Better Orchestral Sounds For Garageband Mac

EQ is the most basic, yet powerful way to enhance the sound of any instrument. It takes practice, but you can hear the difference it makes when you compare i. GarageBand ‘09 comes with more than 100 software instruments, and each of those has dozens of presets that can sound like distinct instruments in their own right. That is a truly astounding. What better way to add some embellishments to your songs than with an orchestral plugin? Even better if its free, right? Orchestral samples, and samples in general, have come a long way. They were practically unusable back in the day, but now, even though you can hear the difference between a sample software and the The 10 best Free Orchestral VST/AU Plugins That Sound Great! But GarageBand can do much more than this: it gives you complete control over its Software Instruments. You can sculpt synth sounds, re-create vintage instruments, change a seventies sound to an '80s instrument, create wonderful electronic sweeps and swirls in synthesizer pads, emulate your favorite artist's axe, etc etc.

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3. Better Orchestral Sounds For Garageband Mac
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When you download GarageBand from the Mac App Store, you’ll immediately get 50 sounds, 500 loops, 1 drummer, and 2 basic lessons for guitar and piano. Likely, though, you want the full package.

Yeah, this is a great feature of Audio Units in general. I own the Native Instruments B4 and Pro-53. And the neat thing is, for each preset included in the Pro-53 (not including my own), you can have over 500 new instruments (that's a lot of legwork to get set up).

Better Orchestral Sounds For Garageband Mac Pro

So, do you happen to know if this will work with Samplers as well? I've been able to get AmpliTube working in there (even though the redraw was a little weird) but I'd love to get access to all of SampleTank's samples...

It works fine with Native Instruments Battery. You should be fine so long as the Sampling Software supports Audio Units.

For those of us new to the whole synthesiser voice thing...
Where does one get instruments that best replicate orchestral instruments? Is this a software package or do I need to have some sort of hardware?
Thanks for one who has been out of the 'loop' since the days of the Mini Moog. (actually, not THAT long)

It depends on the amount of money you're looking to invest. The digital music making world is choc full of available applications that emulate everything from synths to strings. For starters, one of the cheapest and easiest to use alternatives is the GarageBand Jam Pack, which includes a good array of extra string settings for GB (not perfect ones, but they get the job done).
If you DON'T want simplicity and you have money to burn, a lot of pros look to the Mark Of The Unicorn (MOTU) MachFive Software Sampler (for around $395). You'll then have to buy a decent orchestra sound library for the sampler to sample from. The most extensive is Sonic Implants Symphonic String Collection (which runs $995 for the full version of 12.3 GB of high quality orchestra samples.)
There are a lot of mid-range alternatives, too. If you want to find out more, Electronic Musician Magazine (www.emusician.com) does a pretty good job of evaluating and highlighting what's out there.

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I am not looking for loops now, I am looking for 'voices' that I can assign the MIDI tracks to. Is this what these items are? I think I should look seriously into the Jam pack.

No, these are not loops, these are actual sampled and/or processed voices. It works the same with the high end software and Jam Pack. I have a layout of all the instruments that you will get with Jam Pack posted on my site if you want to take a gander:
http://www.promotetheband.com/extras/garageband.htm
Hope that helps.

Thanks a bunch for the list.

Unless you’re paying $200 for MIDI sounds, chances are good that your free MIDI sounds are… awful. This is especially true of strings – violins, violas, cellos, double bass; if it can be played with a bow and was free, the MIDI version doesn’t sound that great.

That being said, there are ways to help make your MIDI strings sound a little bit less pathetic and a little more realistic in your mix. This guide won’t make your stock Garageband strings sound like a real violinist actually played them, but it (hopefully) will make your stock sounds a little more bearable.

On Velocity and Quantization

Just like with MIDI drums, to make your MIDI strings sound most realistic, you shouldn’t just keep all your notes’ velocities at the same level. (In Garageband I think the preset is 98.) Varying your velocities within about plus/minus 15 steps is a safe place to keep it so that you get variation, but it still maintains a similar intensity.

The key to improving the realism of your MIDI string sounds is to humanize them – so you change the velocity, and you change the quantization. You don’t want to quantize your notes so that they begin right on the beat – about 80-95% is a good place to stay.

One of the hard things with strings and quantization is that the samples don’t always start playing right at the beginning of your MIDI note. To just keep your strings in time with all the other instruments, you may have to pull their start time a little bit back from the beat you want them to play on.In the first picture the notes are all aligned right with the beat. But if the sound doesn’t start right away, it can make your strings sound sloppy. Like the second picture, try pulling your notes back so that the sound starts right on the beat to help keep your recording tight.

Use Different Instruments and Split Up Tracks

If you can find some decent free MIDI sounds of each individual instrument in your string section (check out resources for some links!), you’re already light years ahead of Garageband’s stock. Use a different MIDI instrument for each of your instruments – violin, viola, cello, and double bass are the standard string section.

Even if you’re just got some stock “Orchestral Strings” instrument, try to have a unique track for each of those instruments, and keep notes that would fit for each instrument unique to that track. Just because you don’t have a specific MIDI sound for each instrument doesn’t mean you can split them up that way! Here’s a very generalized range that you can use to guide your track splits:

Better Orchestral Sounds For Garageband Mac

• Violins can start as low as G3, and go as high as the spectrum allows
• Violas can start as low as G1 and go to about D5
• Cellos start as low as C2 and go as high as A4
• Double basses are anything lower than G1

Those notes are by no means scientific or definite – they’re just a starter’s guide. I tend to have each instrument playing 3 octaves, with their lowest octave playing in the same range the instrument that’s lower than them, and their highest octave playing in the same range as the instrument higher than them.

For example: Violin would play C4-C6, Viola would play C3-C5, Cello would play C2-C4, Double bass would play C0-C2.The tiny little letters on the keys on the left help me determine where to keep my notes.

Layer Your Sounds

If you’ve got computer power to spare, one of the simplest ways to make a strings track sound more realistic is to layer sounds. Play duplicate tracks (same notes) with different instruments.

For example, say you’ve got a violin part, and you’re using an instrument that has just the violin. To give it more oomph, you can copy/paste the notes into a new track, and use the Smart Strings instrument. Bam! Sound improved.

Modulation and Mixing

One of the awesome things about Garageband’s Smart Strings is that by turning on the modulation, you can change the kinds of sounds that play. You can get staccato, pizzicato, and legato all out of one track instead of needing to have different MIDI tracks specifically for the different ways to play.

Play with the modulation on your different instruments to see if you can get any extra sounds out of your MIDI.A short little guide for playing the Smart Strings with Musical Typing:

• 3 is legato – smooth, blends together, good for long notes
• 4 is a staccato – short, jerky notes played by the bow, this is a shafting sound
• 5 is another staccato – same as above, slightly different technique
• 6 is a pizzicato – short, plucked notes
• 7 is another legato – same as 3, more or less
• 8 is another staccato – similar to 4 and 5

Mixing is the last key thing you can do to get your strings to sound more realistic. First off, do your panning well. Give each of your MIDI strings its place in the stereo field.

Finally, feel free to EQ those suckers. It’ll help clean up the sound, at the very least!

These are the things I have found take my crappy sounding strings and make them more palatable and authentic. The vice of MIDI (it sounds terrible compared to the real thing) is also its blessing – it’s a different sound than you’ll get from a real instrument. Use that to whatever ends you will.

Better Orchestral Sounds For Garageband Mac Download

If you have any questions, let me know in the comments. You can always send thoughts, suggestions, and questions to justanotherhalfling@gmail.com as well 🙂 Thanks for reading!