Whether or not you care for the sound of jingling bells and a rooftop echoing the click, click, click of reindeer hooves, there’s no escaping holiday music. Along with ornamented trees, candles, and nogged eggs, it’s parcel and part of December’s latter weeks. To join rather than beat the holiday spirit, you may wish to pipe such music throughout your home. Here are a few ways to do so—as well as where you might go to find some new holiday tunes.

Home for the holidays

If you live in a smallish apartment, whole-home audio is a cinch. Attach a couple of powered speakers to your computer, phone, music player, or tablet; press the Play button; and crank up the speakers until they rattle the mistletoe dangling in the farthest corner of your home.

If you’ve moved beyond such small quarters and find yourself needing to fill multiple rooms with music, your job is more involved—and more expensive—though not terribly complicated. As a user of Apple products, the obvious choice is to explore Apple’s AirPlay technology.

For those unfamiliar with AirPlay, here’s the gist: With music stored in your computer’s iTunes library or on an iOS device, you can wirelessly stream that music to AirPlay-compatible devices. In Apple’s world this means an Apple TV, and AirPort Express Base Station, or any set of AirPlay-capable speakers.

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A visit to your local Apple Store during the holiday season can be maddening. The stores are overrun with other shoppers, there’s a mob around each gadget table, and waiting for your turn to be helped by an Apple Store employee takes eons. The walk-in line to purchase an iPhone 5 alone can take upwards of an hour, depending on how many people are in front of you. While we generally like the Apple Store’s “no register” system, it can be a real headache during busy periods.

This year, there are a few ways to avoid waiting in a long line. It just takes a little planning ahead.

Check yourself out

Bring your iOS device to the Apple Store, because the Apple Store app is a handy guide for holiday shopping. The app shows you where the nearest Apple Store is, lets you search for product availability at specific stores, and allows you to purchase items yourself.

The Apple Store app also has a feature called Express Checkout that lets you directly purchase items from the online Apple Store by quickly entering your Apple ID and password. Designate whether you’d like to pick the item up in a store or have it shipped. The app bills the card on file that’s linked to your Apple ID and will ship to the address on file as well; you can adjust these settings by selecting Edit in the app itself at checkout.

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Reader and frequent Macworld contributor, Glenn Fleishman should know better than to send me a question via Twitter’s direct message, as I’m sure to blab it to the rest of the world. He messaged:

I bought powered, wired, lavalier mics with 1/8th inch jack. How can I use these with my 2011 MacBook Air?

The MacBook Air has a single headphone port, which should be more accurately called the “headset” port. Like the headphone port on iOS devices, this jack supports audio input as well as output—with this caveat: The microphone or headset in question must be of the three-ring variety, just like Apple’s headsets (and their compatible brethren).

Regrettably, your lavalier mics are undoubtedly of the standard two-ring variety. So you could plug them into your Air’s headphone port from now until the end of time and your laptop would look the other way as if it had no notion that it had another wire dangling from its side.

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It might feel like you’ve just finished that last helping of turkey at the Thanksgiving, but the calendar doesn’t lie: The holidays are just about here. You’ve got less than a dozen shopping days until Christmas. Hanukkah starts even sooner—December 20—and even Kwanzaa is right around the corner, beginning on December 26. It seems like plenty of time to get your shopping done, but not if you’re relying on online shopping or buying customized tech gifts. If you still have gifts to order, pickup, or send, observe these deadlines to ensure that your gifts are delivered before 2012.

