Monday, November 2, 2009

GarageBand - Editing software instrument tracks

I know it's a shock, here I am posting two days in a row! Now that my tutorials are on YouTube, people are watching them and sending back questions. As questions come through my YouTube email, I will post them here as well.

Question:
When I record a software instrument, how can I edit where it begins and where it ends? Example: I click add new track, I click software instrument, I use the grand piano and record something. I double click it and the track editor comes up, and want to delete the time it took for me to press the button to stop recording. How do I do that?

Answer:

When editing green tracks, you can to split the track then delete the section you don't want to keep. Here is what I would do:

1) Make sure the track isn't locked. Locking frees up your processor, uses less power, and saves your track from unintentional changes. Locking is good if you have finished editing that part and you want to save power, but locking is bad if you want to make changes. If the track is locked, the lock icon will look like this:





2) To unlock, click the padlock. When it goes to gray, you can edit the track.
3) Place the playhead/cursor at the spot where you want to cut.
4) From the menu, choose edit>split.
5) Click outside the track (so it's not all bright green anymore) to deselect the recording.
6) Click on the section of the track (now separate from the rest) that you want to delete. It will turn bright green.
7) Press the delete key or choose edit>delete from the menu.

Hopefully, that will work for you! Keep those questions coming :-)

Sunday, November 1, 2009

GarageBand Tutorials Have a New Home!

Yes, I know ... I keep saying I will post more often, but life keeps getting in the way of that. After my summer classes at Boise, I left the next day for a family vacation in Oregon. I came back and had two weeks to pack my oldest off to college, shop for school supplies and clothes for the other two kids, unpack my classroom, and get ready to teach new curriculum to six grade levels (485 students now). The first day of school was my first day for my fall semester Boise class. Needless to say, I have gone through my entire quota of Jolt mints (caffeine is my friend) with several weeks left to go in the semester.

I digress. One of my assignments for Boise this week was to do a video response to a discussion question classmates put on YouTube. I created a YouTube account in 2008 but didn't do anything with it and now I was inspired. I've been holding off moving my GarageBand tutorials off the Boise server because I didn't want to go over my limit on my Yahoo website account. Problem solved - I uploaded my lovely GarageBand Tutorials to my YouTube channel. People have somehow found my Guitar Roadtrip and GarageBand Tutorials (they send me nice emails) and I am hoping that more people will find the GarageBand Tutorials now that they are on YouTube. I had to do some editing on my web pages when I moved them over to my ferdonmusic.com site but it was fun. Of course, I really should have been doing lessons plans, but I couldn't resist!

Here is a link to the new home for my GarageBand instructional materials: http://www.ferdonmusic.com/garageband/intro.html, and my YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/Kipmusic2345. If you hurry you can see me in my chicken hat on YouTube. But you can bet your buttons that my Accessibility video will be yanked off YouTube the second this class is over! Better hurry ...

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

GarageBand '09

This summer I took the next two classes for my EdTech masters at Boise State and one of them focused on instructional design. For my final project, I designed instruction and created materials for music teachers to learn GarageBand '09. I am happy to say that the class is over (I have a few weeks to breathe before the next class begins!) and those materials are now online. Each lesson includes a video tutorial, step-by-step instructions, additional information that related to the lesson, and supporting documents. I plan on adding more lessons to the site and future additions will likely focus on an aspect of the software that goes beyond the basics.

The lessons and tutorials may be found at: http://edtech2.boisestate.edu/ferdons/503/garageband/intro.html --- UPDATE, 11/1/09: The tutorials can still be accessed through this URL, but can now also be found at http://www.ferdonmusic.com/garageband/intro.html. See my November 1st post for more info!

Once I am finished with my degree (May, 2011) I will move my GarageBand webpages to another site but they will always be linked here in the sidebar. I hope the tutorials will be of use to as many people as possible, so please feel free to pass along the link.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

New and Improved Website

I have a few weeks between semesters at Boise State and have been revamping my classroom website. I have been able to move to more consistent page styling using external style sheets (css) which was my main goal. I have had fun making images (using Fireworks) for banners, titles and buttons but my favorite additions to the site are from Google. I added a calendar using Google Calendar and a translating button. Here are some links if you want to check it out:

Kipling Music Website
Google Calendar Getting Started Guide
Google Translate (click on "Tools" to get embed code to put the gadget on your page).

