Make a Great Song with GarageBand

by Jeff Tolbert

The following article is an excerpt from Take Control of Making Music with GarageBand (version 2.0), a $10 electronic book available for download from TidBits Electronic Publishing.

The excerpt begins after the reader has been walked through the mechanics of creating a beginner song. In the except, Jeff helps the reader get started with a more complex song.

MAKE A GREAT SONG

You've created a simple tune. It has a beat and something of a melody, but it doesn't really go anywhere, nor does it last long. The next song you're going to work on will be more structured.

PLAN THE SONG

When you start a song, it helps to consider your goal. Are you making a soundtrack to your latest iMovie project? If so, what's the mood of the movie or the scene? The clearer you are about your goal the smoother the process will be. You might want to make a little drawing of what you want your song to look like. Maybe you want it to start with a bang, then alternate between quiet sections and loud sections, and end with a longer loud part that fades out at the end (Figure 15). Or maybe it should start quietly and build slowly until the end. It's your call. GarageBand comes with a ton of loops, so you should be able to find something that fits your goal.

With your last song still open, start collecting loops for the next project:

1. Browse through the loops, and look for Deep Electric Piano 01, 02, and 05.

2. For each of the aforementioned piano loops, check the box in the Fav column meaning "Favorite"on the far right in the browser's results list (Figure 16).

3. Reset the loop browser (by clicking the Reset button) and then click Favorites. You'll see the loops you just checked.

Creating a Favorites list is a great way to save loops for later use, or to collect a bunch of loops you like and then try to fit them together into a song.

The following are the rest of the loops you're going to use in your next song, including the categories where you can find them. Find them using the loop browser and add them to your Favorites list.

• Synths: Contemplative Synth 04
• Shaker: Shaker 01
• Bass: 80s Dance Bass Synth 01
• Kits: Upbeat Funk Drums 01, 02, and 03
• Guitars: Blues Guitar 02, Electric Guitar Swell 01, and Thick Guitar Delay 01

Again, reset the loop browser and click Favorites. Double-check to make sure all the loops listed above appear in the Favorites list.

CONSIDER THE ELEMENTS THAT MAKE A SONG WORK

Musicians use a variety of tools to make their songs more interesting and capture what they're trying to convey. Since you're creating a song using only Apple loops, you won't be dealing with lyrics or singing. But even when you create an instrumental recording, you can use many different techniques to communicate what you want to.

This section aims to help you think about your song on a number of different levels. It may lead you to explore options you might not have thought of before, making your songs more interesting and effective in the process. I'll only touch on these subjects, because it's far beyond the scope of this ebook to talk about the intricacies of music theory. If you'd like more information, there are plenty of books out there on song-writing, composition, and theory.

MELODY

Since you're using only Apple's loops, you won't have a lot of choice with melodies for this project, but melody is still something to pay attention to. Without a singer, where will the melody be in your song? Melodies tend to be fairly simple, easy to sing, and, well, melodic. We also tend to hear higher-pitched tones as part of the melody, as long as they're playing something hummable. So if all you hear is a piano playing chords, you'll tend to perceive the top notes of those chords as the melody. If you're listening to a rock band and the guitarist is taking a solo, the solo becomes the melody.

Keep the concept of melody in mind as you put loops together. Avoid abrupt and jarring shifts in pitch, moving quickly from a fast series of notes to a much slower set (or vice versa), or creating overly complex lines. A good general rule is: the less complicated, the better. Listen to some of your favorite songs. Even if the music and the chord changes are complex, the melodies are generally simple and singable. Many Steely Dan songs, such as "Deacon Blues ", are great examples of this.

HARMONY

Melody can be thought of as the horizontal aspect of a piece, in that it unfolds over time, as the song plays; you can follow a melody as you might follow a line. In contrast, harmony is more like the vertical aspect of a song: the songwriter places chords at various points along the melody line to give the melody context and color.

Even if your song doesn't specifically include an instrument playing chords, it will generally have an implied sense of harmony. We intuitively listen to the bass line (or the lowest instrument if there is no bass) to tell what the chord structure of a song is.

