While GarageBand can be marketed as an entry-level program, it provides a surprising number of great sound effects. In addition to sounding great, these effects are also very easy to work with. Let’s take a look at the different ways that effects can be used in your GarageBand songs.

Software instruments

The software instruments come preloaded with four effects. Let’s see them individually:

• Compressor: Technically, compression is a form of dynamics processing that allows you to “tighten” the dynamic range of a signal. In real world terms, this means that the difference between the loudest part of a signal and the softest part is reduced. In effect, the soft parts of a sound get a little louder and the loud parts get a little softer. This allows the signal to come out a bit more in the mix. Compression is most often used on highly dynamic signals like drums and vocals.
• Visual equalizer: Short for equalization, EQ allows you to increase or decrease the volume of certain frequency ranges in a sound. As you add tracks to your song, your mix may start to sound “muddy” and undefined. You can combat this by removing unimportant frequencies from each track. For example, removing some low mids from a vocal track can help make it shine a bit more.
• Echo master: This slider controls how much of this track’s signal is sent through the Master Echo effect.
• Master Reverb: This slider controls how much of this track’s signal is sent through the Master Reverb effect.

Royal instruments

Real instruments come preloaded with the same four effects as software instruments, with the addition of a new effect:

• Noise gate: The purpose of a noise gate is to keep out or “turn off” any sound below a certain threshold or volume level. A perfect use for a noise gate would be to remove pickup noise and hum from a guitar signal. When the guitarist is not playing, the noise gate closes, which prevents the pickup hum from being heard in the mix, but as soon as the guitarist starts playing, the noise gate opens and the guitar sign.

Guitar tracks

Guitar tracks treat effects in a different way than real instruments and software. So as not to disappoint anyone, but I’ll save it for another article. I couldn’t do it justice in a few sentences here.

Master track

The signals from all separate GarageBand tracks run through the master track’s effects. The GarageBand Master Track comes preloaded with five effects that are divided into two groups:

Tracking effects

The amount of each track that runs through these two effects is controlled by the master sliders on each instrument track.

• Echo: An echo is a delayed repetition of a sound that generally occurs in a subdivision of time, such as quarter notes or eighth notes.
• Reverberation: Put together enough separate echoes and what you get is reverb. Think of reverb as the ambience of a space. Generally, the larger the gap, the longer the reverberation time.

Master Effects

These are disabled by default, so you will need to enable them if you want to use them.

• Visual equalizer: Same as with real instruments and software.
• Compressor: Ditto
• Ducker: Most often used in dubbing work, a ducker is designed to automatically reduce the volume of backing tracks while playing a lead track. This is not used too often in music.

Just use presets

The effects in GarageBand are all very editable, but I suggest you start by using the presets. Each effect comes with a very nice set of presets that will work well for about 90% of your needs. If you need something that the presets don’t provide, I suggest you follow these steps:

• Choose a preset that is close to what you are looking for.
• Clicking on the graph on the left side of the effect will bring up the editing parameters for that particular effect.
• Now start adjusting the effect parameters until you get the sound you want. Don’t be afraid to experiment because you can always go back to the preset if you really screw things up.