageBand is a tool worth learning when it comes to Arts Festivals, or anything that involves compiling an audio composition.
For Arts Festival, some reasons are:
- Drag and drop in an audio file/files and trim/sequence to suit your script.
- Add sound effects, loads available in the library, or download from a site and drop in.
- Ideal for rehearsals when you want to repeat certain bits of songs, from a certain point, over and over again...
- Essential if you want to use a mashup of different sections of songs/sounds etc.
- Can export to a range of audio formats, including mp3, no problem.
- Adjust volume levels for different elements, eg loud thunderclap, quieter music.
A common problem is that the AV team do not want the compiled audio as one file, ie the finished mix, they need the different tracks separated in order to work with their software/systems, and these audio files need to be mp3 files. Doing this is NOT obvious, hence this post...
Isolate and Share
Isolate the track/s you need to export by muting the others, then isolate the particular section of that track line by moving and indicating the cycle range.
Now Share > Export Song to Disk, but make sure you tick the box that says 'Export cycle area...' so it only exports the bit you selected above.
Now you'll have just that bit as a separate mp3 file, keep doing this for any other bits of your GarageBand project, don't forget to mute/unmute the tracks before you export!
*but it won't export to mp3, which our AV team insist on for some reason.
Backdrop Images
When searching for images for back drops in Google, look for images that are large, this means they need to be at least 2000 pixels in width if not more. To do this use the Google Search Tools:
Tools > Images > Size ...
Make sure you save the image, not just the thumbnail image!!!
For more generic images, you can find great high resolution images on these sites, free for educational use:
