GarageBand: How to create stereo tracks

My friend, Lekowala, texted me: “How do you get the guitar tracks to go stereo?”

I don’t know about other GarageBand users, but here’s how I do it. There are two main ways:

1. Use the “Chorus –> Spread Stereo” effects setting
2. Create a duplicate track, then adjust the Track Pan settings to create a Left and Right track

METHOD #1: CHORUS - SPREAD STEREO (click on the image to see larger sizes)

GarageBand records in Mono (I’m using iLife ‘06). At the Track Info panel, under Input, it says “Channel 1 (Mono)”. It’s still Mono even if you select “Channel 1 & 2 (Stereo)”.

“Chorus” effect. You can instantly hear the difference.

One easy way to get the stereo effect is to select the “Spread Stereo” option from the

If you don’t want to use any effects to distort your original recording, here’s an alternative to using the Chorus Spread Stereo effect.

METHOD #2: Track Pan settings (click on the image to see larger sizes)

After you’ve recorded your track, make a Duplicate Track. Then copy the recording (from your first track) and paste to the duplicate track.

Click on the “Track Volume/ Pan Curve” button (i.e. the little triangle icon). The choose “Track Pan“.

Adjust the tracks to pan to the left and right respectively.

TIP: If you can’t seem to be able to get both tracks to have the same Pan curve number, don’t stress yourself out. Seems there’s always a +1 difference between the left and right pan. In my case, I have the top pan track set to “-34″ and the bottom track to “+35″. You can never get “-34″ and “+34″.

Out of curiosity, I searched if there were other related blog posts/ sites. Here’s a few, although some may not have specific instructions on stereo tracks:

• Homerecording.About.com - An introduction to GarageBand
• Apple.com Mac 101: GarageBand
• Synthtopia.com - Advanced audio effects in Garageband and GarageBand Tips and Tricks
• TidBITS - Tips and Tricks for recording with GarageBand (this one talks about recording two tracks at once, so maybe that’ll help)
• Apple’s Garageband manual - PDF file (it covers the basics of using GarageBand)

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