Before you read any further, please make sure you have appropriate background music playing. You’re welcome. Everyone needs a dose of Weird Al every now and again.

Now, this audio assignment is one of the easiest in the Bank–worth only one star. Despite this, it has a lot of room for creativity and good ol’ goofiness. Plus, I’m showing you all how to do this assignment on Garageband, an application for Mac OS, so fellow Apple users, read on. PC users, read on, as well, because chances are, at some point in your higher education or career experience, you will encounter Mac computers and have to use Mac software. This is a nice way to ease into the OS.

1) First things first: open the application! The icon looks like this and can be found in Finder > Places > Applications:

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

2) Double-click the icon, and be patient. There’s a lot to load in the app, so it might take a while. When it does pop up, you’ll be greeted with this window:

Yeah, this is as awesome as it looks.

3) Since you’ll be recording your voice, double click the mic stand. Name your file whatever you’d like. The .band extension is default for Garageband; you can change that later, so no worries.

• 3A) For future reference, if you’re penning a song and know what key and time signature the piece will be in, you can alter the file’s details before it loads. This assignment, however, doesn’t require any musical theory.

My personal files are blacked out; that black rectangle won’t typically be there!

4) Your newly loaded workspace should look like this!

Such opportunities await.

5) Now, “Female Basic” and “Male Basic” are just fancy terms for vocal tracks laid down for you to record over with slight attention to pitch variation that occurs between genders. Don’t worry about it, but if you prefer one or the other, go ahead and choose. The differences are quite subtle.

• 5A) To delete a track, click it, and then hit COMMAND + DELETE. It should disappear from the left hand column.

6) Again, we’re not doing anything fancy with this assignment, so, the first thing I recommend is to turn off the metronome that counts you in during recording. When it’s turned off, there will be no check mark next to the word, and you won’t hear any clicks rhythmically echoing through your headphones.

7) Now it’s time to record! When you’ve prepared your script and accent, press R. You are now recording. Say what you will!

8) Once you’re done with what you’ve decided to order, hit the space bar. This will pause/stop your work. Your space should look a little something like this, with variations in audio marks–little ticks along that line–and overall section length.

Feelin’ like a rockstar, yet?

9) Click back at the start of your recording, near the 1. Press the space bar for PLAY and take a listen. If you’re satisfied, move onto Step 10!

• 9A) If you’re not happy with the recording, that’s totally okay. This is a learning process, and Garageband is tricky at first! You can get rid of/select all or portions of your recording by literally highlighting sections of the colored area and COMMAND + DELETING. Feel free to take as much time as you need to record over and over and mess around with effects if you’d like! This is a simple assignment that’s fairly wide open, so you have room to fiddle with different details.

10) Once you’re happy with your recording, hit COMMAND + S. This will save it as a Garageband file on your Mac so that you can go back and edit or access it whenever you want. To upload it to SoundCloud, however, you have to make it a .mp3 or .wav file.

11) To do this, move your cursor to the top tool bar and click SHARE. Then, click EXPORT SONG TO DISC.

I’m suggesting you save your file as an .mp3, so when it comes up with this window, just hit EXPORT. Don’t change any details.

Title your piece something memorable and/or awesome and save it in your chosen folder.

So, don’t title it this!

Viola! Your recording is now saved as an .mp3 and can be uploaded to SoundCloud like the rest of your audio work!

I hope this tutorial helped! Let me know what you think or if you have any questions in the comments below!