With Apple’s creative suite iLife ’06, converting inspiration to art could not be any easier. For starters, the iLife ’06 applications come pre-loaded with every Macintosh computer, so there’s no hassle involved in installing third-party programs.

Applications like iTunes, Garageband, iPhoto, iMovie and iWeb offer seamless integrative possibilities – audio, video and pictures are exchangeable between all programs. The creative possibilities are limitless in the hands of any user, experienced or otherwise.

In the first of a four part series, AsiaOne Digital explores the iTunes and Garageband programs to show how they can be harnessed to create deceptively simple but yet sophisticated podcasts. With a graphical and user-friendly interface, iTunes and Garageband leave the mundane technicalities out of the window, giving the user full reign to indulge in his or her imagination.  

Inspiration for your own podcast: iTunes

Novices or experienced podcast makers alike are driven to create that elusive and definitive blend of voice, sound, music and image which makes for a great podcast. They all have their own lists of favourite podcasts and are on the look-out for the next great thing.

With Apple iTunes and an Internet connection, tuning-in and subscribing to podcasts is a breeze, and here, even the Windows users are not left out.

Browse the iTunes store for podcasts, download them and use the subscribe function to get latest episodes.

Once you are connected to the World Wide Web, go to the iTunes store in your iTunes program and look out for the Podcasts section. Once in there, browse from a list of pre-determined categories or featured video content to select the podcast you would like to listen to.

Just click on the “Get Episode” button beside the desired episode to download it!

If you enjoyed the episode and would like to hear more, iTunes offers a  “Subscribe” button to ensure newer episodes are automatically downloaded when your computer is connected to the Internet.

Based on your requirements, iTunes can be programmed to check for new episodes as frequently or infrequently as you wish, using the “Settings” button at the bottom.

Want to take your ‘casts in your pod wherever you may roam? If you have an iPod, podcasts can be automatically synced so that new episodes are copied over to the iPod, and you can resume listening at exactly where you stopped while you are on the go.

With a huge array of inspiring podcasts available, it’s hard to find a reason not to get cracking on creating your own!

Home-made podcasts right in your garage

Creating a sophisticated sounding- or looking-podcast is pretty straightforward with Garageband. In “Create Podcast Episode” mode, all the tools necessary for you to make that amazing recording are right at your disposal.

There’s no tedious importing of sound effects or loops from other libraries, or any need to resize and crop pictures to fit your episode – everything is intuitively accessible in the Garageband platform.

A basic framework at the go

In “Create Podcast Mode”, a basic layout of four audio tracks and a channel for artwork is already in place when you start the project.

You might think that this constrains the way the podcast is structured but then again, it provides the bare essentials of what you need to start recording and editing instantly – perfect for those frenzied flights of inspired moments.

To add or remove any additional channels to your project, just go to the “Track” drop-down menu on the top your screen and choose the desired action.

And... We’re live!

Garageband's neat layout helps podcast authors structure and conceptualise their ideas.

Those who are familiar with more complex software like Pro-tools or Cakewalk - that have steeper learning curves to master their entire repertoire - will not have much difficulty figuring out how to work the recording and playback functions of the individual channels in Garageband.

But for the newbies out there – here’s a quick run-down:

Before hitting that big record button in the playback/forward/backward/timer panel in the centre of the screen (it looks very much like a CD player’s controls) and shouting out “we’re live!” – we need to tell Garageband which channels you want the recording to be sent to.

This process of ‘arming’ the channel is performed by going to the individual channel and clicking on its own record button – this tells Garageband to send any inputs to that channel.

 Once you are done working with that channel, unselecting it will stop future recording on it. There’s also a useful ‘lock’ button which when lit up, prevents any overwriting of the materials on that channel, until it is ‘unlocked’.

Just like channels can be selected/unselected in the recording mode, a similar set of functions is provided in the playback mode to help in the editing and review processes.

Clicking on that big playback button in the ‘CD-player’ control panel will start playing the entire project from left to right, but we can tell Garageband to ‘solo’ or ‘mute’ certain channels.

This is great for identifying problematic ambient noises in certain channels or for a focused review of specific recordings.

To ‘solo’ a channel and drop everything else out of the mix, light up the ‘headphones’ button on the individual channel controls, and to ‘mute’ a channel, light up ‘speaker’-looking button.

The great thing about these functions is that they can be activated ‘on-the-fly’, as the project is played in real-time.

A sonic arsenal at your disposal

Garageband also contains a whole slate of ready-to-use sounds and loops to enhance your podcast. Click the ‘eye’ button in the ‘CD-player’ control panel to reveal the library of loops which contains Jingles, Stingers, and Sound Effects.

 It feels like being a radio DJ with the whole sonic arsenal at your disposal.

Try “Acoustic Sunrise” under the Country section in Jingles for a reflective introduction to kick-off the podcast, throw in some Sound Effects and Stingers to accentuate your content, and finish off with some fanfare from the Cinematic section under Jingles.

Sounds like a great recipe doesn’t it?

All sound loops operate on a drag-and-drop system – simply drag the desired loop and drop it onto the channel you want.

Shift its position anywhere on the timeline by dragging it around, and edit the length by placing the mouse over the ends of the individual sound waves.

 To speed up or alter the pitch of the loop, simply select the sound wave and click on the ‘scissor-looking’ button on the ‘CD-player’ control panel to review the section in greater detail.

Creating the podcast: It’s all in the process 

This article is in no way intended to be exhaustive in showing you how iTunes and Garageband work. It merely seeks to introduce potential users to some basic functions and perhaps get them off the ground and running to create a podcast.

Apple has some great iLife ’06 tutorials at www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials complete with video and written instructions to show you more.

If you are more adventurous, just playing around with the buttons and the interface can take up hours on end, and provide for a fun, rewarding experience.