Gifts from the Apple Store

If you’re giving the gift of Apple this year and would prefer not waiting in a long line at the Apple Store, you can buy any in-stock product online and have it shipped to your house. Apple is even offering free two-to-three day shipping on most of its major products. However, if you want something delivered on or before Christmas Eve, you’d better act fast—some Macs need to be ordered by Wednesday to meet this deadline. Here’s the Apple Store’s express shipping schedule with a holiday delivery guarantee:

• iPad: December 19 for engraved, December 21 for non-engraved.
• iPod: December 19 for engraved, December 21 for non-engraved.
• iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS: December 21
• Customized Macs: December 14
• Regular off-the-shelf Macs and popular configurations: December 21
• Apple TV: December 21
• All other items: December 21

All of the above dates promise delivery on or before Christmas Eve. It’s too late to order an iPhone 4S online–they had to be ordered by December 5 to guarantee delivery by December 24. If you order one now, it’s set to ship between December 23 and January 3. At this point, you can either reserve an iPhone 4S after 9:00 p.m. for in-store pickup the next day, or else face waiting in line for a walk-in purchase.

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Editor's note: We've published an updated version of this article, Buying Guide: Find the Best Headphones (2012).

If you're looking to improve the audio coming from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod, new headphones will do wonders. Similarly, a good set of headphones is a must-have for those times you want to listen to your Mac privately. However, the variety of styles and options is wider than ever—and the opportunities for in-person testing fewer. To help you find the perfect set of headphones, here’s the 2011 edition of our yearly buying guide: what to look (and listen) for, descriptions of the different types, and specific recommendations. (We covered speakers in our annual speakers buying guide.)

Whichever model you choose, don't forget to protect your hearing.

What to look for when shopping

Unlike with speakers, headphones don't differ much on features—you plug them in, put the earpieces on (or in) your ears, and listen. (One exception, covered below, relates to remote/headset functionality.) For the most part, the main differences between models are type, comfort, and sound quality. I cover the different types of headphones below, but here are a few things to keep in mind when shopping.

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I’ve been doing a lot of podcasting lately. In the last year I’ve probably edited and posted something like 85 different podcast episodes, between my half-time duties on the Macworld Podcast and the podcasts I do in my personal time. During that time I’ve learned a whole lot about what to do—and just as importantly, what not to do—in order to make a podcast that sounds good.

In 2009 our own Christopher Breen detailed his methods for producing the Macworld Podcast as well as our favorite gear for podcasting. Those articles are both great, and worth reading if you’re thinking of becoming a podcaster or are a podcaster looking for ways to improve.

Get a microphone

Call me a podcast snob if you will—I certainly call myself one—but I just can’t bear to listen to a podcast with bad audio. And there are lots of them out there. Good audio starts with the recording itself, and that means everyone on the podcast needs a good microphone.

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If you love music, movies, TV shows, and podcasts there’s a good chance that your iTunes Media folder (formerly called the iTunes Music folder, and yours might be called that if you’ve been using iTunes for a long time) has swollen to the point where it’s pushing up against the bounds of your hard drive’s capacity. In such cases you need to move your media to a more expansive drive. Here are the steps for doing just that.

Step One: Add a hard drive to your Mac

The whole point of this exercise is to make more room for your iTunes media. When choosing the capacity of that hard drive, consider both the current size of your iTunes Media folder as well as how much media you’re likely to add in the next few years. If you purchase music from the iTunes Store bear in mind that Apple’s has increased the bit rate of music sold at the store—from 128-kbps AAC to 256-kbps AAC. When the bit rate doubles so too does the size of the files. And if you rip your own CDs, and want the best quality, Apple Lossless files are even larger. Also, the TV shows and movies from the iTunes Store can be huge—especially if you purchase the HD versions.

Step Two: Configure iTunes’ preferences

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A reader who wishes to go by the name OldMacster needs some advice on an audio recording. He/she writes:

I recently recorded our church choir singing many songs using GarageBand. Trouble is, because I recorded all the songs at one time, GarageBand treats it as one very long song. How do I separate each song that the choir sang so that the CD that I burn has each song on a separate track, like a commercial CD I find in the store?

Thank you, OldMacster, for providing me with the opportunity to gripe about one of GarageBand’s weaknesses—the inability to insert markers in a track and then export separate tracks based on those markers. But you can’t. And so, oh well.

