Choosing Instruments

Go to GarageBand and view the various instruments that you can use. Choose the four main instruments that you want to start to work with for your song. Do not spend too much time doing this; you can always change later. You may use musical typing, play real instruments and record, or you can use loops. Although you may not use loops that use more than one instrument per track. Also, try not to overuse a certain tune or beat. It would be nice to hear fresh song tunes that are not repeated from past projects. The more music that you record originally, the better.

You must have a minimum of two musical typing that are by you; they can either be main parts to your song or smaller supplemental parts. Besides these two required instruments that you must play, you are allowed to think of a tune that you want and ask a friend to play that music for you. The music must be original or modified enough to be original. Make sure you are directing the music you are requesting and not just relying on them to come up with something good for you.

Watch the video tutorial below to learn how to choose loops wisely if you are going to use them.

In posterous, write a description of the four main instruments you will be using or take a screenshot of the garageband tracks. Also, indicate the two instrument ideas you will use for your musical typing or instrument recording.

In GarageBand's track list on the left side, you need to know and reconize each of the colors so you will know the track type:

GarageBand Track Colors

purple: "Real Instrument Recordings"

blue: "Real Instrument Loops"

orange: "Audio File"

green: "Software Instrument"

Then in GarageBand, go to Share > Export song to Disk and save it as an MP3 and post it along with a description of the four instruments you chose, a screencapture showing your loops in GarageBand, and the genre you selected.