Sometimes it pays to read the help files

[mmcirvin]

I finally learned how to create notes in the GarageBand note editor instead of just copying them: You command-click where there is no note already. I would never have discovered that myself.

There already has to be a region created before you can make notes in it, though.

Comments

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Starting to sound like Hyperscore (http://www.media.mit.edu/hyperins/projects/hyperscore.html), now. (It's windows-only, sorry.)

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

GarageBand's interface is a bit more traditional than that; it seems to be an evolutionary descendant of earlier, more expensive sound and MIDI editors, that also puts in one place things that were previously done by multiple programs. As I said, the primary emphasis is really on capturing direct performance with an instrument or microphone plugged into the computer, but you can use it as a standalone composition program as well, contrary to what some early reviews have said, and once you get the hang of it it's actually pleasant to do.

(Except for dealing with the remaining interface bugs: it works pretty well on the whole, but this is definitely young software. There seems to be state information stored with each note that sometimes gets out of whack: the key modifiers for doing different editing operations on a particular note will sometimes have the wrong effect, and notes played on the screen keyboard are occasionally created in a strange state in which they won't play until you edit their length, even if you don't change it in the end.)

I'm having fun fiddling around with it, though nothing I've produced so far is good enough not to be embarrassing if I play it for others. I'm slowly picking up some rudiments of music theory by experiment. I've always been more interested in music theory than in actually learning how to play an instrument, so being able to compose for robots is fascinating to me. (To keep samantha2074 from getting peeved I should hasten to add that if I actually wanted to compose for human players, some playing experience on the instruments involved would be crucial. But this isn't one of my goals in life.)