Here at Transformance Music we are very excited about our upcoming training day for Primary School teachers- ‘

Using a software program like GarageBand, Acid Music Studio, Mixcraft, Sonar Home Studio or the GarageBand app on the iPad, have students create their own 12 bar blues backing. They can then play or sing a melody based on the blues scale over the top. Write your own blues lyrics on the Gullah Music website.

Transforming the Blues iPad GarageBand Lesson. Transforming The Blues Free iPad GarageBand Project The 12 Bar Blues in a Tango Style? If you’re looking for a blues activity that’s a little different – and you have some iPads you can use during class – you might like to ask students to “transform the blues” using the GarageBand app. This unit teaches students how to play 12-bar Blues on the iPad using the Garageband app. Students should already be familiar with the form, chord progression, and scale used in the 12-bar blues, as well as the history, cultural context, music and musicians of the Blues. In Part 1, students play and record the chords used in the 12-bar blues. Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube. The 12 Bar Blues in a Tango Style? If you’re looking for a blues activity that’s a little different – and you have some iPads you can use during class – you might like to ask students to “transform the blues” using the GarageBand app.

Developing Musicianship

and Creativity in the New National Curriculum

run in partnership with Mr Andrews Online . Details are available from here, but in essence the day will provide an opportunity for Music Specialists and classroom teacher who work with KS1-3 to tool up all all the skills and apps needed to deliver songwriting/composition sessions using iPads. We are pleased to offer delegates already attending a deal to bring a friend or colleague at half price. This also applys to new bookings- so you and a friend could each pay 75% of the fee for the day.

We look forward to making music with you!

If you’re looking for a harmonica VST from Garageband, look no further than the Serpo plug-in from JD Tech. You can get it either from Vst4Free at the link below or from AudioPlugingsForFree.

Serpo on Vst4Free and AudioPluginsForFree

From what I understand, the Serpo plug-in is the only Apple-compatible FREE plug-in that comes with a harmonica built into it, so for now, it’s the best option available to you.

Truthfully, you could probably find an alternative out there, especially if you’re willing to spend some money, however, this is the only free one available to my knowledge.

How to Use Serpo’s Harmonica

The notes of the harmonica are subject to change, depending on the type of harmonica.

For instance, real-life harmonicas actually come in a variety of formats, with most of them using the Key of C Major, the most common key signature in Western Music Theory, or at least the key signature on which the rest of music theory is based.

From what I can tell, Serpo’s harmonica is actually a chromatic harmonica, which means that it’s not tied to any particular key signature. Each note of the MIDI Keyboard or Garageband’s Smart Controls functions as it normally would for a software instrument.

In other words, when you press ‘C’ on the Musical Typing, you actually get a C note from the harmonica, and when you press on a ‘C#’ you also get a C#.

When you try to play a chord with it, which isn’t really possible with a harmonica in real-life, you end up with a bizarre sound.

A harmonica is typically a melodic instrument.

In other words, it’s used melodically, rather than harmonically, which means you play each note one at a time, rather than in harmony with each other, which is different from playing the piano or guitar.

Guitars and pianos can be played both melodically and harmonically, in other words, single notes and then notes combined with each other. The same thing cannot be said for the harmonica.

Due to the limiting structure of the harmonica, it’s much better to use the instrument to outline chords, rather than play all of the MIDI notes together. For instance, if you wanted to play a chord with the harmonica, you would have to play each note on its own.

Explained another way, the harmonica plays chords melodically and as arpeggios, which means you’re playing the notes of the chord on a note-by-note basis.

In other words, if you want the C Major sound, then you go ahead and play a C, E, and then a G.

If you wanted to play a G Major Chord, you’d play a G, B, and a D.

To play a G7 (G Dominant 7th), you’d play a G, B, D, and an F.

Playing the Blues with Serpo’s Harmonica

I would argue that playing the blues on the harmonica, like every other instrument, depends a lot more on the musical context than the actual notes that you play with the melodic instrument.

In other words, it really depends on the chords that are playing in the background, rather than the notes you play on the lead instrument.

The notes you play on the harmonica are meant more for outlining the chords that make up the musical structure of the song.

For instance, the most common musical phrase in blues is the 12-bar blues progression, which is I-IV-V7.

To play a bluesy sounding harmonica progression, you would just want to use a piano or a guitar to outline those chords, and then you can go ahead and jam on the harmonica as you want, as long as you’re in the key of C.

You could probably use the C Pentatonic scale as well, which you can find online just by Googling it.

How To Make Serpo’s Harmonica Sound Great

Admittedly, VSTs never sound quite as good as the real thing, however, there are usually things that can be done to increase the quality of the sound.

With that in mind, there are a number of things that you can do to Serpo’s Harmonica to make it sound a little bit better, so we’re going to explore a few of those tactics here.

In my article on how to make Garageband instruments sound a little bit more professional, which you can check out at this link here, I explore some of the most common practices for increasing the sound’s quality.

However, in this tutorial specifically, we’ll tailor the changes specifically for the harmonica.

There are 6 different tactics you want to employ to make the harmonica sound a bit better, including light slurs and staccato notes, compression, EQ, reverb, ambience, and then stereo-delay.

1) Use Light Slurs and Staccato

By this, I mean that after you play a musical phrase on Serpo’s harmonica, you end the phrase with a very-lightly played note that’s almost like a slur.

It looks a lot like what you can see in the image below:

I find that this is a good way to actually make the MIDI harmonica sound a little more realistic and dynamic.

Also, the note should be staccato as well, which means that you’re going to play the note as a short burst, rather than elongated. You can also see what this looks like in the image above.

2) Compression Setting

The compressor is another way to make it sound a little bit better. You want to use the following settings to really bring some of the quieter sounds forward, and the louder sounds further back in the mix.

I have the Compressor set up at the following controls:

Threshold: -29.0dB

Ratio: 6:1:1

Attack: 35ms

Gain: 2.0dB

This is going to improve the quality of the sound.

3) Channel EQ

For the Channel EQ, I have it set it up like what you can see in the below:

As you can see, I’ve attenuated some of the lower frequencies in addition to frequencies in the higher ranges.

The purpose of this is to eliminate some of the unnecessary frequencies, and also make the higher frequencies less sharp and less prominent.

4) Delay

The delay, in this case, is used just to thicken up the sound a little bit, to make it sound a little more full-bodied.

I have the Delay set to the following parameters, as you can see in the image shown below:

For the most part, the most important delay settings to change are the following:

Left Note:1/8

Garageband Ipad 12 Bar Blues Band

Right Note: 1/8

Left Mix: 8%

Right Mix: 8%

This is going to make it sound just a little bit more interesting. I use this same Delay setting when I mix vocals as well.

5) Reverb

For the reverb, I have