Although you could split the tracks in GarageBand, then cut and paste the split portions into separate tracks, and then export each track separately, it’s a bother. I’d consider, instead, saving the GarageBand track as a single AIFF track and then opening that single track in a different application that handles this kind of thing with greater aplomb. To do that, choose Share -> Export Song to Disk. In the sheet that appears, make sure that the Compress option is not enabled. Now save the track to your Desktop.

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Often, when you’ve recorded something that’s out of tune, you’ve just got to record it again. But before you do, try fixing it in GarageBand '09, which comes with a few tools for tweaking pitch. Here, I’ll walk you through the process of using these tools.

1. Double-click on the region you want to work with. This will select the region as well as open up the Track Editor. (If the Track Editor was already open, this will hide it; if that’s the case, double-click it again.)

2. To the left of the region, you’ll see three sliders: Pitch, Enhance Tuning, and Enhance Timing.

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Reader Daniel Shanefield finds that his iPad lacks a favorite iTunes feature. He writes:

With my iBook, I get free music from iTunes via Internet radio. But the iPod app on my iPad doesn’t offer this kind of content. How can I get that with the iPad?

You’re correct. While you can listen to streaming Internet radio on your Mac via the Radio entry in iTunes’ Source list, the iPad’s iPod app doesn’t offer this feature. Fortunately, you are anything but out of luck.

There are a number of iPad apps that can stream Internet radio broadcasts—more, in fact, than are streamed by iTunes. Many of these apps use technology developed by RadioTime, a Dallas-based service that maintains a database of over 60,000 radio channels—terrestrial stations as well as Internet-based stations. With these apps you can search for stations in a number of ways, including call letters, radio hosts, show names, genres, and bit-rate.

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It used to cost a fortune to set up a centralized sound system in your home. All you need now are a few simple items, many of which you already have: a Mac; an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad; Apple’s free Remote app; a wireless network; an AirPort Express; and, of course, some music.

Using the Remote app to control iTunes on a Mac and stream content to speakers or to an Apple TV opens the door to a more logical way to listen to music. No more finding a CD and bringing it to the stereo in the room where you want to listen; just store everything on a Mac, and stream.

We’ve written about how to set up such a sound system already, but here are a few tips to make this system even better.

1. Start the DJ from scratch

iTunes DJ is a feature in iTunes that lets you queue up music for listening. Formerly called Party Shuffle, it’s designed to take a random selection of music from your library, or from a selected playlist, and play the songs in order. You can add songs to it as you go, or rearrange them to suit your mood.

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[Editor’s note: The MPAA and most media companies argue that you can’t legally copy or convert commercial DVDs for any reason. We (and others) think that, if you own a DVD, you should be able to override its copy protection to make a backup copy or to convert its content for viewing on other devices. Currently, the law isn’t entirely clear one way or the other. So our advice is: If you don’t own it, don’t do it. If you do own it, think before you rip.]

If you’re a music fan, you probably have a number of DVDs of concerts by your favorite artists. And you may want to listen to the music from these DVDs, say, on your iPod. In many cases, the “soundtracks” of concert DVDs are not commercially available (and even when they are, you already own the DVD, so why pay twice?). So why not rip the audio yourself, and make your own live album from those favorite DVDs?

We’ve discussed recording audio from different sources on your Mac in the past. This method captures the audio playback from an application on your computer (DVD Player, for example) into a file that you can edit, chop up, and tag. While you could use this method, it requires you to play the entire DVD while the application runs on your computer.

If you want to instead pull the audio files off your DVDs, there are several ways to do so. Our sister site Mac OS X Hints recently ran a hint with one method, but it’s a bit complex, and involves some outdated software that may not work for long.

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Many cheap cell phones have had the ability to dial contacts by speaking their names for some time—the problem in is just that most of those voice systems don’t work very well.

With the debut of the iPhone 3GS, Apple introduced a new Voice Control feature that lets you speak to your phone in order to have it dial contacts or control music playback—great for when you want to keep your phone in your pocket on those cold winter days, or safely initiate a call while on the road. It also makes the phone more usable for those with disabilities that hinder them from using the iPhone's touch interface.

