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Hi Everyone,

In this lesson I'm talking about general mixing ideas, adding effects, EQ, and some extremely basic ways to master your track.

I made a little song seed for this lesson and you're welcome to watch me make it here.

This whole course is about how to get comfortable using GarageBand. At this point, you've learned general navigation skills in Lesson 1, how to record, manually input, and manipulate MIDI data in Lesson 2, how to use an audio interface and properly set gain levels in Lesson 3, and how to get a general sense of mixing and good recording process in Lesson 4.

In this lesson we talk a little more about mixing, but we mostly focus on:

• adding your own plugins to a basic track so you don't have to rely on presets

• learning how to "see" musical frequencies on the EQ spectrum

• learning to do a rough master of your track to get it to glue together a little and sound louder

The idea here is to make some music and just explore and experiment with effects, plugins, reverb, delay, etc. Have fun making something and get into the mix and EQ and share whatever fun, weird, cool, strange thing you come up with to the community forum. Or share questions and issues for troubleshooting.

Keep in mind, there are SO many facets to recording, mixing, adding effects, etc - I could spend a year on this stuff. I do intend to dig into more recording concepts in the future, but I feel that these lessons are a good starting.

Also, if you master all the skills in this lesson you'll know all the basics of Logic Pro X, the professional version of GarageBand with a lot more features and useful benefits.

Other lessons in this series:

GarageBand 1 | Getting Started

GarageBand 2 | Software Instruments

GarageBand 3 | Audio Interface & Setting Gain

GarageBand 4 | Recording Process & Basic Mixing

GarageBand 5 | Adding Effects and Final Mixing (current lesson)

Search for more lessons on the Lesson Archive

Files

GarageBand 5- Adding Effects and Final Mixing_v01.mov

This is "GarageBand 5- Adding Effects and Final Mixing_v01.mov" by Scott Paul Johnson on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

Comments

Killian Maduro

Scott, I think you are a really good singer you've definitely got a voice and your vocal melody lines are catchy.

Brian Campbell

Hey Scott, I really enjoyed this video. Thanks for taking the time to make it! Around 33:30 you start dragging around the EQ nodes and mention it sounds like an EDM song. Is there a way to create smooth transitions between different EQ settings for certain parts of the track? For example, let's say the song starts with the high frequencies filtered out for a few seconds and then gradually brings them back in to a "normal" level. Would you split the tracks up into small fragments and adjust each EQ separately or can you apply some sort of EQ transition effect?

Scott Paul Johnson

Hey Brian. There IS a way on Logic Pro and other "pro" software. The concept is called "automation." You're able to build a smooth transition with volume, EQ, Distortion, anything. As far as I can tell, there isn't a way to do that in GarageBand.