The problem with synthesisers, Brian Eno once remarked, is that musicians waste hours scrambling through the electrons for a new sound, when it's clear that what they're actually looking for is a new idea. Sit them down at a grand piano and that same musician will focus instead on the notes they're supposed to be playing. But then digital technology's like that. It may make tasks many times easier to achieve, but simultaneously it's many times easier to get distracted from the job in hand.

We all fall for it. The Great Lie that if we only added this or that alluring new upgrade, our working lives would be so much more productive we'd have loads more free time to spend chilling out with our loved ones. As if.

Over the years, messrs Steinberg, MOTU, Digidesign and others have periodically persuaded me to part with hundreds, maybe thousands of pounds in pursuit of that Lie. I've wasted not only money but whole working weeks that could have been usefully spent with pen, paper and a cassette recorder - trying to synchronise MIDI, or cajole some temperamental bit of kit into letting me even begin my working day.
I've stared in bewilderment at screens cluttered with enough windows, buttons and icons to fly a jumbo jet. I've fiddled for hours with Over-Easy compression, Parametric EQ, and infinitesimal degrees of quantization instead of getting on with the song I was supposed o be writing. And every few months I've ended up ditching the whole digital disaster and going back to good old analogue tape. Secondhand copy of Cubase anyone ?

And then, out of the blue, came GarageBand.
It's thirty years since I started making music for a living - and nearly twenty since I bought my first Mac. I've lived through Elvis, the Beatles, Flower Power, Glam, Punk, Rap, House, Hiphop and Britpop. In that time the technology of music has changed beyond all recognition. But trust me. There's never been anything quite like GarageBand.

Garageband is to Protools etc what the model T Ford was to the early Bentley. Technically inferior perhaps, but mass produced, easy to use, cheap to maintain, and a tenth of the price. The technology had existed in the hands of a privileged elite for years. It took Henry Ford to make it attractive and accessible for the Great Unwashed. And no doubt the motoring experts of the day turned up their noses at the Model T, just as Cubase snobs sniff at GarageBand today. It isn't a "proper" music application, they sneer: it's for amateurs to "mess about" with.

But "messing about" is the whole point: inspiration springs not from professionalism but spontanaeity and playfulness. As for not being a "proper" application, Garageband may have its quirks and shortcomings, but a penniless Prodigy or the next Missy Elliott could easily work around them. Thanks to Apple's acquisition of Emagic there's enough thoroughbred horsepower under the hood to coax 100% professional results from this astonishing little package. The floundering Music Industry is so desperate for anything genuinely fresh and original that any bona fide teen genius could bang out a couple of demos in Garageband, give them away free on the web and wait for the world to beat a path to their door.

But if you're considering a venture of your own into musicmaking on a Mac, take a tip from your Uncle Tom. Don't begin by lashing out two thousand quid on what experts call an "entry-level" recording system. In my experience, that kind of outlay (and learning curve) places such a weight of expectation on your early attempts it's easy to end up stilted, selfconscious and discouraged.

Instead, get up and running as cheaply as possible using Garageband, Sound Studio and iTunes and see how you get on. Cheaply ? At best it may not cost you a penny. (See sidepanel) At worst you might have to flash the plastic for a goreous new eMac with big bright screen, large hard disk, beefy G4 chip, half a gigabyte of RAM, state of the art superdrive, built-in mic and speakers, plus all three applications thrown in - for £750 including VAT.

The combination of Garageband, Sound Studio and iTunes will let you mess about, try stuff out, make mistakes, bang down quick and dirty vocals, sing nonsense, wander through vast acres of loops till something turns you on, rip off your favourite Nirvana riff. Above all be quick and prolific, finish whatever you start - and don't be afraid of making truly awful music.

Awful ? Perfectionism is the enemy of achievement. Veteran songsmith Tom Paxton always claimed only 2 songs he wrote in every 10 were any good, but that he had to finish the first eight before he could reach the last two. So just get going and have some fun. Don't worry overmuch about sound quality, originality or what anyone else will think of the results. Throw together a few rough tunes, burn them to CD in iTunes and bask in a glow of satisfaction. The artist's job is to finish the work, not to judge it.

