In this tutorial, I’m going to lay out all of the different features of the Amp Designer in Garageband, as well as a step-by-step process for using it.
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Nov 18, 2017 Hello, new member and new to recording with garageband! I would like to capture the live sound of my guitar amp using garageband. I know there are many modelling and FX options using GB, but I really want to hear how my amp sounds. I'm using the following:-macbook pro and garageband-Presonus Inspire 1394 interface. Traynor YCV 50 all-tube. There are also MIDI connectors such as the iRig MIDI, which hook up MIDI keyboards, drum machines, drum pads, pedal boards and more to an iOS device. Connect your guitar to your iOS device (we’re using an iRig), get your headphones on and turn up the volume on your headphones and guitar. Open GarageBand.
Digital Audio Workstations are incredibly versatile, especially Garageband and its Amp Designer software.
What The Amp Designer in Garageband Includes
- Amp Heads (Fender, Marshall, Mesa Boogie, Vox, Randall, Orange, and more)
- Cabinets (Same brands as well as different sizes, 4×12, 1×12, 2×12)
- An adjustable Pedal Effects Board – Delay, Reverb, Chorus, Flange etc.
- Hundreds of presets
- Ability to move microphone positioning on the virtual amplifier cabinet.
- Dynamic, Condenser, and Ribbon microphones modeled after the most famous microphones.
- Noise Gate (eliminates feedback and other unwanted noises)
- Guitar Tuner
A lot of people are surprised to see that Garageband comes with a plethora of amplifier combinations and pre-sets for both the guitar and the bass guitar.
I’ve counted approximately 7 collections of pre-sets.
In this order, they are Clean Guitar, Crunch Guitar,Distorted Guitar, Experimental Guitar,Clean Bass, Crunch Bass, and Experimental Bass.
There’s also settings for the Acoustic Guitar as well. There are 5 of them, Echo Strum, Natural Flat Pick, Natural Stereo, Natural Strum, and Natural Chorus.
Each one can be either used with a bass guitar or electric guitar, but the titles suggest for which instrument they’re designed specifically.
Under each category, there are approximately 21 presets (with a few exceptons), and many of them are quite good. My personal favorite is the Dublin Delay and Dyna-Trem which are found underneath Clean Guitar.
Now, all of these presets are basically pre-determined settings with Amplifier Models, Cabinets, Microphone positioning, and effects units running on them.
For that reason, they are a great jumping off point for getting started.
Some of my favorites right from the start were Cool Jazz Combo, Clean Echoes, Dyna-Trem, and Dublin Delay, which are all under the Clean Guitar pre-set.
After you get sick of messing around with the innumerable amount of presets, you can go into the Amp Designer to begin making things sound exactly as you want.
Before you’ve even entered the actual Amp Designer, you’ll notice there are some settings to adjust in the Smart Controls. In the image you can see below, I’m on the “Clean Echoes” setting.
What You Need To Use The Amp Designer In Garageband
Before we begin talking about all of the tips, tricks, and secrets of using Garageband’s Amp Designer, let’s talk about what you actually need to get started.
If you haven’t checked it out yet, I would suggest looking up my article, How To Connect Your Guitar to Garageband, as well as How To Connect Your MIDI Keyboard to Garageband.
Both of these articles go into detail on how to set up your guitar and MIDI keyboard with Garageband.
However, for the sake of this tutorial. I’ll also include a brief list of necessities here as well.
In order to play guitar in Garageband, you need a couple of different tools.
I’m going to go ahead and assume that you have a Mac Laptop – (you probably aren’t running Garageband through a Mac emulator on your PC, let’s be honest).
Due to the port changes made by Apple in recent years, I’ll also include necessary adapters/connectors.
***Moreover, the gear I’ve recommended is all of the gear that I USE; it’s not necessarily the best in the world.
You can find all of this gear on my recommended products page here.
- Audio Interface (iRig HD 2 or Scarlett 6USB)
- Guitar Cable (Right-Angled Jack)
- USB-C to USB-Female Adaptor (You don’t need this if your laptop isn’t the brand new one with the new USB-Type C Port)
- Monitors or Studio Headphones (I recommend Audio-Technica ATH-M50x)
And that’s pretty much it.