It’s altogether possible that you haven’t yet taken advantage of the 3GS’s Voice Control features, and while it may not allow you to command your iPhone to produce a cup of “tea, Earl Grey, hot,” there are still plenty of tricks up its sleeve.

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While classical music fans have hesitated getting into the download market, the elimination of DRM and the increased file bit rates now offer some good reasons to start exploring downloads. In addition, new ventures from classical labels and orchestras show that this is a vibrant part of the music download market. Here’s a look at some of the many ways you can get classical music to listen on your Mac or your iPod.

In early December, Apple announced a huge iTunes Pass featuring most of the New York Philharmonic’s 2009-2010 season. For $150, you can get more than 50 works, or more than 30 hours of music, updated regularly as it becomes available. The New York Philharmonic was one of the first major symphony orchestras to embrace digital distribution of concerts with the DG concert series, and it now considers that recording and distributing music by download is the norm. This set, which is an extension of its weekly radio broadcasts, allows listeners to get a wide range of music by world-class performers. The only downside is the price: while it comes to only about $5 per hour of music, there’s an initial outlay of $150. In addition, this pass is currently only available on the U.S. iTunes Store, but the New York Philharmonic is hoping to extend the pass to other countries in the near future.

iTunes isn’t the only game in town for downloading classical music, however. The

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It’s happened to the best of us: a hard drive crash takes our precious iTunes library down to Davy Jones’ Locker, and we either don’t have backups, or our backups are corrupted or out of date. If those files are on your iPod, however, you can restore them to your computer—with a little bit of work.

I’m so obsessive about my music collection that I keep two backups of my music, because Kirk’s First Rule of Computing is that you will, one day, lose your files. But let’s say something happens to your backups and you can’t get your music files restored. Apple doesn’t provide any way for you to copy files from your iPod back to your Mac. While there are legitimate reasons for blocking bi-directional copying—it would be simple to dump your entire music collection on a friend’s computer, for example—there are also good reasons why you might need to do so.

A friend of mine e-mailed me the other day asking how he could recover files from his iPod. There are several ways and utilities to help you, but let’s start with the easy and free way.

First, connect the iPod to your Mac; as soon as you do so, hold down the Command and Option keys, which will tell iTunes not to sync to your iPod. You’ll then see the iPod (but not iPhone or iPod touch) show up in the Finder sidebar. If you click it, to see its contents, you’ll see four folders by default: Calendars, Contacts, Notes and Recordings. But what you won’t see are any of the music files stored on your iPod; that’s because Apple has hidden them. You’ll need a way to display these hidden files in the Finder. If you’re comfortable using Terminal, you can run this command:

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Many of us here at Macworld are music lovers. We listen to a lot of music in a lot of places around the house. Which means many of us are also big fans of Sonos’ Digital Music System, which lets you easily get your music into multiple rooms using a combination of hardware, software, and remote controllers. Some of us are also longtime fans of Logitech’s Squeezebox product line, which similarly lets you pipe digital music all over your house.

But every time we write about Sonos or Squeezebox, a number of readers (understandably) ask, “Can’t you do the same thing with a bunch of AirPort Express units and speakers using AirTunes?” (AirTunes is technology that allows you to play audio from iTunes on a remote audio system connected to an AirPort Express.) After all, the Sonos and Squeezebox systems are relatively expensive, so some people wonder why you would opt for either over a system based on Apple gear.

With that question in mind, we set out to see if we could put together a whole-house audio system, based on AirPort Express units, that can compete with Sonos- or Squeezebox-based setup. We weren’t looking for the least-expensive setup: Sticking an AirPort Express and a set of inexpensive powered speakers in each room would work, but it wouldn’t give you anything near the same functionality and audio quality. What we wanted was an Apple-based, whole-home audio system that approaches the audio quality and features of the Sonos and Squeezebox systems.

