Mixing Your Composition

Navigation

Mixing is the process of combining together different, discreet tracks of audio. Flour, sugar, milk, and eggs are combined to make a cake. You “mix” them together to get the end result—a delicious cake.

Mixer Controls in Garage Band

Pan

Each track contains a virtual knob for adjusting pan. The best way to evaluate your pan settings is by using headphones connected to your Macintosh.

Volume

Volume is the number one item pros like to adjust. Instead of volume, you may hear the term “levels” being used. Garage Band provides a real-time display of the levels for each track. Levels should never light the track “alarms,” the two red lights that appear next to the levels display. This is a warning that your track is too loud, and should be adjusted. Tracks with levels too high can sound distorted when they’re mixed into the final audio file.

Mute

You can mute a track to “silence” it temporarily. This helps when mixing together a lot of tracks, to hear what the “whole” sounds like without all the “ingredients.” Ever wonder what chocolate cake would taste like without the chocolate? That’s what mute is for.

Solo

What does a track sound like by itself? Use the solo button on the track to mute all the other tracks.

Controls for mute and solo on a track.

Envelopes

Each track can be controlled by two envelopes. By using these lines which live underneath each track, you can change the pan and volume settings over time. Maybe the trumpet needs to get louder here… or maybe you want the sound of the synthesizer to crawl slowly from the left-side of the stage to the right? Use these controls to pinpoint moments on the timeline where these need to happen.

Mixing Controls in Garage Band 2

All mixing is usually done at the end of creating a composition. While you may certainly make these adjustments at any time during playback, mixing is considered a “fine-tuning” aspect of fixing your song before exporting it to iTunes.

Watch this movie demonstrating how to change an envelope in Garage Band to change volume over time. (264 KB, Quicktime)

Questions

  1. Why do you have to watch the levels for each track? What happens if they go too high?
  2. When you mute a track, what does this do?
  3. What does the icon for “solo” look like in Garage Band’s mixer/track display?
  4. What advantage does mixing in Garage Band have over “mixing” a recipe, such as a cake, or pancake batter?

© 2005 by John G. Hendron. Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.