Once you’ve got your guitar hooked up to your computer and playing directly through your monitors/headphones, we can start talking about using the Amp Designer at its full potential.
***As I wrote about in my article on latency, it’s important you don’t have your computer connected to a Bluetooth speaker, because then there will be a significant delay between what you’re playing and what you’re hearing.
Obviously, we don’t want this.
How To Use The Amp Designer
First things first.
If you’re a beginner to using the Amp Designer, the first thing you can do is select the “Amp Collection” option when you’ve first opened a new project.
If you choose the “Amp Collection,” it’ll bring up a 6 different amplifiers and pre-sets, Dublin Delay, Surfin’ Stereo, Royal Rock, Double Brit Phaser, Maelstrom, as well as Wide Wide Wah.
To bring up the Garageband Amp Designer, hit the little icon in the bottom right of the Smart Controls that looks like an Amplifier (at least it’s supposed to look like an Amp/Cab combination anyway).
The Amp Designer comes with a plethora of different cabinets, amplifiers, models, and Microphones.
If you want, you can also change not only the style of the microphone but where it’s located on the cabinet speaker.
I can’t lie, this is one of the Amp Designer’s coolest features, and it’s impressive Apple managed to get it right.
As a general rule, moving the microphone toward the center of the speaker will add more “brightness” and “crunch.” Essentially, we’re getting a boost of higher frequencies by centering the microphone on the speaker.
As we move the microphone further out to the left and right of the center, we’re getting more mid and low frequencies, essentially “darkening” the sound.
Also, there is an option for adjusting how much of the screen the Amp Designer actually takes up. Looking up at the top right-hand side of the Amp Designer, notice the button that says, “View.”
You can choose from the options, 50% up until 200%, depending on how much of the screen you want the Amp Designer to take up. I normally keep it at 100% or 125%.
If you click on the “Manual” drop-down menu on the right side of the “On” button in the Amp Designer, you’ll have access to even more presets.
If I had to make a guess, I’d say there are around an additional 100 presets to choose from, within the categories of Clean, Crunch, and Distortion.
As I said before, for the most part, all of the amplifiers and cabinets are modeled after a few different companies, including Fender, Vox, Marshall, Mesa Boogie, and Orange.
Moreover, all of the knobs, are exactly how they’d be on a real guitar amplifier, including the Gain, Bass, Treble, Mids, Reverb, Master, and Presence.
There’s no reason to go into the details on each one of these, but I’ll give you a brief rundown on all of the knobs in case you’re not too familiar.
Gain – Increases the power of the signal.
Bass – Increases the lowest frequencies
Treble – Increases higher frequencies
Reverb – Increases the virtual size of the room (That’s what it sounds like. I’m not sure precisely how reverb really works).
Master – Increases the total volume.
Presence – Boosts frequencies that are even higher than the regular treble frequencies.
Bass – Increases the lowest frequencies
Treble – Increases higher frequencies
Reverb – Increases the virtual size of the room (That’s what it sounds like. I’m not sure precisely how reverb really works).
Master – Increases the total volume.
Presence – Boosts frequencies that are even higher than the regular treble frequencies.
Now, there are additional EQ controls, notably if you click on the button that says “EQ” above the Gain, Mids, Bass, and Treble options.
If you click on the EQ button, you’ll get several 5 different options, including Modern, Vintage, US Classic, British Bright, and Boutique.
Also, there are a number of different Reverb options as well if you just click on the Reverb Dropdown menu where it says “Reverb.”
It’s worth noting that you can actually crank the Master Volume on the Amp Designer without actually turning the volume up on the actual track of your Guitar Track Region.
***In other words, you can push your virtual amplifier to its potential without worrying about the correlated increase in volume.
There’s also an “output level” slider on the bottom right-hand side that just turns up the total strength of the signal.
The microphone options are based on the three main microphones, the Dynamic, Condenser and Ribbon Microphone.
We’re not going to get into the many differences between Dynamic, Condenser, and Ribbon microphones because they are numerous and people in Audio Engineering debate this topic all of the time.