Unless you own a PowerMac don't even bother buying a microphone or mixer until you're sure that computer-based recording definitely suits your personal way of working. Most Macs have a perfectly serviceable little mic built in, which is fine for rustling up a low-cost demo or two. To use this, open up the Sound pane in System Preferences, and under Inputs select "Internal Microphone". Play or sing at normal volume reasonably close to the computer, and set the level control so that the meter bounces healthily to the right but never hits the very top bar.


THE GARAGEBAND INTERFACE
Much has been said and written about Garageband's inspirational use of MIDI and audio loops, and the excellent 11-page "Garageband at a glance" PDF offers a good basic grounding that will have you making music in no time. The real excitement comes with making and using loops of your own - more on how to do this later. For me though Garageband's great triumph is not so much the loops as the interface. The way its underlying complexity is hidden from the casual user. Like its sibling iMovie, it's inviting and intuitive to use, while concealing some very nifty machinery indeed behind the scenes.

At first glance each track appears to have only the most basic controls: volume, pan, solo and mute. You press "record" to record, and press it again when you want to stop. But after a few hours or days of using it, you start to hanker for a little reverb and try double-clicking on the track title. Hey presto - a slew of wellcrafted FX presets appears. "Male Vocal Basic", for example, does just what it says - applying features compression, EQ, echo and reverb settings tailored by experts to enhance a man’s singing voice. Guitars, keyboards, drums, brass etc are all catered for.

Human nature being what it is, you soon start wishing you could tweak those presets to suit your own tastes... and then notice a little triangle marked "Details...". Click it, a whole new pane drops down where - sure enough - you can play with those EQ, reverb, gate and echo settings to your heart's content then save fresh presets of your own.

Eventually of course even an old Luddite like me starts to find these basic controls a bit primitive. You begin to itch for the more professional compression and musical EQ to be found in normal recording studios. And then you spot the two little pop-up menus nonchalantly marked "none" to put you off the scent. And Open Sesame ! An Aladdin's Cave appears with Apple's secret weapon - the magnificent Audio Unit Effects suite: 31-band graphics, Multitap delays, Filters, Limiters, sophisticated reverbs and more besides. Two separate AU effects are available on every channel.

The real jewel in the AU crown is a stunning four-way multiband compressor - a baby brother of the expensive costly units beloved of radio stations and mastering engineers the world over. Applied sparingly, multiband compression can sweeten up individual tracks or even whole mixes and make them sound like, well - a thousand dollars at least - if not a million.

The "Garageband at a glance" PDF is accompanied by a three part tutorial, which guides you through the simple audio and MIDI editing facilities. These provide just enough functionality for songwriting purposes without descending into anal geekery.

For more detailed information and advice however consult the web. A good starting point is The Garage Door - run by Victor Hookstra - which includes links to further resources, free loops and pretty much everything you'll ever need. http://www.thegaragedoor.com/

Apple's own GarageBand discussion forum also offers a vast anarchic stew of hints, tips, help and snide comments from fellow users at:
http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx/garageband/

Finally check http://www.missingmanual.com for David Pogue's "GarageBand: The Missing Manual" for an accessible and definitive technical guide when released.


WORKING AROUND THE QUIRKS
As you get the hang of Garageband and your recordings become more ambitious you'll gradually run into its quirks and limitations. This is where Sound Studio and iTunes come into their own. You may wonder why anyone would need a simple stereo editor like Sound Studio when Garageband itself can edit multiple tracks and apply a wide range of Apple AU Effects to your recordings.

The reason is that audio edits and effects in Garageband are non-destructive. The original sound files remain untouched (and untouchable) on your hard disk while edits and effects are applied on the fly by the computer's processor. By contrast, Sound Studio edits and treats the audio files themselves. First, though, you have to get hold of them.

Quirk Number One. The only way to get audio files out of GarageBand is via the Export To iTunes command, which is why iTunes needs to be installed and running. The reason you need to export and treat individual tracks is Quirk Number Two. The number of tracks GarageBand can use varies wildly from machine to machine. Processor speed, backside cache and RAM size come into it of course, but so do the number of effects in use, size, speed and fragmentation of your hard disk, current phase of the moon and whether there's an R in the month.

Suppose you've recorded an killer vocal rather badly, and need a processor-guzzling slew of compression, gating and EQ to make it sound good. Solo the track and export it to iTunes, then use Command-R within iTunes to locate the AIFF file itself. Drag this into Sound Studio. here you can use the Normalize command to optimise the track level, and the Resample command to turn it back into mono ("Export To iTunes" always generates a stereo file). Save the file and drag it right back into Garageband - where it now sounds great without any effects at all. Delete the original and that's it. Job done.

