First off, you must be completely beside yourself with excitement about your new iPad. I mean, think of all the amazing apps, tasks, and such that you have access to with taps and swipes of your fingertips.

Second, you must be just ecstatic about your new purchase of GarageBand for iPad! And you should be—making GarageBand available for the iPad was a brilliant move for Apple. For crying out loud, coupling instruments, recording technology, and arrangement with such an intuitive instrument as the iPad—it’s brilliant!

For those of you who are new to the iPad, let me give you a quick history.

GarageBand started off as (and still is) an audio application for all Apple computers. It’s part of a suite of multimedia applications, sometimes known as the iSuite. These applications include iWeb, iPhoto, iMovie, and more. I won’t go into an explanation of what each of these applications does, because it’s not relevant to what we’re learning. Besides, if you look at the names, they are pretty self-explanatory.

My absolute favorite is GarageBand, though. Having the ability to use virtual instruments, such as pianos, guitars, and synths, anywhere I go has been amazing. But what’s been even better is being able to record vocals at a friend’s house and instantly have effects that make me sound like a pro. It’s so cool!

GarageBand itself owes a lot to its older brother, Logic/Logic Pro. When GarageBand was first shuffled out the door, it was brilliant in the sense that anyone—and I mean anyone—could easily learn to play and record a song. Over the years, though, GarageBand has borrowed some other tricks from its older brother, and it has become even more powerful and intuitive. Features such as loops, time stretching, spectrum analysis, and amp modeling have come from Logic over the years.

In this tutorial of GarageBand, we’ll go through the newest incarnation of GarageBand, which is available for your iPad. (I can’t stop saying that; it’s so cool!) In easy numbered steps, we’ll cover how to achieve all of the musical dreams and goals that you are undoubtedly coming up with right now.

And, because GarageBand is just as visual as it is audible, we’ll have plenty of pictures to give you references as we move along.

All right, enough chatter! Thanks for buying this handy manual, and let’s get to work!