New with this version of GarageBand is the How Did I Play feature. How Did I Play analyses and rates your performance. I hope Apple continues to feed us new lessons, as this is a nice way to learn. Their pacing is just about right and the ability to loop just the bits I want to concentrate on has helped me get the hang of chords that tie my fingers into knots.

The GarageBand lessons have been helpful. However, I’ve recently purchased a guitar with the notion that I might actually learn to play it. I’m a professional keyboard player so the keyboard lessons didn’t have much to offer me. Scrolling notation is an awkward way to read music. When you explore How Did I Play (which I address shortly) you’ll be happy for the full page view. A new View menu lets you quickly select from among these views.

Those with more experience won’t gain much from them.Īs with the previous version of GarageBand, this lessons window also provides access to the Mixer and Setup windows, where you respectively adjust the volume of the teacher’s voice, teacher’s instrument, background band, and your instrument, and configure your input and output devices (an audio interface or microphone, for example) as well as choose a notation view. If you’re new to playing an instrument, these pages can be helpful.

The Glossary entries are very basic, including such concepts as articulation, chords, hand position and posture, dynamics, music notation, and scales. Within this screen you can access the new Glossary feature, which presents common musical concepts linked to pages that offer text and, sometimes, video examples taken from the lessons. The additional lessons are as good as the basic lessons-clearly presented in a nice interface that shows Tim in widescreen at the top of the window, a keyboard or fretboard below, and a speed slider, play controls, and volume controls along the bottom of the screen. This isn’t surprising given that the complete collection of free lessons is over 25GB. This can be slow going-it took my Mac an entire day to download all of the lessons over a 4Mbit DSL connection. As with the basic lessons (excluding the first guitar and keyboard lessons, which are bundled with GarageBand), you must download these lessons via GarageBand’s Lesson Store. In addition to the eight basic guitar and keyboard lessons that were available with GarageBand ’09, GarageBand ’11 offers four additional free collections-Rock Guitar (five lessons), Blues Guitar (seven lessons), Pop Piano (six lessons), and Classical Piano (four lessons). Tim, the engaging instructor from GarageBand ’09, reappears in GarageBand ’11’s lessons.

Apple garageband for mac