Enhanced, for your pleasure.
I’ve been using Apple’s Garageband for quite awhile now, but never really took notice of this feature before: “Enhance Tuning”. It’s semi-hidden, and if I was one to read documentation I’m sure I would’ve come across it sooner. It can correct slight abnormalities in your guitaring or singing, for example – without the need for expensive studio-grade plugins like Auto-Tune. While it certainly isn’t as robust in controls as Auto-Tune, it can get the job done if you are “pretty close”
Create a new track – a “Real Instrument” track. You can do your recording, and examine the audio track. On the left you should see sliders for Pitch, Enhance Tuning and Enhance Timing.
- Pitch is for transposing, or course adjustments.
- Enhance Tuning is for finer pitch adjustments, like fixing your (my) tone-deaf singing.
- Enhance Timing is for quantizing notes to a set interval (e.g. 1/16th notes will move notes to the nearest 1/16th interval.) This is particularly helpful for when you’re keying in drum tracks or trying to get a clean track.
The nice thing about these (with the exception of the Pitch slider) is that you can adjust the level of robot-takeover… slider to the left is more human and slider to the right is more robot. So, if you want to quantize your notes you can leave it at 50% to keep some of the swing timing or mild imperfections to keep it from sounding too processed.
What you end up with, is what I’ll have in my next Sessions track within the next couple of days.
I’m continuously amazed with what Apple releases as “consumer level” products. The capabilities are enough to be dangerous – or at least enough for people like me to think we’re dangerous!
UPDATE: I used only Garageband’s built-in “Enhance Tuning” for the vocals on the song in this entry.