Quirk Number Three. The default settings for a new song is 120 bpm tempo with 4/4 signature in the key of C major - very limiting as a starting point. Solution: sing your song idea into Garageband "cold" without any backing or metronome click. Then drag in a couple of roughly suitable loops from your library and adjust the tempo and key of your master track to get an approximate match. Now start again from scratch using these new settings.
Finally Quirk Number Four has no solution. Garageband can record only one stereo pair of tracks at a time. If this is an insurmoundable problem - say for recording a band - you'll need after all to look at a more expensive package which can record multiple sources at once. You'll also need a dedicated Audio/MIDI interface. For an expert overview of the available choices see Mike Collins's article in the June 2004 issue of MacWorld.

A BASIC SHOPPING LIST
You need to plug headphones into your Mac to mute the speakers anytime you're recording with a microphone. Any comfortable pair that sound good to you will be fine. Koss and Beyer are much acclaimed by experts, but the make honestly doesn't matter much. The main thing is for you to feel comfortable wearing them and like the sound they make. If you already own a pair you like, so much the better.

Don't bother buying any special audio or MIDI interface unless you absolutely need one - it's just one more bit of fiddly kit to go wrong. To input MIDI information, use a dedicated USB music keyboard such as the M-Audio Keystation 49e (£69 from the Apple Store) plugged straight into the computer. Less is more.

For audio, once you're ready to move beyond the limitations of your Mac's built-in mic, get a small mixer such as the excellent Behringer Eurorack UB802 (£46 from Digital Village) to route mics, guitars, drum machines, keyboards - perhaps even a cassette deck - to the computer's audio-in socket. Never use professional grade audio cables for this purpose. They're bulky and cumbersome with heavy-duty plugs. The smallest tug can easily snap the socket clean off a laptop's motherboard. Instead use a cheap lightweight lead with moulded plugs (2 x phono to 1 x 3.5mm stereo minijack) to permanently connect the tape output of your mixer to the computer. The less plugging and re-plugging you do on the computer itself, the better.

For monitoring, either use your computer's own speakers for the time being, or connect the audio out to your existing home hifi with a similar cable.


Shure SM58 microphone - rugged, versatile, utterly reliable. Other mics may offer higher fidelity for particular instruments, but the SM58 is forgiving enough to record anything you throw at it - from vocals to bass drums. A great all-rounder.

Sound Studio from Felt Tip Software. Cost: bundled free with every new iBook, iMac or eMac - or shareware download £27 ($50) from
www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/audio/soundstudio.html

Soundtrack Loop Utility from Apple. Use Sound Studio to chop any sound file into short portions and export them as AIFF files. Soundtrack Loop Utility will convert these into Apple Loops format and allow you to define key, tempo and attributes with just a few simple clicks. Cost: free
ftp://ftp.apple.com/developer/Development_Kits/Apple_Loops_SDK_1.1.dmg.bin

Quicktime Pro from Apple. It's a bargain. Sooner or later you'll need its peerless import and export facilities, not only for audio but video too. Don't argue, just get it. Cost: £25

As you get more proficient consider getting a third party optical mouse with a scrollwheel. In Garageband, scroll-shift moves you left or right along the editing timeline - a vital and ergonomic timesaver.

Finally: the single most useful tool you will ever own as a songwriter. Fumble for it next time you wake with a killer hook running round your head. Take it on long car journeys and to band rehearsals or soundchecks, ready for the moment inspiration strikes. Sing, chant, mumble, strum and dictate your ideas into it as they occur. Play back your GarageBand mixes on it. Ladies and Gentlemen - I give you the humble plastic mono handheld cassette recorder.

The sound quality will never be great, but it'll unfailingly capture every noise you point it at, from whispered lyrics to deafening drums. Don't even dream of fiddling with DAT, Digital or minidisc for this purpose. The second you start fiddling with mics and setting levels, you begin thinking about sonic quality to the exclusion of music. Forget fidelity - capture the moment. Then turn it into an Apple Loop and use it in Garageband as a building block for your next
masterpiece. (Sony TCM-150 Cost: £25)

Tom Robinson is a BBC 6 Music presenter and songwriter who has worked with Peter Gabriel, Elton John, Dan Hartman - and written several Top 40 hits of his own.


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