PE3 - Garage Band - Getting your Compositions and Music Out (Part 3/3)

In this practicum I learned that it is extremely easy to get all sorts of media into Garage Band and even compose using a MIDI keyboard.  But this made me wonder, was Garage Band like "Hotel California" where you can checkin anytime you like but you can never leave? What are the options for moving things out of Garageband to share and remix?  It turns out that Garage Band offers nearly every option a audio enthusiast or musician could want.



Garage Band Export Options

 After you are done with your composition, you can send it to:

• iTunes
• a Ringtone for your phone
• a PodCast
• an MP3 (Export Song to Disk)
• or to a physical CD

In short, Apple gets it.  They are supporting the remix culuture in which we currently live.  Other companies are not so flexible with their output and export options. 

For those working with MIDI files, Garage Band will even let you output sheet music.  Is this exciting or what?  Now I can finally finish my Cello quartet, broadway musical, and opera.   Garage Band is more than just a drag and drop loop remixer.  It is a full featured studio program and I haven't even tried using a guitar or microphone.  I wanted to try filters and create an autotune filter and then sing a song, but there's always next week. The sheet music I printed for the Happy Song in Part #1 shown below.

Musical Score from Garage Band

PE2 - Garage Band + Yamaha Keyboard = :) (Part 2 of 3)

I have an older Yamaha PSR-410 keyboard and I wondered if it would be possible to get this ancient keyboard to work with Garage Band?

Me Playing A Tune on a Keyboard

The rear of the keyboard has the old 5-pin serial MIDI IN and OUT ports so there was hope.  Would these old serial ports still work?  Were they fast enough to interface with a high speed MacBook Pro?

MIDI IN and OUT Ports

I did some research on Amazon and found this cable, EMU Midi 1x1 Cable From Amazon. Thanks to the Amazon comment and rating system I learned that this cable would work in a MacBook Pro without any additional drivers or software?  Could it really be that easy I asked myself. Could this project really only cost $29.99?

Midi Cable

The cable arrived from Amazon and he moment of truth was at hand. I plugged it into the USB port and voila, Garage Band immediately recognized the external MIDI input and when I pressed a key on the keyboard it played a note using the active instrument in Garage Band.

USB Midi Cable Plugged into MacBook Pro

No more using the cheesy onscreen keyboard in Garage Band for me.   I can now record an instrument using a MIDI keyboard.  Mac truly makes this all too easy.  Also, the MIDI interface is blazing fast.  There is no noticeable lag between a keyboard key press and sound events.

Garage Band - Showing a MIDI Keyboard Recording

PE1 - Garage Band and MIDI Files (Part 1 of 3)

Learning Experience 1 - Going Deeper with Garage Band by Using MIDI files





Hope you enjoy the Happy Song! Did I mention that Macs rock?

BP12 OMM (One Minute Movie on iGoogle)

BP11 Comment to Sandy Lopez

Follow this link to Sandy's Blog to view my comments on Sandy's blog.  My comment was the first comment made on 10/13/2010.

(This line was edited in Adobe Contribute and is a test to see if it gets published.)

BP10 Comment to Ginny Holm

Follow this link to Ginny's Blog (The Holm Front) to view my comments on Ginny's blog.  My comment was the first comment made on 10/13/2010.

BP9 Cooklet (Web 2.0) Tool

This week I decided to dig deeper into the pile of Web2.0 apps and find something obscure. After digging through the pile for awhile, I found a site which might be useful for culinary arts teachers. This is the site that has the answer of "what's for dinner?" and is called Cooklet.com

Cooklet.com describe the site was follows:

Cooklet is a platform that enhances the experience of cooking and helps you organise recipes. Through our international community we aspire to develop dialouge and sharing of cuisine among users from all over the world.

Currently the platform is in beta version. We are constantly working on improving all the solutions, do contact us if you have any feedback and suggestions. 

I have found that most recipie sites on the Internet have the same problems.  The first problem is that you don't know if anyone has tried the recipe and second there is no rating system. Cooklet solves these problems by allowing users to share this information using their social network cooking platform as shown below.

For each recipe I can clearly see if anyone "cooked it" and how they "ranked it."  Additionally, members can blog about their experiences and share any changes or ideas they had regarding the dish.


Cooklet also adds a social media feature set to your Cooklet profile.  You can think of Cooklet as FaceBook for recipes and cooking enthusiasts.  Just like other social media sites you can have friends and send messages to them.  Cooklet maintains its own internal email system, similar to other social media sites.  Cooklet supports social cookbooks where you can maintain an online cookbook of recipes you found on the site and add personal notes which you can share with the community. Cooklet also supports forums and blogs for cooking related topics.  Below is a screen-shot of the Cooklet profile manager interface which details the available social networking features.

However the Cooklet experience doesn't stop with computer based social media. Users can use their extras to take Cooklet with you on your mobile device so when you are the grocery store you can look up your ingredient lists.  I believe Cooklet can also be run as a standalone application, but I did not test it. The screen shot below shows the Cooklet platform extras.

Enjoy Cooklet! I know I will.