If you listen to the song you created earlier (or listen to my version of that song, funkmorsel.mp3), the bass line suggests a certain chord structure for the song. In this case, the note that begins each repetition of the bass loop defines the key and the main chord of the song. The bass plays other notes during the loop, but since no other instrument reinforces these notes, they function as embellishments rather than as true chord changes.

Now listen to what happens when the horns come in. At the end of the horn melody, the horns play a new chord. The bass keeps playing the same notes it's been playing, but the horns introduce a new harmony on top of it. The two work well together, and there's musical interest created by the interplay between the two harmonies.

You don't need to understand the theory behind your harmonies to come up with something new and exciting. This is one of the neat things about GarageBand: you can throw things together quickly, and sometimes you surprise yourself with the combinations that arise. Don't be afraid to experiment!

Rhythm is the beat or pulse of a musical phrase. Some rhythms are groovier than others; Stevie Wonder is a far sight funkier than John Philip Sousa. Straight, rigid accents that land directly on the beat are not funky, but add some accents on the off-beats and people will start to dance.

Remember that you don't have to fill every beat. Trying to make your song groovier by piling on tons of percussion probably won't work. Having a few instruments play complementary rhythms will have a much greater impact than a complicated mash of sounds and beats. Accent certain beats and de-emphasize others, and leave some holes in your rhythms. It's the contrast between the accented and unaccented beats that makes a song really move.

Be sure to think about the rhythmic quality of all the instruments, not just the drums and percussion. For instance, the guitars in a Rolling Stones song contribute just as much to the rhythmic push as the drums do. Likewise, the drummer for Talking Heads commonly played simple, straight drumbeats; the rhythmic interest came from the other instruments.

TEXTURE

It's easy to describe texture when you're talking about physical objects like clothing, food, and sculpture, but what is musical texture? Simply put, you can think of texture as the relationship between what the different instruments are doing at any given moment. Maybe the piano is playing chords while the bass is holding long notes and the drums are playing a complex rhythm. That's one kind of texture. Another is when several instruments are all playing the same insistent rhythm. Yet another is when most of the instruments drop out, leaving one playing alone for a few measures.

Keep an eye on the texture you're creating when assembling a song. If your song is especially busy at a particular point, you may want to simplify some of the parts to create contrast and tension. Conversely, if there's a long, slow part in your song, maybe it would sound interesting to bring in a more active element over time. You can even do this visually; if you notice a lot of short, choppy waveforms and busy Software Instrument loops, try swapping one of them for a loop with more space or longer notes. Look at the song you created earlier for an illustration of this: the drums and the guitar are quite active, and the bass is slightly less so. Most of the contrast comes from the horn part with its long rests (the flat lines) and held notes.

DYNAMICS

If you listen to your favorite songs, you'll notice that few of them stay at one volume level or one level of intensity all the way through. The quietest, most tender ballad generally has a chorus that is more emotional and energetic than the verses, and most have a crescendo of feeling at the end. Conversely, the most head-banging, amps-to-11 heavy metal song will usually have a quiet moment or two as a break from the mayhem.

These differences in dynamics provide variety and contrast, making the song more interesting. The loud and exciting parts accentuate the quieter moments and vice versa. Without its slow, strange verses, the chorus of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” wouldn't be nearly as exciting.

TIMBRE

Timbre (pronounced TAM-ber) can be described as instrumental tone color or sound quality. Imagine a piano, a guitar, and a bagpipe all playing the same note. Timbre is the color of the sound that enables you to tell the instruments apart.

Sometimes you may find a loop you like but the wrong instrument is playing it. If it's a Software Instrument (that is, if the loop is green), you can easily change it to a different instrument or to a subtle variation of the existing instrument. If the loop sounds like an acoustic guitar, for example, you can change it to an electric guitar, a piano, or any number of other instruments. You may want to think about doing this in the middle of a song: have a part that starts on flute and switches to organ part-way through. (The later section Add bass and percussion discusses how to switch instrument sounds.)

One possible way to add excitement to a song is to change the timbre in the middle of it. Notice this as you work on your next song. It starts with a round, mellow electric piano as the main instrument; then, about halfway through the song, the piano drops in prominence and guitars become the primary focus. The piano pops back in later to tie the two halves of the song together, but it never quite regains its spot as the primary instrument until the end.

Discuss the Make a Great Song with GarageBand excerpt.