iLife ‘08-GarageBand Review

Most consumers are moving towards the digital life, so it only makes since to create programs for the lifestyle. iLife is one of those programs. And iLife isn’t one giant program as some may think; iLife is composed of five applications - iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, iDVD and Garage Band. These applications are designed to help you and your digital lifestyle, and they do so with Apple style-beauty and simplicity. This is the last part of my review on the GarageBand application for iLife ‘08.

I love creating music, so this is my favorite application. The latest version of Garageband has some visual enhancements as well as the addition of multi-track recording, Arrangements, a Visual equalizer and more. A great feature that I really like is “Magic Garageband” which allows you to try-out different instruments into the genre you’re playing, letting you create a virtual band to play with before opening a project fully. I can play a number of instruments so I can spot out a bad tone, but if you are tone deaf like some people, you may not produce the best sounding music using this feature.

Another nice feature is called multi-take recording, which allows you to combine different takes of the music and put them together. For example, if you crashed the guitar solo but got the chorus, you can fuse them together. This feature is also found in Soundtrack Pro 2, which is another neat music making application. The previous version of Garageband really focused on podcasting, but this new version puts the focus back on music, which is a plus for me.

I’m no musician, but I can say that GarageBand is not perfect. I wish there were more voice enhancing effects for audio production. Moreover, I wish there were more effects for adjusting audio like noise reduction and normalization. A musician might be able to give you a better idea of the comprehensive operations of Garageband, but I find it well thought out, simple, and just plain fun to use. GarageBand is designed to get the non-musicians involved in making music too. I have been messing with these types of programs for years; however, if you are a new user, it’ll take some time to get use to. I wish Apple could port it over to PC so others could experience it.

This concludes the iLife ‘08 application reviews. I hope you enjoyed it. Check back soon, as I will be taking the next few days to generate reviews for the iWork ‘08 application suite. I was able to get my hand on that suite also, and I am not disappointed.