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If you were an early adopter of digital music, starting back in the days of Casady & Greene’s Soundjam on through the birth of iTunes, it’s likely that your iTunes library is untidy at best—stricken with duplicates, mismatched tags, and missing or incorrect album artwork.

iTunes is very little help in this regard, offering the most minimal of tools in the form of its Show Duplicates command, a command that separates twins only by track tile and artist. If you have a track that has studio, live, outtake, and remix versions, iTunes is likely to term them all duplicates. And this is not helpful unless you enjoy sifting through long lists of tracks, tossing the few true duplicates.

No, for this kind of job and others—correcting ID3 tags and supplying accurate cover art—you need better tools. Better tools such as these.

Dupin

Among the geekier element of Mac iTunes users, Doug Adams is legendary for his Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes Web site. If something can be done to iTunes or an iPod via AppleScript or Automator, odds are that Doug offers the way.

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As an amateur musician, I’m always looking for ways to get a song from my head into my computer. With Sonoma Wire Works FourTrack, it’s easy to compose an entire song, record the basic parts, and then export the audio to your Mac for further editing. Track recording is a way to lay down the basic instrumental parts and to add vocals and other sounds that make up a complete song.

First, grab the app at the App Store—it costs $10 (also check out our review of the app). The iPhone headset works okay for recording, but the cord is a bit short for my taste. I use the Shure SE210 earbuds ($180) and the Shure Music Phone Adapter ($40) because they are good quality and have really long cords.

Here’s how to record your song:

1. Set your iPhone in Airplane mode to prevent any interference.
2. Start FourTrack, and press the Song Tools button. On the Song Tools screen, you can configure a metronome to keep you on the beat. The metronome also allows you to later sync up drum loops at the same beats per minute.
3. Name the song, and press the down arrow (upper right) to close Song Tools.
4. Press the REC ARM button for track one and slide the Slide to Record button to record your audio. Then, you can do the same for three additional tracks: for example, you can add piano, background vocals, or any other sounds you want. The jog dial near the bottom of the screen lets you scan through the song, or just click on the blue timer.
5. You have created your first song! It is saved automatically. Now, you can create additional tracks.
6. To record more tracks, you have to combine (or “bounce”) tracks together. Press the Song Tools button. You can “bounce” all four tracks into a new song with two tracks (just press Bounce, and then To New Song) or from tracks one and two down to just one combined track one (press Bounce, then To This Song). It means you can record multiple tracks beyond just four, with no limits–although the sound quality degrades with each bounce. Press the down arrow to close Song Tools.
7. Once your song is done, you can tweak the audio so it pans to the left or right. Adjust pan settings for each track by moving the jog dial left or right for each track. This helps make your song sound better by isolating the sounds.
8. When your song is finished, go to Song Tools -> Song List -> Wi-Fi Sync at the bottom of the screen. On your Mac, start Safari and go to the IP address shown. On your iPhone, press OK. Now your Mac is synced and you can download audio tracks from Safari and load them into, say, GarageBand. Sonoma Wire Works offers a free RiffWorks program that can import iPhone tracks directly. Once connected over Wi-Fi Sync, just click Import, select the song, and rock on.

This original song, recorded entirely on FourTrack, has main vocals, guitar, background vocals and a drum. Thanks to Jamie Larson who recorded guitar, vocals, and wrote the song for this tutorial.

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Upgrade your next reunion, wedding, corporate event, bat mitzvah, or house party from fun to unforgettable by setting up a professional-style photo booth. You don’t need tons of expensive equipment or an enclosed box with curtains; you just need a camera, minimal lighting and background supplies, and some willing participants. These instructions are for a basic booth, but it can be modified and personalized. Share your own tips and recommendations in the comments.

Grab your camera

First and foremost, you will need a digital SLR camera and a tripod. Since you’re shooting stationary subjects with a strong flash, you don’t need a high-end camera to get good images—most consumer level DSLRs will work. For this example we used my trusty Nikon D40.

