One of GarageBand 10‘s key features, the Drummer track actually debuted in Apple’s premium recording program – Logic Pro X – first. While the Drummer track interface can look a little daunting at first, I’m happy to report that once you’ve gotten over that initial learning curve, the Drummer track is an incredibly useful tool. How to Use Real Musical Instruments with GarageBand on Your iPad By MacLife 13 February 2012 It’s time to plug a real instrument into GarageBand to see what it can do.

Programming Drums In Garageband Ipad 1
Garageband For Ipad Manual
How To Use Garageband Ipad
Garageband For Ipad App

GarageBand for Mac 10.2 includes a variety of Apple Loops powered by Drummer. Quickly add beats to your project by dragging a Drummer loop from the Loop Browser into your project. Choose from variety of Drummer Loops for each virtual drummer character profile.

Find a Drummer loop

To open the Loop Browser, click in the upper-right corner of the GarageBand window.

Drummer Loops appear in the Loop Browser with a yellow icon . To show only Drummer Loops in the Loops Browser, select Drummer from the Loop Packs pop-up menu at the top of the Loops Browser. Preview a loop by clicking it in the Loop Browser.

Add a Drummer loop to your project

When you’ve found a Drummer Loop you like, drag it into an empty part of the Tracks area. GarageBand automatically creates a new Drummer track with a region of the Drummer Loop. All the settings in the Drummer Editor are configured to reproduce the sound of the Drummer loop.

You can now edit the track as you would any other Drummer track using the Drummer Editor. You can also create your own regions in the track, and edit them freely.

Add additional Drummer Loops

You can add additional Drummer Loops of the same type (Acoustic, Electronic or Percussionist) to an existing Drummer track. Adding Drummer Loops from multiple Drummers to the same track may cause the loop to sound different from the preview.

If you want to add a Drummer Loop of a different type, dragging it to the tracks area creates a new Drummer track. A GarageBand project can have up to six Drummer tracks.

After seeing one of THE best live bands (RUSH!) this week with one of THE world's best rock drummers (Neil Peart), it's only fitting to be inspired and do a tutorial on recording drums with Garage Band for iPad. If you're lucky enough to have a seat close to the stage, it's quite an experience to see the 'Professor' up close and actually hear his drum sound coming from the stage. So on with the tutorial... and a mean mean stride...

Let's look at the setup and equipment needed and the different options - Acoustic and electric - we have...

Acoustic Kit (Never Turn Your Back On a Monster!)

1. Stereo Blue Microphone Yeti Pro or other USB microphone.

Stereo is crucial if you want to get a fat sound. IK Multimedia has released the cool iRig microphone but it's mono and you can't combine 2 of them on the iPad. Now, this being said, perhaps you're going for a mono drum sound like the Beatles.

2. Griffin iMic or the upcoming Alesis iO Dock with a multichannel mixer and your own mic collection.

If a stereo mic isn't enough and you want more mics and control, then simple run the mics to a mixer and attach it's stereo outputs to the inputs of the iMic or Alesis I/O. For example, you may want a Kick/Snare/stereo overheads setup. The only caveat in this setup is that you will need to not only balance your volume levels between the mics but also pan and EQ them to the sound you want BEFORE you record. GB does not allow volume, pan or EQ separation of each mic after the recording is done as it's a stereo file. Here's hoping Ver. 2 has at least EQ. The other issue I came across was the headphone output of the iMic is low especially when playing the drums. You can either get a headphone amp or plug in the outputs of the iMic to your mixer and setup an aux monitor section. Be careful though to properly assign this headphone mix as you don't want to end up recording the metronome click and music tracks to your drum track.

Electric Kit with Camera Connection Kit (The Body Electric)

As mentioned in a previous article, in order to get MIDI control for the iPad, you will need the Camera Connection Kit and a USB MIDI interface.

Korg Nano Pad or other drum finger pad trigger

You will need a powered USB hub to use the Korg NanoPad. Also, if you need to assign different MIDI note mappings to the pads, this will have to be done in Korg's editing software on your Mac.

Programming Drums In Garageband Ipad 1

V-Drums
For even more drum like control, you can plug in a set of V-Drums into the iPad. The V-Drums doesn't have a USB out but you can use a MIDI to USB converter, like the M-Audio UNO into the Camera Connection Kit. A Google search will show many MIDI USB devices compatible with the iPad.

Recording Control (We Have Assumed Control...)

Mic positioning ('Roll the Bones'): 3-4 mics and it captures the kit superbly with a nice room sound. If you're not sure of what his technique is, just do a Google search for 'Glynn Johns'. When using just a stereo mic, experimentation is key with the distance from the drums, in line with the kick or snare, placing it as an overhead, etc.

Room selection/dampening/drum tuning ('Workin' Them Angels'): Without a doubt, one of the key things to recording a great drum sound is TUNING! Wait... you can tune drums?I've lost count as to the amount of recordings I've heard from bands recording themselves on a budget with poorly tuned drums. When properly done, even cheap drums can sound great and if you're not sure on how to tune, check out this tutorial on Recording Drums.

The room you place your drums in will also be key to it's tone. Try to find a room with high ceilings, wood panel walls, or soft furniture to absorb and disperse the sound. Drums are LOUD and in a small, low ceiling room will cause all sorts of problems. Empty rooms with dampening can also cause standing wave problems. Perhaps ask friends with appropriate rooms or even small churches if you can spend some time recording. Lastly, get moving blankets or office dividers if the room is close but not quite perfect in sound to help alleviate problems such as slap back or an overly loud kick drum.

Garageband For Ipad Manual

Recording then looping sections (Subdivisions). In a previous tutorial, I explained how GB does things in 'Song Sections' where you can specify how many bars each section is. Here's a trick though for drummers that's useful especially with demo's of songs or for experimentation of new ideas. With this method, it's likely the drummer won't be playing with any backing tracks on the iPad other then a click since he's going to repeat sections of the song, so perhaps set up someone playing the bass/guitar parts, etc. in his monitors. Otherwise, lay down a ghost track and copy/paste it numerous times for different drum takes. Set your 'Song Section' to 'Automatic' so that it will record an infinite number of bars.

The drummer then plays along to the click/ghost track and records various takes of the song or parts of the song. Here's an example. Verse 1 may be recorded three times with the same groove but perhaps a different fill on the end or with/without ghost notes on the snare. Now you can edit the track using the split tool and break apart the takes into various parts such as drum groove/groove with ghost notes/groove with ride/drum fill 1/drum fill 2/etc. Duplicate the track by tapping on the track icon and hitting 'duplicate'. A second track will appear but it will be empty. We have two options to get parts pieced on the duplicated track. You can 'copy' the recorded parts and 'paste' them into the duplicated track to form the song. Be sure to select the duplicate track after copying or you will be pasting over the original and move your playhead to where you want to paste the part in. OR... you can touch the section and drag it to the duplicated track and the bar you want. Looping is also available on these part