If you have ever mixed using a good studio desk you know the value of the solo button. The solo button in GarageBand is good for isolating problems or fine tuning the sound of individual tracks but it cant be used when making a mix. The only thing you can do is to cut out all the tracks except those you want in the mix. Instead of destroying the loops or MIDI data though, make a new empty Basic Track, move the data to the new track in the same space on the time line and then mute that track. This way you can go back and use that data in the same place or somewhere else if you change your mind. If you have a long stream of MIDI data, use the Command+T to break it up into manageable pieces.
This screenshot shows how part of the bass loop has been cut out to mute parts of the measure. The second track has effects, the first is dry. You can hear this midway through the gipper dub MP3 file on the opening page
| Tip: when chopping up
a region of audio, be sure to use Command+G to turn off GarageBand's
quantizing of loop or midi data. |
You can chop up a sound within GB itself. Just select the sound, press
and the bottom of the window will open up a basic
wave editor like this: 
Set your cut points and use Command+T to create the breaks in the sound.
Applying effects to one sound or one part of the track
This expands the track muting trick to another level. A typical feature of most dub sound is applying effects to just one part of a sound. If you are dealing with loops, the only way to do that is to isolate the sound you want to effect. With MIDI data you can trim out the notes you need or with loops or recorded sounds, use the wave editing mode in the lower half of the screen to split out what you want to get to. [show example] Once again, make a new empty Basic Track or duplicate the track, drag your sounds there and apply the effects you want. You still are not going to be able to control the effects in real time, but some AU effects will let you have more control than the basic presets or the effects Apple provides. Generally look for a drop down menu option of "manual" and see what you can find.
 |
Here's
an example of ExpertSleeper's PingPong Delay applied to a track. In the
lower half of the screenshot you can see that the PingPong Delay is
applied first, then the Track Echo. You can see that the PingPong Delay
is set to Manual and I've brought up the details by clicking the pencil
icon. In this case I did not want a super saturated sound so I set the
"Dry Level" (the ammount of the sound before processing) much higher
than the "Effect Level" (the ammount of processed sound). When using
manual settings dont be afraid to play around and see how each slider
will change your sound. Learning your effects is the best way to get a
dub sound that is really yours. The default Echo and Reverb just dont sound that good but they can add some nice color to other effects. Of course you could just go and prove me wrong and do a great dub using only preset effects without any AU plugins at all. If you do, please post it to the net and let me know. I'll link you you here. |
Thats all I've got for now, I'll expand these pages someday, maybe.