Choose a backdrop

Start with a flat white or gray background. You can use a blank wall, muslin or fabric (which give a textured effect), or for the best results, seamless background paper. These inexpensive rolls of paper are typically held up by a background support system (two stands and a crossbar). “A” clamps are used for keeping the backdrop from unrolling too far, and for weighing it down on the floor. You can get seamless backdrops in almost any color, but be careful not to overshadow your subjects. Simple and clean is usually the best bet.

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When you’ve got a lot of music, you generally have no problem fitting it on your Mac, but you may run into problems syncing your iPod or iPhone. Depending on which model you own, you may not be able to put all your music on your portable device. There was a time when Apple sold an iPod classic that held 160GB of music, but the last refresh of the product line eliminated that version. The iPod classic is now available in the one-size-fits-all 120GB model only. Music lovers with large libraries, who had been hoping for a larger capacity iPod, are holding on to their 160GB classics and taking good care of them.

On the lower end of the size continuum, the iPod nano comes in 8GB and 16GB capacities, and the iPod touch, like the iPhone, goes up to 32GB. (The iPod shuffle holds less, of course, but I won’t discuss that here: syncing to a shuffle is pretty straightforward. Since you’re not expected to put all your music on it, the AutoFill features makes a selection from your library or a selected playlist.)

Choosing a strategy

If you have more music than your iPod holds—regardless of its size—then you need to adopt a strategy to choose what you want to take with you on the go. The first method is simple, yet requires a fair amount of work if you have a lot of music. When you connect your iPod, the Summary screen in iTunes offers the option to Sync Only Checked Music and Videos. This means that any items that are unchecked won’t be copied. I use this for my 160GB iPod (my library is currently around 240GB); however, it requires that I check or uncheck music when I want to add or remove music on the iPod.

Unchecking a track is easy: you just click the checkbox to the left of it. If you want to uncheck multiple tracks, you can press the Command key and click; this will uncheck (or check) all visible tracks. You wouldn’t want to do this when your entire library is selected, but when you’ve selected, for example, a single album or playlist. You can also select any number of tracks then Control-click or right-click and choose Check Selection or Uncheck Selection from the contextual menu.

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Earlier this week, contributing colleague, Kirk McElhearn, provided hints for ripping CDs better and faster. Today, I’d like to piggy-back on Kirk’s fine work to provide an overview of just what you can do with CDs within iTunes.

Rip ’em

Of course, you can pull the contents from CDs and put the results in your iTunes library. By default, when you insert an audio CD, iTunes launches, displays the CD under the Devices heading in iTunes’ Source list, queries the Internet for the CD’s title and track listings, and then tosses up a dialog box that reads “Would you like to import the CD “name of CD” into your iTunes library?” If you click Yes, the contents of the CD are imported using the Import Settings found in iTunes’ General preference.

If you have a lot of CDs that you’d like to rip—when you’re ripping your massive collection of Grateful Dead discs, for example—you should travel to that General preference, locate the When You Insert a CD pop-up menu, and choose Import and Eject CD. (Other options in this menu include Show CD, Begin Playing, Ask to Import CD, and Import CD.) Choosing Import and Eject CD means iTunes will go about its ripping business without bothering you for anything other than the next disc you’d like to rip.

Before asking iTunes to rip your CD you should consider whether you want tracks imported individually or ganged together into a single track. For example, you might like all the tracks on an audiobook CD to be combined into a single “Disc 1” track, making it easier to navigate the audiobook on an iPod or iPhone. Or, to ensure that a shuffling iPod plays an entire classical work instead of a single movement, combine that work’s component parts into a single unit.

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In these Mac 911 blog entries I tend to stick with tried-and-true advice: If Problem A occurs, Solution B should put your right (and, if not, Solutions C and then D are sure to nail it). But every so often it’s worthwhile to offer a Voodoo Solution—the thing to try when you might as well.

Today: The Button.

We use an M-Audio Fast Track Ultra USB audio interface in the Pod Cave to record our round-table discussions. Last week, said audio interface became unresponsive. The get-down lights worked but the device was not seen in the Sound system preference and was just as unseen by the Fast Track Ultra pref pane.

