This page has the following introductory goals: awareness of the meaning of multi-track audio composing; some experience in editing an existing audio composition; the experience of how easy it is to create a copyright free musical composition and some study of lesson plans that use an audio composition tool in different content areas. This activity may be completed during class time or completed outside of class if there is not time. The audio created by multi-track audio editing can be uploaded as a stand-alone composition in its own right such as a music file or a podcastor or used in other media including video, 2D & 3D animation, as a single track in other audio editing and inserted into Web, blog posting pages, word processor documents and slideshow (e.g., Powerpoint or Keynote) presentations. GarageBand is used as an exemplar application, but other audio editors on other platforms can do some or more of its features.
Find a Macintosh computer. Start up the application called GarageBand, and take the Magic GarageBand choice. Pick a musical style. Choose a specific instrument for each instrument icon on the stage then click the Create Project button. Play the piece and listen on headphones. Is it a keeper? Should it be edited or is it time to start from scratch and create something new? A simple editing change is to modify the overall volume settings to highlight a particular instrument and balance others. A second more elegant step is to open a song's Master Track from the Tracks menu and set volume control points across the track's timeline to take turns highlighting or subduing different instrument sounds. See the screen shot example of the volume edits of a slow blue's creation.
From this five track composition that Magic GaragaBand creates, tracks can also be subtracted and/or new ones added. Additional tracks might include: voice over tracks from someone who makes up words to go with the song; other live instrument recordings that are made by playing along with the existing tracks; and tracks made from the other musical loops in the extensive built-in loop library. Listen to this 7 track example with screen shot in which voice over and a special effects track are added with applause and crickets. A bit of this experience and music explorers begin to realize they can invent their own songs, podcasts and radio plays without asking the Magic option to take the lead. It is far more fun to create your own composition from scratch.
Once some clicking has been experimented with to editing the piece, including something as simple as changing the volume up and down for different tracks, click the Share command in the GarageBand Menu Bar and save the file in MP3 format. Keep track of the folder on your Flash drive where this file is stored. It can be used in future chapters or other projects outside of this course such as on an opening Powerpoint slide.
Text directions are always open to a number of interpretations. To learn the simple creation features of Magic GarageBand, watch these clips below. You must have previously logged in with your Atomic Learning username and password for these links to work. You can find these same links within the Atomic Learning site by clicking the link below to GarageBand '11 Training or search for the complete set up Garageband tutorials at the Atomic Learning site.
If some detail in the screencasts does not match up with the version of Garageband on the Macintosh computer that you are using, then in Atomic Learning search for GarageBand and pick the tutorial version that is running on your computer. By clicking on the menu bar title GarageBand and choosing the subheading of About GarageBand, it will tell you the version you are using. This process can be used to determine the actual version of any Mac application.
Turn your composition in a file that can be taken with you. If needed, watch the tutorial on exporting or sharing your composition. For widespread playability across different computers and platforms, save it in mp3 format.
Once the file is on your Flash drive, quit GarageBand and play it. Notice that some other application, a media player, will play back the composition with on the Windows or Mac operating systems.
Once an audio or music file has been created, it can be shared or used by others in many ways.
Note the Insert command from the menu bar of Microsoft Office applications such as Word and Powerpoint. Within Word, go Insert to Audio, then Audio from File... to insert and make playable an audio file. Within Powerpoint go Insert to Sound and Music to insert and make playable an audio file. When the Office application file is saved, the audio file will be contained within the Word or Powerpoint file. Other types of media including text, images and video can be inserted around it.
Web authors may find a future need for putting audio on a Web page and sharing their creations with a global audience. There are two basic ways that Web page editing is done, from an application running from the local hard drive or in an online editor within a Web site. Both options will be discussed below.
Getting an audio file to appear in a Web page edited and saved to a local hard drive requires some quick copy and paste work. In the case of mp3 files, just copy the code below and paste at the appropriate place in a Web page using the HTML view of a Web page editor such as SeaMonkey, Dreamweaver or Web site editor. This method uses the cross-platform Quicktime player for playback.
<object classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B"
width="353" height="16"
codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab">
<param name="SRC" value="slow-blues-7tracks-149sec.mp3" />
<param name="AUTOPLAY" value="true" />
<param name="CONTROLLER" value="true" />
<param name="volume" value="40" />
<embed src="slow-blues-7tracks-149sec.mp3" width="353" height="16"
autoplay="true" controller="true"
volume="40"
pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/"> </embed>
</object>
Change the mp3 filename in two places (highlighted in red text) to match the file that has been created in GarageBand. If the Web page and the mp3 file are uploaded to your Web site then all is ready for the listening of future Web page readers. Both the HTML and the mp3 file must be uploaded into the Web account. Media is never technically within a Web page, rather it is always linked to a Web page through special HTML code. UCSF's Embedded Media HTML Generator provides a semi-automated way to insert a wider range of media types.
There are many different Web sites systems that provide an online Web page editor. Each will have their own procedures for inserting different kinds of media.
Google Sites provides free Web site service which includes an online Web page editor. For details on their technique, see the page titled "Adding mp3 to a Web page".
To go beyond these activities, watch other Atomic Learning screencasts for GarageBand, see the GarageBand tutorial or view the GarageBand support site. In addition to creating music, there are audio shows called podcasts that are easily created by audio editors. Adults will enjoy exploring NPR podcasts, but there are places for children to share their own podcats, such as Kid-Cast. Web sites can also easily be created that are behind passwords that only students and teachers know, which allow uploading and playing of podcasts.
There are other audio editors, such as Adobe Audition, Audacity and Aviary's Myna Audio Editor. The lesson plan activity ideas could generally be implemented with different editors.The details vary with each editor.
Some ideas will work across all content areas and age levels. One general lesson plan would involve creating a vocabulary movie, narration, picture and text that teaches the 10 or so vocabulary words for the week. The mp3 file that Magic GarageBand created would be trimmed so that some of it played as an opening to the movie, and some played along with the scrolling credits at the end. In the scrolling credits, add credit for the software that did the music composing. The job description might read something like Music Composition, then Magic GarageBand Tracks. Add credit also for the person who inserted and trimmed the music to fit the video segments. The job description would be Film Scoring, then the person's name.
View 2 or 3 of the lesson plan choices at Lesson Planet to see how different educators integrated GarageBand into activites in different content areas: http://www.lessonplanet.com/search?keywords=garageband&rating=3&search_type=related
Parent chapter - Updated May 30, 2012 Page author: Houghton