The primary difference, however, between the Dynamic and Condenser microphone is the Dynamic is far more common than the condenser, and the Dynamic doesn’t need an additional power source like the condenser.
The condenser is normally associated with more power. I’m likely wrong about the main differences between the microphones, so you’ll have to go somewhere else for that information.
Apparently, a ribbon microphone apparently is a microphone where thin pieces of metal are “suspended between permanent magnets.”
Maybe someone in the comments could discuss the differences between these three microphones in regular person language.
Moving on…
Most of the microphones in Garageband’s Amp Designer are modeled after actual microphones, like the Shure 57 – a classic microphone.
Now that we’ve discussed all of the relevant parameters of the Amp Designer, let’s get into actually how to set one up and use it.
How To Actually Use the Amp Designer in Garageband
For this section, I’m going to run through a set-up that I’ve created.
And if you mimic what I’ve done here in your own Amp Designer, you’ll get a feel for all of the ways in which we can adjust the Amp Designer to our choosing.
Compare the Blackface 4×10, for example, with the Sunshine Stack 4×12, and the difference is quite noticable.
The three big changes you can make in the amp designer are the Microphone positioning, the Amp/Cabinet combination, as well as the type of microphone you want, whether it’s Dynamic, Ribbon, or a Condenser.
Of course, the Gain/Mids/Bass options are important as well, but their importance goes without saying.
It’s really up to you to decide what you want to use. It’s a matter of messing around with the controls.
I used the Dyna-Trem preset, and then fine-tuned it to my preferences afterward.
Match it to the dials I’ve used in the images, and you’ll get a feel for how things sound.
I’ve included the Instagram Post below so you can see what it sounds like. You’ll have to excuse my messing-around. I was having fun playing around with it.
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In this case, I used the neck pick-up, obviously, with the tone and gain cranked all the way up. The gain is always the best when it’s near maxed in my opinion. Maybe around 8 or 9.
You can check out the settings within the Smart Controls as well. There are a few differences between the settings in the Smart Controls as well as in the actual Amp Designer.
The settings in the Smart Control essentially control the actual effect of the preset, in the case, the “Chorus” or the “Dyna-Trem” as Garageband calls it.
The Gain knob is the same as the Gain knob in the Amp Designer, but the Tone knob is different.
Explained in another way, if you turn up the Gain in the Smart Controls, it’ll also turn up the gain in the Amp Designer at the same level.
As I said before, it’s really up to you and your ear. You can figure out how you want to go about it.
How To Adjust the Pedals In The Amp Designer
The order of the pedals in the Amp Designer is actually pretty important, and shouldn’t be ignored. This is the case in real life as well (when using actual analog pedals and amp/cabs).
How you organize the order of effects matters a lot, but it’s best to experiment with this on your own.
Normally, it’s common practice to use the dynamics pedals first, ie, EQ, Compressor, etc, and then the effects pedals afterward.
If you want to access the pedalboard, click on the icon that looks like a pedal beside the Amp Designer button.
This is how I approach it anyway. Obviously, there are other ways of doing things.
My thinking is that it’s best to EQ the sound to the way you like it and then add the effects after.
By the way, if you’re wondering if you can use our actual effects pedals for Garageband, then yes you can.
The order of the signal chain is as follows for me, Guitar > Effects > Audio Interface > Computer.
Important things to Remember
1) Make sure that you only have the “Monitoring” button turned on the track you intend on recording and listening through.
The “Monitoring” button is the little button that looks like an upside Wi-Fi symbol. When it’s turned on, it’s the color orange. It looks like this.
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If you have the monitoring button turned on every single channel, you’ll likely run into some problems, including latency, lagging, and probably even feedback at times.
2) Make sure that you have either Headphones plugged in or actual speak monitors, otherwise, you’ll likely run into some seriously annoying feedback or other problems.
3) Ensure the “Count-In” button is either turned on or off. It can be somewhat of a nuisance depending on whether it’s on or off. Personally, I prefer having it on, because then I can literally count in as the name for it suggests. Others may find it annoying though.
It’s also notable that the guitar doesn’t record during the count-in period, so keep that in mind.
4) Your Audio Interface signal has to be dialed in at the appropriate amount. What I mean by that, is that if you’ve turned it up too much, the signal will be coming in hot, and thus, you’ll get some distortion.
