Dear Apple: WHERE Are These GarageBand iOS Features?

Dear Apple: WHERE Are These GarageBand iOS Features?

GarageBand iOS is amazing, really powerful and (amazingly, still) free. It has also had no shortage of love lately from Apple with literally thousands of new loops, instruments and drum kits added in the last few months.

So we really don't have much to complain about right?

WRONG.

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———TIMESTAMPS———

00:00 HELLO!
00:37 DISSAPOINTMENT
02:18 NORMALIZATION
03:48 AUTOMATION
05:02 MASTER TRACK
05:55 COMMUNITY IDEAS

———FREE GUIDES———

———GEAR———

———SOCIALS———

#garagebandios #garageband #garagebandfeatures

[Tyranitar]

I have something else, changing tempo and time signature mid song. Also choosing something other than the 3 default time signatures. Also an orchestral type soundpack with percussion would be great.

[sticknmove]

1. A Mixer
2. The FX app to be available on every track
3. Mute sliced parts
4. Colored Tracks
5. Loops to automatically match key

[jamesmanigault-bryant]

My 9-year-old son is a beat maker and a DJ. He says… “1. More packs and instruments.
2. Filter on 1 instrument.
3. Collaborations with other musicians, artists, DJ’s, and DJ celebrities.
4. Really cool dubstep instrument.”

[prodmorningstar]

I would like the ability to make my own custom drum kit, so I could put my own sounds in the beat sequencer.

[sleekitwan]

Getting feisty in your old age Patrick! No, you’re not that old. I am. Absolutely agree on your three main points…and of course in practice, normalisation is probably intertwined with the Master Track option, so I would see both those being bundled as one update. I am quite happy with the weird ‘mastering’ method your friend and not mine (!) Pete Johns explained, of taking the ‘shared’ or exported stereo pair output if a song, and grabbing it in a song project specifically set up for the purpose of mastering.

BUT of course, we fall foul of the normalisation curse that afflicts the final output - I set the fantastic fabfilter Pro-Q3 to only let the song out at -6dB and the freakin’ GB iOS ignores my carefully-calibrated volume level and smashes the stereo pair up to the 0dB roof. In practice the effect is that iOS compresses, expands, and EQs your song, according to some brutal algorithm. This I could stand if you could literally pick a number like say -3dB maybe, but I can tell you from extensive testing, it’s not just the average. If your first 10 seconds or less, has a ‘spike’ like a big drum hit, you will find when you import the stereo pair in garageband, the track is actually muted somewhat.

At least, the image of the waveform is smaller in amplitude, which means it’s quieter I presume. GRATICULES - I need them! I need to know exactly what volume or gain setting each track has. I might want to make it repeatable, but this actually brings us back to auto-normalisation…all roads lead there. AND Cubasis sort of lets you control the shared stereo pair BUT I still cannot CHOOSE the exact output level…now for a while a year or so ago, you COULD! I liaised with Apple about this directly as I had a support issue at the time, but there was no positive response. I also flipped the Cubasis 3 switch that supposedly avoids using the iOS sound processing on top of the Cubasis one, but it is very unclear what this really means - and I still could no longer calibrate the dB output again, after in the early days, with iOS 13.x, being able to do so for a while.

So in short, I can master in Cub3 but it’s blooming guesswork - apart from that spell a while ago, where when I set -6dB in my final pro Q3 plugin of Cub3, when it really sid output at that level, now it’s possible to lower it from 0dB, but ALL my stuff is coming out as a truly un-settable level - at -6dB in Cub3, the level is actually more like -12 or so. Last point - THERE IS NO FINANCIAL OR LEGITIMATE REASON FOR IOS TO BE THE ‘POOR RELATION’ COMPARATIVELY SPEAKING!

One more… why not… I want to be able to make one Audio Unit, ‘operate’ another. In other words, I would like to be able to take say a midi sequencer, and plant it in the Audio Unit chain, BEFORE the main instrument and its effects that really come afterward. So if I had it on GB iOS right now, I imagine another entry right at the TOP of the ‘effects’ column, but in fact takes another track that say you have a sequencer-only unit sat in, and it uses the midi track of those dashes we all know so well, to trigger or ‘operate’ the instrument we are in the track of. In short, the chain of processing would simply be for example…Rozetta - Instrument of this present track - Effects (as usual). I am thinking of Woodstepper for example, or Rozetta, being able to drive say, the Alchemy rock organ, or indeed any audio unit instrument.

OK and another thing…PLEASE APPLE STOP OBLITERATING ALL MY COMPRESSION AND EFFECTS, every time I dare to change the GB instrument to something else - this amounts to a request for having more effects units being possible? Because some GB instruments use some effects to get the required tone, I can see why this happens.

