Whether you’re a talented musician or like the idea of building on a pre–recorded beat, when it comes to making music, your Mac is the perfect partner

Written by Carrie Marshall

Image rights: Apple, Ian McKinnell.

Macs and music were made for each other, and it’s never been easier to make music on your Mac — no matter what kind of music you want to make. It’s also incredibly easy to share your musical masterpieces with the rest of the world; you can start a song in the morning and share it on Soundcloud that day.

Your Mac isn’t just great for writing songs or recording performances. It can also be an incredibly powerful recording studio, especially when you start experimenting with plug-ins. Plug–ins are little apps that plug in to your music app and give it new powers; plug–ins include cavernous echoes, digitally modelled guitar amplifiers, retro synthesizers and a whole collection of special effects.

Once you’ve mixed your song to make it sound brilliant, your Mac can handle the final step too: mastering. Mastering is when you ensure that your songs sound as good as they possibly can, that the gentle ballad isn’t twice as loud as your heaviest track and that there’s a consistency to the overall sound (if you want there to be). Last, and not least, you can then export the finished product and share it online.

Let’s discover how your Mac can help you make, mix and share any kind of music.

ANYONE CAN PLAY GUITAR: GARAGEBAND BASICS

Every Mac comes with GarageBand. It’s free — and it’s brilliant

We love GarageBand. That’s not just because it’s free. It’s because it’s useful, easy to use, and delivers some of the best features of its big sister, Logic Pro X. And it works really well with the iOS app, which you can use as a virtual keyboard, drum kit, or guitar, or record when you’re out and about. You can then open the project on your Mac.

Like many music apps, GarageBand works with multi–track audio. A track could be a small bit of music repeating as a loop; notes you played on a MIDI keyboard or created by hand in the editing window; or a recording of someone making music. Each component of the song gets its own track, so for example you might have a track for the drum machine, another for the bass, a couple of tracks for synthesizers and one for the lead vocal. Or you might record multiple tracks of the same thing to get a bigger sound.