As GarageBand celebrates its 15-year anniversary this year, Rolling Stone is out with an inside look at how Apple creates the sounds in the app, the role of GarageBand in music production today, and more. The report is “the first media visit Apple has ever allowed to its Music Apps studio.”
Phil Schiller told Rolling Stone that the origin of GarageBand is largely from an “experiment” Apple performed in 2004:
Rolling Stone offers a detailed look at where Apple creates GarageBand sounds, and the team behind the process. Apple’s Music Apps studio is in an unmarked building a few minutes away from Apple Park. The GarageBand team is led by German engineer Dr. Gerhard Lengeling, who joined Apple 17 years ago.
When it comes to creating GarageBand sounds, the report describes the excruciating process of reproducing an American upright bass:
In the real-world, GarageBand is incredibly popular among artists as it’s an easy way to lay down the beginning of a track. Sometimes, however, the result from Garageband is so good it ends up being the final version:
Despite constantly updating GarageBand, however, Apple is careful not to market GarageBand as “too professional a product.” It also sells Logic Pro X for $199.99, and Susan Prescott, Appel’s VP of apps marketing, says the goal is to stay relevant for everyone:
“There have been times an artist will bring in a vocal they recorded in Garageband just using a laptop internal microphone and it sounds cool. Skylar Grey does this a lot.”
As for the future, Schiller says he sees machine learning playing an increasing role in music production and GarageBand:
Read the full report from Rolling Stone here.
Of the danger of GarageBand influencing music too much, he says “there is a cause and effect” between any type of creativity and its creation platform.
On this day 15 years ago, I helped Steve Jobs introduce GarageBand to the world. Since then, it’s brought music composition and production into the lives of millions of people who might have never had access to it otherwise. Looking back on it, I believe this was a kind of altruism on Steve’s part, offering the app for free on Apple devices and eventually for all. He loved music as much as anything else in his life, and GarageBand was Steve’s way of giving people the tools to discover the music within themselves. I once knew a man who changed the world.
A post shared by John Mayer 💎 (@johnmayer) on Jan 6, 2019 at 10:10am PST
