| Review by
By David Pogue
June 2004
ISBN: 0-596-00695-0
304 pages, $19.95
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/garageband/index.html
It’s been over thirty years since I wrote a book report and it never gets easier, but this new 254 page book from Pogue Press/O’Reilly Media makes even that job enjoyable. David Pogue is well know to the Mac user community for his Missing Manuals for Mac OS 9, iMovie 4, iDVD, iLife’04,Mac OS X (the Panther Edition), and now for the juggernaut, GarageBand. He writes in a entertaining and engaging style that anticipates your questions and leads you through a logical exposition of your new toy.
Pogue states “GarageBand may be simple, but it isn’t simplistic. It offers a wide range of tools, shortcuts, and professional features... many of [which] aren’t covered in...its electronic help screen.” Hence this Missing Manual.
 The author communicates at all levels. For newbies and those folks who have owned a Mac for six years and still haven’t used the Help menu (you know who you are), he patiently and plainly explains what a Click, Double-Click, and Command—Click are. He runs through the essential Mac jargon on page five to make sure everyone is up to speed when they begin the book.
For Power Users (yes, you with the shiny fingertips and the squinty eyes!) he fills his chapters with ample cross references, allowing you to surf ahead through the book like a big paper website. For example, on page two Pogue compares GarageBand’s hunger for processor speed and RAM to the appetite of a team of ravenous Sumo Wrestlers. He then offers reference to a whole Chapter 10, The Speed Chapter, full of tweaks, fixes and work-arounds to feed that beast. Once there, you’ll find another cross reference to a page where you can convert “Midi Regions” into “Real Instrument” regions so that you can consolidate bits of several recordings into a single track to conserve processor speed.
The book is an interesting experience for those who wish to read it all from cover to cover, but like any good manual, it is a reference book as well as an illustrated tutorial. And for folks who wish some hands-on activity, the missing manual has a “Missing CD” (available free online from the missingmanuals.com website) which includes samples and examples in addition to nifty downloads.
One noteable (pun intended) example is found on page seventy where we are introduced to “MidiKeys,” a freeware program that turns the keyboard of your Macintosh into a piano. You merely open up a Software Instrument in GarageBand, run MidiKeys and start playing on your keyboard. This is so very helpful when you are inflight, working on a laptop and your 49 key midi-controller-piano keeps poking that annoyed person in the window seat. Put it away and use MidiKeys instead! Unless you are posessed by Glenn Gould’s ghost, headphones are also advised.
The Missing Manual is divided into three basic parts: “Building a Hit,” “Beyond the Garage,” and the “Appendices.” Each is designed to carry you through to the next logical step in producing and using a GarageBand recording.
“Building a Hit” covers the fundamental tools of song building: loops, midi, and real instrument recording. Here you will also find the tricks and techniques for editing and massaging these audio “Regions” into professional sounds.
“Beyond the Garage” is the place where you learn what to do with your music once you’ve made it: exporting to iTunes, buring it, posting it on the web, and using it with the other iLife family members, iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD. You will also find that “Speed” chapter here, and one on troubleshooting, which is often the most dog-eared part of any manual.
Lastly, the “Appendices” cover all that boring but necessary “reference” stuff such as a menu-by-menu tour of the program, a crash course on music for those that aren’t already hip, and the ever-popular, penultimately useful, keyboard shortcuts section. But the best is left for last; an ample Index, by which all manuals must be measured, graces eleven pages at the end of the tome. I always look at the index first in all such books, and this one covers the waterfront, from “+button” to “Zooming timeline.”
The fact that this book covers GarageBand so thoroughly and yet in a style that keeps you awake and eager, is a testament to Pogue’s experience and style. But the real bonus is the online support which continues to publish new information well after you have finished reading the book for the first time. If you need a little help with the hard stuff, or if you are daunted by the laconic instructions in GarageBand’s Help Menu, this is the book for you. And if you don’t know a lick of music but still would like to get started making your own, GarageBand: The Missing Manual is an essential ingredient in what will be the most fun you have ever had with a computer.
November 2004
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