OK and another other thing…MUST be able to take a midi track I have made inside GB, and drop it into ANY other midi track, instead of being blocked. This is a cast-iron block at the moment, I am having to constantly think about getting a bass guitar audio unit - there’s only really one and they have a free version to try - because then I can take say a melody line and drop it an octave into the bass guitar. Why it’s a sin to take one instrument’s driving midi instructions, and drop it on another is beyond me.

In fact, isn’t one of the main uses of midi, this exact aspect? I had a short discussion with Mr Rudess about this exact situation with his otherwise brilliant ‘geoshred’ instrument. I maintain I would like ALL instruments or apps or audio Units to be able to take instruction from a midi file or track, generated on an entirely different instrument. To be closed to this, is against the ubiquitous nature of midi. I don’t care if it amounts to a restrictive and basic import/translation of a relatively primitive midi file, to an audio unit that can do superb morphing and stuff when triggered ‘natively’…I just want to be able to do it. The point I made was that while geoshred refuses to take such midi files - echoing Apple’s stance with some instruments - the similar to me (but I was advised not at all similar!) and equally brilliant SWAM instruments (the trumpet I challenge anyone to be able to distinguish from an actual trumpet), are happy to take. Sure they don’t always work, with all expressiveness that I modulated from say the beautiful Poison 202 synth, but the basic notes and some nuances come through fine.

I also agree, GarageBand iOS/iPadOS is an extraordinary DAW, and am hoping to run a better version one day, preferring to stay with touchscreen. My fantasy iPad is probably a 16 inch with 32gB of RAM and 1tB of SSD, and dual M1 processors. Ah well…I would only go to a non-touchscreen if that was the only way to break out of my present track limit of about 8 instruments or so. I know GB has 32 tracks and I have once run out and had to ‘track bounce’ to squeeze a project into that, but mostly in GB I run out of DSP I think, long before that, and RAM is pegged at 4Gb for my 2017 ipad pro2!

The new iPads cost more than the equivalent Mac Mini. And you get a touchscreen. I prefer the iOS way of working, with a touchscreen, and as long as the screen is less than say 16 inches or so, I doubt I would use a mouse much. I tried it out on my ipad pro2 12.9” but didn’t like it, it felt slow and unintuitive. A great topic for discussion anyway, I made the auto-normalisation point to Apple. All the best and keep well Patrick. [EDITED!]

[jamesnyers]

Well, reading all the feature requests here in the comment section, everyone agrees we just need Logic Pro on the iPad. That is what GB on iOS would become if all these features would be implemented. I need a full mixer, track stacks, drummer to midi, advanced piano roll options, bounce in place, vocal comping…. we need Logic on the M1 iPad pro. Oh!….and better high gain Amps in Amp Designer.

[hiddengemsstation]

Petition to have Patrick be the GarageBand CEO

[PeteJohnsMusic]

For those wondering, I was runner up back in 2007. Bloody Russell Crowe!!

[ThomasChrist]

Spot on, Patrick! 👏👏👏 Now we just need Apple to take notice. Maybe we need one of those online petitions promoted by Patrick and Pete to get as many signatures as possible and send it off to Tim Cook? Might be worth a shot anyway!

[infarction]

Nice one big man. Agree with all your suggestions.
Cheers,
A Scotsman in Denmark.

[lorilange]

Can you edit after you had saved your creation?

[WineWorldTV]

Looking forward to your take on the Mac OS GB update.

[spacerockerlightyears]

Must admit all these new packs aren’t really my bag, but what is my bag is a master track and option to turn off auto normalisation. I can see why Apple have gone with the artist packs etc, but for more creative types who have no need for any of this stuff, the bread and butter basics could easily be sorted out. Perhaps an update to the guitar sounds, piano sounds would be beneficial too. Pull your finger out Apple. Edit. I’d like to see the count in changed so you can have a 4/8 or even a 16 count in!

[lorilange]

Could I add my own instruments say my djembe drum or tambourine etc manually? That add to that the digital versions?

[HeartCrash]

I would like to correct tones on the autotune, that you can move it free and make it higher or lower.

[blueking]

Exporting the project as multi stems. Lets say you have 15-20 + project you wanna export out to finish off in another program, that would take ages to solo each track and export one by one!

[Yord_Music]

Are they holding back on features for a possible Logic Pro release? (iPad Pro M1) That would be a very Apple thing to do.

[augursabound]

One thing I noticed with garageband is the brass midi instruments are very limited, would be good to get more of those and some better sounding ones

[LadyRodalineStrate]

Good to know how to turn off normalisation. Thank you

[mon_nobi]

maybe i'm just naive because i've been producing mostly on garageband ios for almost a decade and have little other frame of reference, or maybe im just slow on the production knowledge, but i still don't fully understand what the impact of the autonormalization is. i know sometimes the exported wav file sounds different than the project file's audio like it is often lower in volume and etc, but what would it sound like if we could toggle it off? would my song be louder or quieter or radio ready or clipping or just more identical to the project file, etc?