Music
After launching 15 years ago, Apple's free digital audio workstation enabled musicians to create high quality material from their bedrooms.
In its 15 years of existence, GarageBand – Apple’s free music production software for Macs, iPhones and iPads – has been used by everyone from budding bedroom producers to global music superstars.
Grimes famously recorded her first album for 4AD, 2012’s Visions, entirely on GarageBand. Rhianna’s hit Umbrella grew from the ‘Vintage Funk Kit 03’ GarageBand drum loop. Lana Del Rey has spoken about experimenting with the software early on in her career, and Björk has previously revealed she's used GarageBand for her DJ sets. Elsewhere, leftfield artists like Kelsey Lu and Julianna Barwick have also used the software in their sonic experimentations.
GarageBand debuted in 2004 for OS X and was made available for iOS devices in 2011. Featuring a sound library of free virtual instruments, multitrack recording, MIDI sequencing, Live Loops, Multi-Touch keyboard (on iPhones an iPads) and more, this entry-level DAW (digital audio workstation) offered producers (and podcasters) an intuitive way of taking the leap into digital music production – doing away with the need for a studio or expensive gear.
Of course, GarageBand is designed with beginners or hobbyists in mind – the virtual instruments and mixing features are limited, for example. Most electronic music producers use more sophisticated DAWs like Logic Pro X (Mac’s professional music production suite which costs £199.99) or the ubiquitous Ableton Live. However, there are some artists who view the simplicity of GarageBand in a positive light.
I would encourage anyone who is interested in music production to start with a simple programme like GarageBand and work their way up
York-born songwriter and XL Recordings’ alum Lapsley makes warm, stripped-back electronic pop that’s rife with emotion. She released her debut album, Long Way Home, in 2016 and recalls using GarageBand on one of the first tracks she ever made, Station – the song which coincidentally kickstarted her career. She still uses the software as a tool. “If I’m trying to record something quickly or I’m feeling a bit bombarded with the number of plug-ins on Logic, I find GarageBand is a really good creative tool to just take it all away and try and figure stuff out,” she says. “It’s really important to be able to work with space and I think GarageBand enables you to have that space.”
Lapsley credits GarageBand with “opening the doors to her career” – doors which she says are so often shut to artists like herself with no prior experience of or connections to the London-centric music industry. “Sometimes it can feel in this industry that only rich people can make it, as everything costs so much money… I would encourage anyone who is interested in music production to start with a simple programme like GarageBand and work their way up,” she says. “I got a record deal from using GarageBand, it’s basically given me a career.”
For Beijing producer and composer Howie Lee, GarageBand provides the best interface for mimicking real instruments. “It has great selection of Chinese instruments – I love all of them… I really do think iPad music is very undervalued these days. Also, most people I show don’t even realise that they have GarageBand for free on their phone.” Being able to make music on the go is something that appeals to ambient artist H. Takahashi. “It was attractive for me to be able to record even a small amount of time in a busy city life,” he offers. “I always carry my iPhone with me and keep recording like a physiological phenomenon… time spent with a garage band is meditation for me."
Last year, Apple momentously shipped its two billionth iOS device – which means a lot of potential music makers with free access to GarageBand. Former THEESatisfaction member SassyBlack, aka producer, singer-rapper and multi-instrumentalist Catherine Harris-White, recorded all of the beats for her first solo EP project, Me and Mines (Cute Chicks), on her phone, before exporting and uploading them into Ableton.
She recalls using GarageBand when taking her first steps as a recording artist. “I bought my first laptop in 2004 – a sleek black MacBook. I had just started at music school and was going for jazz vocals, so I would just record ideas on GarageBand,” she remembers. “I wasn’t grasping the other programmes as well – ones that are used for making sheet music – but GarageBand gave me a lot of space. I could just sit there and record my vocals to a metronome – stacking them and making weird harmonies, using my voice as instrumentation.”
She continues: “It was great for me to be able to communicate my ideas and for me to be able to figure out that I can do music all entirely on my own, which is how I produce now as a solo musician. I used that for songs when I was working at school and in [TheeSatisfaction], which ultimately went on to be signed to Sub Pop.”
Harris-White now teaches Ableton Live workshops at a library. “Using GarageBand led me to using Ableton as it had kind of the same setup in arrangement view. It was my gateway application to becoming an electronic musician... I also hear from a lot of the young people I work with that it’s a really good entry point. It’s still a part of my life because it’s still on my phone.”
Varg, a Swedish producer who co-runs the Stockholm-based label Northern Electronics, is also drawn to the streamlined nature of GarageBand. “I just find GarageBand really easy to use,” he says. “I use it like I have used tape recorders in the past. I record beats on my iPad and export to GarageBand on my computer – it’s easy to do that mix and match thing. I find joy in the limitations that it brings you.”
For Varg, snobbery about production has the potential to kill creativity and render musicians unproductive. “Of course, I can see the point of Logic or other DAWs for having those advanced effects, but if you’re just recording, then GarageBand is great. It’s nice because what you see is what you get – it’s like MS Paint. Maybe you won’t be able to find that warp function that you’re looking for, but maybe you don’t need that at the time. But maybe you just need to record some music that’s really fucking good.”
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