Mad Max - Creating the sound of joy with GarageBand

These instructions are designed for GarageBand 3 plus the sounds of a symphony orchestra.
GarageBand is easy and fast yet powerful enough to do film scoring.
Please, tell me if you find anything as good!


This course in music and filmmaking is:
Film scoring introduction for filmmakers
This lesson is:
Lesson #2 - Using rhythm to create moods with GarageBand and the sounds of a symphony orchestra
The pages in this lesson are:
Lesson Summary: Creating moods with rhythm using GarageBand with symphony orchestra
Page 2: Creating the sound of joy with GarageBand and symphony orchestra sounds - 6 points
Page 3: Creating additional moods for motion pictures with rhythm - 6 points
Creating the sound of fear with GarageBand plus Jam Pack: Symphony Orchestra

Step 1

1. Pick four notes
Start a new project file in GarageBand and add four short notes of a bell sound.
In the pop quiz, you determined which bell and which pitch is the most enjoyable. Now you pick four notes at random and put them on a track so they play in just one second.
Note: Once you have created the project with your four note, you can easily adjust the velocity of the notes. I prefer to have each of the notes with a different velocity.

Step 2

2. Repeat the notes

One of the options in GarageBand is to drag the region so it repeats itself. We need about four seconds of these tiny bell sounds.


3. Send me your results

Once you are happy with your sound of fear, send me the project file. Done!

More advanced Techniques

In the exercise above, you used on only one track in GarageBand. If you wish, you can try to create additional tracks to enhance your sound of joy.

Option 1 · Add other voices

The tiny bells give you a feeling of joy. You can enhance this with other sounds. The easiest is to add another instruments playing the same notes very slowly while the bells play in the background.

Option 2 · Add an audio sound effect

Programs like GarageBand allow you to mix music with ordinary audio files (sound effects from a sound effect library.) Pick a fearful sound effect and combine it with your bells. Perhaps the chirping of a bird.

The Next Page

Once you have sent me your project file for creating the "Sound of Fear" using a violin trill, you can try to create other moods using only a single note with GarageBand and Jam Pack:Symphony Orchestra.

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