5) The Noise Gate is actually pretty dope.
The Noise Gate option is in Garageband’s Smart Controls, which you can bring up using the “B”-key on your keyboard. In my opinion, the Noise Gate setting is usually good to dial in around (-45) – (-50dB).
Around that area. Maybe a little less. The Noise Gate eliminates all of the undesirable sounds, like hissing and so on.
6) Turn off the Master Echo and Master Reverb if you don’t want it turned on. Recording guitar parts are different from MIDI because if you’ve recorded with a ton of delay or reverb, it’ll stay on the track.
7) Garageband also comes with a tuner. Personally, I don’t like it that much because it’s not of the greatest quality, but it’s there. It’s the symbol that looks like a tuning fork.
So You Want To Record Authentic-Sounding Guitar In Your DAW
In this article, I’ll show you exactly how to plug your guitar into GarageBand. The way that I find works best is the most convenient and sounds pretty good as well while minimizing latency and other problems.
How to Plug Your Guitar Into GarageBand
There are a few different ways of doing this, and some are significantly better than others. I’m just going to show you the way that I do it.
I have a couple of pieces of necessary gear:
- Obviously, your guitar.
- A Firewire to USB Cable
- an Audio Interface (I use the Focusrite Saffire 6USB. The Scarlett 2i2 is good too.)
- A USB-C to USB cable (The only reason this adapter is necessary is I’m using the latest edition of the MacBook Pro. The older generation MacBook Pro doesn’t need this adapter).
- Regular Guitar Cable.
If you’re new to music production, understand that a lot of this equipment will come in handy for years to come.
If you’re serious about recording and producing, much of this equipment and more are a necessity, so just grab some of it off Amazon and be done with it.
![Garageband Garageband](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125657466/436650268.jpg)
Without further ado,
The actual steps:
1) Connect your Firewire cable to your MacBook Pro. In most cases, this cable will come with your purchase of an audio interface, or a MIDI keyboard. However, if you don’t have one for whatever reason, I’m sure you can pick one up from Amazon for cheap.
2) Usually, the port for the firewire cable is on the back of the Audio Interface. Plug the other part of the firewire cable into the back of the Audio Interface.
In my case, the Firewire to USB has to go into the USB-C adapter that I mentioned earlier.
3) Now, assuming you have the Focusrite Saffire 6USB, it should be powered by your computer. You don’t have to plug it in or anything like that, so all of its lights will turn on which you can see on the front of the unit.
4) Open GarageBand.
5) Click “Open Project,” or one of your old existing files. It doesn’t matter.
6) Once it brings up the “Choose A Track Type Page,” Click on where it says: “Built-in Input.”
7) This should be all that’s needed for this part of the process. However, assuming this is the first time that you’ve ever done this, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to click on where it says, “Built-in Output.”
8) That should bring up your “Output” and “Input” Devices under the Audio-MIDI region preferences.
9) Make sure you’ve selected “Built-in Output,” if you’re using your computer as your speaker, or the speakers that are hooked up to your laptop.
10) Select your Audio Interface for the “Input Device.”
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11) Now, once you’re back at the “Choose A Track Type Page,” then click on one of the two subheadings below, either the “Guitar option,” or the “Microphone option.” This should bring up your MIDI Region and all of your controls.
12) In the “Smart Controls Area,” make sure that you’ve selected your audio-interface where it says, “Input.”
13) Now, plug your guitar into the front of your Audio Interface.
14) Click on the “Monitoring Button,” which looks like an upside down Wi-Fi symbol. This part is important, otherwise, you won’t be able to hear what you’re even playing.
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15) You can now select whatever kind of amp you want, whether it’s a “clean guitar,” “crunch guitar,” “acoustic guitar,” “distorted guitar,” “experimental guitar,” “clean bass,” “crunch bass,” and “experimental bass.”
Rane serato scratch live sl3 2. 16) You want to hit the “Monitoring” button beside your track-header as well. I’ve highlighted the upside down Wi-Fi-looking symbol with a black circle. It’ll turn orange once it’s been selected.
