GarageBand lets you create music of your very own. If you're already a musician, you'll probably flip over GarageBand; it combines the CD-quality samples of Apple's Soundtrack software with the hard-disk recording features of Digital Performer and the canned rhythm tracks of Band in a Box. But what's really mind-boggling is the way this program can turn the inspiration of musical novices into commercial-sounding demos. Imagine how many thousands of singers and instrumentalists, though blessed with enormous native talent, remain undiscovered because they lack recording studios and backup bands. For them, GarageBand may open a lot of doors--or just offer a lot of fun.
GarageBand: The Missing Manual is an authoritative, witty guide to constructing digital recordings with GarageBand.
David Pogue, Yale '85, is the weekly personal-technology columnist for the New York Times and an Emmy award-winning tech correspondent for CBS News. His funny tech videos appear weekly on CNBC. And with 3 million books in print, he is also one of the world's bestselling how- to authors. He wrote or co-wrote seven books in the "For Dummies" series (including Macs, Magic, Opera, and Classical Music). In 1999, he launched his own series of amusing, practical, and user-friendly computer books called Missing Manuals, which now includes 100 titles.
David and his wife Jennifer Pogue, MD, live in Connecticut with their three young children. His web site is www.davidpogue.com.
Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. This book was written and edited in Microsoft Word X on various Macs. The screenshots were captured with Ambrosia Software's Snapz Pro X (www.ambrosiasw.com). Adobe PhotoShop CS and Macromedia Freehand MX (www.adobe.com) were called in as required for touching them up.
The book was designed and laid out in Adobe InDesign 3.0 on a PowerBook G3, Power Mac G4, and Power Mac G5. The fonts used include Formata (as the sans-serif family) and Minion (as the serif body face). To provide the apple and command symbols, custom fonts were created using Macromedia Fontographer.
The book was then generated as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file for proofreading, indexing, and final transmission to the printing plant.
Comments about oreilly GarageBand: The Missing Manual:
I've been waiting for months for this book and consumed it when it finally arrived. It's as good as I had hoped, with great examples and hands-on funny training that really works for me.
What's missing? A little more on the advanced business of working with MIDI keyboards and new soundfonts, since theM-Audio 49e has so little documentation, and most of the downloadable soundfonts require special decompression.
But get the book if you want to play with GarageBand! It's everything you can imagine and more.
