In Defense of GarageBand

GarageBand gets a bad rap when it comes to voice actors using it at home. Sure, it’s an app designed as a starting place for musicians (and non-musicians) to have fun making music. Apple also baked in some presets to help it connect with apps like iMovie, so you can add narration for your personal video projects. That’s just swell. I feel like their Ilife suite of apps from the not-so-distant past have been somewhat dismantled, leading to a lot of confusion. Their effort to keep things simple has actually made things worse.

So why does is it seem to be looked down upon by so many in the voice actor community?

There are perhaps several factors, not the least of which is operator error and a lack of understanding about what Apple is offering. People will point out that GarageBand can only handle a sample rate of 44.1. So what? You should ask those people to explain to you what that means and how it effects your ability to record voice overs. Some will point out that it’s lacking in very detail oriented editing capabilities. My question is often “How bad is your recording space that you need to obsess over crossfades for a single VO track?”. Perhaps the biggest issue is file management. Exporting takes is tedious in GarageBand! But what if I told you there was absolutely no need to do that in a session?

In my class, GarageBand for Voice Actors, you’ll walk away with a better understanding of all of these things. GarageBand is a perfect way to record takes, roll a backup of your session, and even edit VO. We cover the common mistakes people make and how to avoid them. We’ll cover best practices for setting up and saving sessions. But most importantly, you’ll learn that it’s a simple-to-use tool with an easy learning curve. I’ve been working with actors who use GarageBand to record national TV and radio commercials, audio books, podcasts and more!

Besides it being a free app that’s included on most Macs, it’s also one of the few free apps that passes audio in real-time, which let’s you connect and playback takes with Source Connect, Zoom & Skype (with some help), and more- like adding processing in certain situations in real-time! These are things you can’t do with Audacity or Twisted Wave.

So whether you’re just starting out or are a voice over pro, GarageBand has you covered better than you think!

If you want to learn more, signup and subscribe to my website, and stay on top of future class offerings. The next GarageBand class currently has a wait list- but if enough people are interested, I will run it again soon!