Under each heading, there are quite a few options that all sound pretty good, especially after you tweak them to your preferences.
And it’s pretty much as simple as that.
There are some problems that you can run into when doing all of this for the very first time. For that reason, I’ll explain some of the problems that I’ve had when I first started out.
Common Problems and Annoyances As A Beginner
1) Make sure that the gain on your Audio-Interface isn’t turned up too much, otherwise, you’re going to be feeding GarageBand too hot of a signal, which will make it sound distorted and bad.
![How To Use Guitar Amp On Garageband Ipad How To Use Guitar Amp On Garageband Ipad](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125657466/447115167.jpg)
2) Make sure the “Pad,” and “Inst,” buttons are turned off on your audio interface, assuming you own a Focusrite Saffire 6USB. I imagine there are similar controls on other audio interface models.
How To Use Garageband Guitar Amp
I find that these buttons make the signal too powerful as well, and thus, create distortion.
3) Latency. I’ve never actually had latency problems when using an Audio Interface, but some people do have this problem. I have an entire article on Latency which you can read more about here.
Essentially, if you’re having latency issues, there could be a number of different causes, however, most of them will be a result of your set-up and incorrect settings for your gear.
For instance, you want to make sure that – if you’re running more than one track – you have the monitoring button turned on for only one of them, rather than every single track.
Other Ways Of Recording Your Guitar In GarageBand
1) You can also use your MacBook’s microphone. This is for very rough demos, obviously, because this way of doing it is going to make a very low-quality recording. However, if you’re desperate, and want to record something, this method will work.
- To do this, you just open a new “Audio” track in your workspace.
- And then click on the “Record” button.
- Start playing the guitar with your amplifier close to it, and that should be enough for a very rough demo.
2) You can also purchase a Guitar to USB cable and hook your guitar directly up to GarageBand. This is an inferior way of recording guitar tracks as well, but it works if you’re running on a string budget.
(This is what a guitar-jack to USB looks like. I don’t own one so I couldn’t take a picture. I had to piece these two images together, but this is what it looks like).
GarageBand will immediately recognize this as an input, so you don’t have to worry about there being compatibility issues.
However, like the method above, you’ll likely run into latency.
3) Use a small portable audio interface if you plan on only running one instrument through your DAW. This is pretty much the same as the main method which I described in detail above.
The only difference is that you’ll be using a much smaller, and likely, limited audio interface. The good thing about this is that it’s relatively inexpensive. Small interfaces are becoming exceedingly popular, like the iRig for example.
I haven’t picked one of these up yet, but once I start traveling around Europe, I imagine I’ll eventually purchase one. I’ll make sure to write a review on it once I do.
Update: You have to use the iRig HD if you want it to work with a PC computer or Mac. The iRig 2 is only good for mobile.
4) Another popular way would be to mic your guitar amplifier up to your audio interface and then through GarageBand.
This is a decent option, but I prefer just to run my guitar directly through GarageBand, rather than doing this. Amplifiers are too big and cumbersome, and I would much rather limit the amount of gear I own.
Before playing your guitar in GarageBand, know that there’s an actually fairly useful tuning mechanism set up in the DAW. It’s not as good as a good old fashioned Korg tuner, but it still works pretty well. I usually use it if I’m too lazy to go over and grab my tuner.
How To Tune Your Guitar Using GarageBand
1) Your guitar is plugged into your audio interface in the computer, so it’s as simple as clicking on the tuning fork beside the center of the DAW where it shows the time signature, tempo, and key signature.
2) When you click on the tuning fork icon, it’ll bring up the meter where you can tune your guitar.
Other Features
One of the great things about using a DAW for your guitar is all of the great VST plug-ins that you can use for your guitar.
For example, you can download amplifier simulators and cabs for your set up, and while it may not sound good as the original which the plug-ins are modeled after, they still sound good enough to use, and they’re good enough for the vast majority of people who aren’t tone-purists.
I’ll show you how to download plug-ins into your DAW in a later article.
That’s all for now. If this helped you out, do me a favor and share it on social media.
YouTube Video Tutorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxqoQXvQvvAVideo can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: How To Plug Your Guitar Into Garageband (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxqoQXvQvvA)