I’m sure many people have pined for a hotrock electric guitar and a pumped up amplifier that can power an entire stadium for all your dream solo rock concerts. Let me show you how to achieve that this very second, with nothing more than your iPhone and GarageBand ’09 on your mac. Let’s get started!
Meet iPhone App Store app iShred (iTunes Download). This powerful app is a complete steal for $4.99: it’s basically an electric guitar PLUS all the effects boxes you’ll ever need PLUS every chord-bank in the world compressed into a mere 19MB on your iPhone. And, everyone of course knows GarageBand (Product Page), a modest part of Apple’s iLife ’09 suite.
iShred and GarageBand ’09 was a match made in the mac heavens. Here’s what’s needed:
- iShred
- GarageBand (not necessarily ’09, but I worked off ’09. It’s got the latest improvements to the effects boxes and amps)
- A mac with a line-in port (this is most recent macs, I believe)
- A 3.5mm male-male audio cable
- An iPhone audio cable adapter, male-female (only for the 1st-gen iPhones with a recessed audio port
Set up the cables such that the iPhone is connected to your Mac’s line-in port via the 3.5mm audio cable (with the adapted if required). Fire up GarageBand and start a new song. Create a new track for a real electric guitar:
Once in the main editing interface, click over the right side and play with the amplifier settings. There are quite a few built-in options, but go over and change the master amplifier settings by clicking on the image of the amplifier and selecting “edit”. Turn “Monitor” on or on with feedback protection. Now, open up iShred on your iPhone (Go ahead and buy it: it’s a guaranteed amazement!) and play around with the interface. Set up a few user chords or use the ones built-in. Play those chords: if your setup is correct, your iPhone should be acting like an electric guitar! Mess with the settings and effects.
The following are my screenshots of my recording of “Gotta Be Somebody” by Nickelback. I’ve added a bass line and some drum loops, set the small portion of the song to loop, and with “monitor” on with some crunch effects, recorded the guitar line with iShred!
I’m sure you get the idea by now. This system is now akin to an electric guitar plus amplifier, minus the cost, and plus the GEEK factor! For all who are interested in hearing the quality, check out my recording of a small loop of “Gotta Be Somebody” here.
[audio:http://www.thequantumbyte.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/gotta-be-somebody-loop.mp3]
Hope this was interesting and helpful. Let me know what you think in the comments section! Later.
March 14th, 2009 at 11:36 am
I hope everybody likes this tutorial.
May 31st, 2009 at 8:13 pm
No one ever explains how you get from the actual guitar which has a mono guitar style plug to a mini stereo jack and whether you have to first go through a pre-amp. Even the imic has a mini stereo jack input. I would love to see some actual set ups instead of always starting from “now that you have your guitar plugged into the Mac”
Thanks for help
June 19th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Zak,
There are a number of different ways to get the guitar plugged into your mac. If you have the equipment already you can take the guitar cord to a preamp, come out from the preamp with another guitar cord. To get into the Mac, what i have done is to find a cable that is 1/4 inch on one side for the guitar and 1/8 on the other side for the mac. This cable is about 9″ long and i got it at Radio Shack. The reason that i went with this configuration is to relieve the stress on the input jack. You can also find many 1/4 to usb connectors on the internet as well. A friend of mine has the one from Griffin and it works perfectly. Hope this helps and good luck!
December 31st, 2009 at 3:47 am
I’d be curious to know what sort of connections used to plug into your Mac, e.g. stereo or mono, any means of boosting level/gain. I finally figured out why I was getting nothing through my M-Audio Mobile Pre: iShred’s volume is so low coming through a 1/8″ male to male cable (though in my case I have to use a female 1/8″ to male 1/4″ adapter for the Mobile Pre). Now, with iShred’s volume set to max, the iPhone’s volume set to max, and the recording level set to max, iShred’s sound level is audible, but still too low. Any suggestions?
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