DDF 102 – Music for Film Week 7: Strings in GarageBand
You may have noticed that there are not that many long sustained string sounds in the loop libraries that come with Soundtrack or GarageBand. Fortunately there is a way you can make a credible string orchestra sound using GarageBand, even if you are a non musician. Considering that it's bundled with every Mac sold, it's amazing what this little program can do. You can find both the GarageBand project and a series of example files in the accompanying folder. 1. Open GarageBand and choose 'New Music Project'. If the last project you were working on comes up, just close it, and you'll go to the startup screen. 2. In the next dialogue give your project a name, say 'sustained strings' and save it somewhere you'll be able to find it later. Set the tempo to 40bpm. The other settings can be left at their default values of 4/4, C major for this exercise. 3. You should now have the basic GarageBand screen with the default Grand Piano track. Choose 'Show track info' from the Track menu, and change the instrument to Strings > Orchestral Strings. You can see a lot of extra instrument options that I have on this machine since I have several of the Apple Jam Packs installed. You'll probably only have Orchestral, Hollywood and Lunar stings to choose from.
4. At the bottom of the Track Info window click on the 'Details' triangle under the violins icon to show the effects. 5. Choose AUMatrix Reverb from the drop down menu under compressor to add that effect. It's much nicer than the standard reverb (which you can set to 0). Choose Cathedral from the presets drop down menu.