iPad Project: The Radio Play – Garageband

Open Garageband. Tap the Plus icon to begin a new project.

Choose the Audio Recorder Instrument.

Tip: The microphone is on the very top edge of the iPad, just above the front-facing camera. The best sound quality when recording will come from a headset or directional microphone. The white iPhone earbuds with attached microphone work well.

Select the Wrench (Settings) icon and switch off the Metronome so it doesn’t interfere with recording.

Tap the red button to begin recording. Record the first witch’s line ("When shall we three meet again?") and press the button again to stop recording.

Choose "Monster" in the preset menu that appears. Set the Gain and Pitch to alter the voice to the desired tone.

Tip: Use the slider to go back in the audio track. The purple region is the recorded audio for this track. The effect you choose will only apply to the data on this track. You may hear other tracks playing – this is because they are not muted in the timeline mode. The Back Arrow button returns the slider to the very beginning of the track.

Tap the timeline button to see the new clip in timeline mode.

Record all three parts, piece by piece. Use the presets to distort the vocal performance, or simply use vocal techniques.

While in the timeline mode, tap the Puzzle Piece icon. Select "Section A" and turn Automatic "ON". Click the timeline to return. This makes your song automatically as long as you need it to be. Otherwise, it will constrain your song to a partcular number of bars or beats.

At this point, students might want to add pre-recorded sound effects. There are literally millions of places to download free sound effects from the Internet. See the Project Files for a healthy selection of Nature and Animal Sounds you can use in this project.

To add the files you shared via iTunes, tap the "Loop" button. Tap "Audio files" to view the sound effects collection. Tap a sound effect to hear a preview. Tap and hold to pick it up and drag it to the timeline.

Tap a clip to select it. Use the ends of the clip to extend or shrink the clip.

Double-tap the clip to bring up a contextual menu. Copy, Cut, Delete. Also, use Loop to replay the clip as many times as you need. Use Split to chop the clip in two (drag the scissors icon to the correct location).

Tip: Pinch to zoom in, to allow for precision cutting.

After much copying and pasting and double-tapping and dragging, you might have something that resembles this:

To Export the final project, Tap "My Songs" and then tap the share button. Either share via iTunes (requires you to plug back into the computer) or via email, which sends the file as an .m4a file to any email address.