Now, have some fun translating :-)

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Back Again

I keep thinking I will write regular blog posts then I have music shows and homework for Boise State. There is a brief lull - I expect it to last several minutes - so here is a quick post. I recently discovered Switch and it has become my current favorite audio conversion tool. It's free and very easy to use - drag and drop, select file type from drop-down menu and click "convert." You can visit the Switch website for additional information. Downloads for a variety of operating systems can be found toward the bottom of the page.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Tutorials

I have discovered the joy of screencasting! In my EdTech classes at Boise, instructors have created tutorials using a process called screencasting. In screencasting, computer software captures what is happening on the monitor and records audio commentary. In this type of tutorial, the viewer will see and hear step-by-step instructions for completing specific tasks on the computer. Of course I had to try it out.

I recorded my first tutorial while using GarageBand to edit a song for my upcoming 4th grade music program. For a first try, I think it turned out pretty well. Blogger only allows uploading of image files so, for now, I put my beautiful 13 minute tutorial on File Dropper. It may move, but for now the tutorial can be accessed via the following address: http://www.filedropper.com/editinganaudiofileusinggarageband. When you click on the link, it will take you to the File Dropper website. You may need to scroll down a tad, but you will see a button that says "download." Click on that and the movie will download to your computer. While I am happy to share, we really don't need copies of the tutorial on each viewer's computer, so my next task will be to figure out how people can view it without downloading.

If you are a Mac user and would like an introduction to audio editing, please check it out and let me know what you think. If there are topics you would like to suggest for future screencast tutorials (Mac or PC), please let me know. I am eager to play :-)

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

The Only Thing Better Than Blogging


The only thing better than blogging is blogging with Pooh Bear! I was on delicious and one bookmark led me to another and before I knew it, I was on a page with my favorite bear. There are some good tips on writing blog posts and, of course, you can never go wrong with Pooh Bear! Here is the Winnie the Pooh Guide to Blogging.

I'm Back!

When I started my Music EdTech blog I was determined to add posts on a regular basis. I've been pretty good about posting answers to questions that people have sent my way and, until recently, did fairly well at adding other tidbits on a fairly regular basis. Then a couple months ago they changed the date for our curriculum adoption. We went from spring to January 26th. YIKES!! Because I am the department chair I got to do lots and lots of things to keep our process moving along. The presentation to the Board of Education was last night so it's back to a somewhat more normal schedule. YIPPEE!!! Now that the bulk of the work is behind us I am very glad the date got changed. We were likely more efficient than we would have otherwise been and now I can focus more on my very fun Music EdTech blog.

Do you have a question or some techie thing you've been thinking of trying? Send me a comment or email (contact section in the sidebar) and I would be happy to help. Tomorrow I am off to the Illinois Music Educators Association All-State Conference in Peoria, but my trusty MacBook will be with me so I will be, as always, compulsively checking my blog for comments!!

The Joys of Social Bookmarking

I have recently discovered the joy of delicious. I had heard about the whole social bookmarking thing but always thought, "I like my bookmarks just fine the way they are, thank you very much, and I don't need one more thing to do." Then I actually tried it, and guess what? I liked it! I know that I have just barely stuck my foot in the door of social bookmarking but have quickly come to realize the tremendous wealth of information available with just a few quick clicks of the mouse. For those of you new to the idea, here is an excerpt from the Social Bookmarking page on Wikipedia: "In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine."

The feature I thought I would like best is that my bookmarks could be accessed from any computer with Internet access. In the past, I would bookmark something wonderful on my MacBook at home, but when I got to school, I would have to go back and forth between two computers to get the URL or send myself links. Not a good use of time. Being able to access my bookmarks from any computer is a tremendously wonderful feature, but I've discovered that what I like best is checking out what sites other people have bookmarked. Looking for information about technology integration? You can see bookmarks that every delicious user has tagged "technology integration" or check out bookmarks for a specific user. Many bloggers are now putting links on their blog that allow you to add that person to your network. If this all sounds like a foreign language, take heart - the whole thing is very intuitive.

While this may save you time when you are doing research, you still have to evaluate each bookmarked site. Just because someone else likes it doesn't mean it's good, but it certainly provides a narrower search than typing your search terms into the Google searchbar.

Did I peak your interest? Here is a link to a website that lists what they say are the Top 30 Social Bookmarking Sites.