Production

This is the main screen and also the beginning of my jingle. The programme is purposefully laid out and easy to work around whether using musical keys or loops. The first action is to create a new track which will allow you to insert a certain musical instrument or sound effect.
This is the drop-down menu that reveals the shortcut keys and tab for creating a new track. I had to do this a total of eight time for a range of sound effects, two different song clips, two voice over track and an original riff that i created using the programme.

To insert a pre-recorded song or sound clip, the clip first needs to be put into iTunes on the computer. I found it easier putting the ones i needed into a playlist of my own. Once they are in iTunes, they can simply be dragged and dropped into the track space from the small iTunes window below that is situated in the bottom right hand corner of the GarageBand window.

Once inserted, the track looked like this:
or like this for a sound effect played on the keys.

The other two alternative inputs to pre-recorded tracks and sounds are GarageBand 'loops' and original composition via the musical keys feature.

The loops menu looks like this
It is very well organised and easy to find exactly the style, instrument or effect you would like which is useful when creating a track for the first time in a time sensitive environment.
I didn't use the loops at all however, my composition was made entirely from one externally sourced song and the musical keys function.

This is the magical musical typing that was the main producer of my radio jingle. It is very clever and can be used in conjunction with all manor of different effects to create a totally unique riff, with off the shelf sound effects. I wanted to use this to make my peice more interesting as it would be an original composition as apposed to the mixing of someone else's hard work!



To accurately find the timings of when certain tracks should fade out and others fade in, i found myself using the popup time counter very often.
This clock came in very handy as it told you where your cursor was exactly, as apposed to
reading the small numbers at the top that only give you a rough reference of where you are. It allowed me to make sure all fades came in and out perfectly in time without clashing at all.

Once tracks and effects were in place, I experimented with tweaking and altering the sounds slightly. Again, this is very easy to do and more importantly reverse when I got it wrong!

There is a selection of tools that opens up in place of the mini iTunes window when selecting the 'eye' button as showed below:
The functions that can be completed on this editing bar include echo, reverb, wah-wah and a mutitude of voice accessories which i used in certain places in my jingle.

After editing my clips and getting the sounds i wanted, the next step was to get the fades in the right positions so that the jingle linked flawlessly with the background music of the 'chit chat' section. This can be seen below.
The volume (the blue angled area) can be seen dropping away at the end of that particular song creating a professional ending to the piece.

I now have a beautifully crafted and totally complete radio jingle in GarageBand...
so what do I do now?

SHARE IT WITH THE WORLD...or just iTunes!

selecting 'share' in the top menu, then selecting 'send song to iTunes' turned my GarageBand tune into an actual .mp3 file that can be played on almost anything. This is on the brand new mac in the small room sir, and I heartily invite you to check it out.