Our fearless leader, Jason Snell, did all the right things—shut it down, un- and replugged it, cursed, reinstalled the drivers, cursed a bit more, scanned M-Audio’s tech support area, cursed yet again, and started the process for returning the device for repair. Upon hearing the news of the uncooperative interface (which I recommended, and felt some responsibility for), I suggested that he let me have a whack at it.

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While many people get music from digital sources—the iTunes Store, eMusic, Amazon.com and other on-line vendors—a lot of us still buy CDs. In addition, many people have never gotten around to ripping their CD collections. Ripping CDs can be a chore, and ideally you want to rip as fast as possible, but it’s not always easy to do so. Here are some tips for ripping CDs, and a way to get faster ripping speeds for your discs.

What affects ripping speed

There are two main variables when ripping CDs: your optical drive and your processor(s). The speed of the former has the greatest effect on CD ripping. I recently downgraded from a Mac Pro to a Mac mini, and the only lament I have is the speed of the internal SuperDrive in the mini, which reads CDs at up to 24x. With the Mac Pro’s ability to hold a second optical drive, I had added a 52x CD drive, and ripping CDs in iTunes was very quick: I would get up to 40x, compared to a maximum of 20x on the Mac mini.

Ripping speed is shown in iTunes, at the top of the window, as an “x” speed. (1x is about 150 KB per second, or the speed at which data is read when listening to an audio CD.) I see figures from about 5x to 20x on my Mac mini, and these numbers increase as ripping progresses. This is not because iTunes gets better as it goes on, but simply because of the way CDs and drives work. When you copy data from them, CDs spin at a constant speed, or “constant angular velocity.” Unlike LPs, which are read from the outside in, CDs are read from the center to the edge. Since the speed is constant, less data is read at the beginning of the CD than at the end, hence the increase in data throughput during the ripping process.

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When I first started working on my own music album—and writing about it at Macworld.com’s Creative Notes blog—I wanted to make it an interactive experience, where readers can participate by asking questions, offering advice, and giving feedback. And in the 11 months that this project's been going on, that’s worked out really well.

Then I thought: what better way to get people involved than to actually write a song with one of my readers?

So that’s what I’m doing. I’m putting the call out to all singers. If the rock and hard rock genre is your thing and you want to contribute your vocal and lyric writing abilities to a song, keep reading to see how you can participate directly in this album-recording project.

Read more…

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Reader James Emrich seeks to remove audio from his movies with one or two iLife applications. He writes:

I shot a bunch of home movies of my daughter at school band concerts and musicals. They are in DV format and each is about 60 minutes long. I would like to extract some of the individual pieces (audio only), import them into iTunes, put them together, and then burn them to a CD so I can listen to them when I’m on the road. Is there any way to do this in either iMovie or GarageBand or both?

The easiest way to do this in iMovie ’08 and ’09 is to select the portion of the movie from which you want the sound track and drag it into the Project pane. Now choose Share -> Export Using QuickTime. In the Save Exported File As window that appears, choose Sound to AIFF from the Export pop-up menu and click the Save button. iMovie will export a file that contains just the sound track. You can then drag that audio file into iTunes and have your way with it. Repeat for other clips.

GarageBand is another option. If you’re using GarageBand ’08, create a new music project and choose Track -> Show Movie Track. In GarageBand ’09 you can simply create a movie project and a Movie track will automatically be created. From here on out, the two versions work the same way.

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We often give musicians sole credit as the artists behind the music we like listening to, but the truth is, they’re just a part of the process. The song we wind up hearing takes many long hours of work from audio and recording engineers, mixers, mastering engineers, and a slew of other people that get involved with the process.

When I started recording songs for my album last spring, I wanted a mix of a re-amped guitar signal and an analog amp recorded through a microphone. Re-amping is when you record a clean signal into your digital audio workstation (DAW) and then use a plug-in to achieve your guitar tone.

Re-amping certainly has its benefits. Once the track has been laid down, I can change the tone whenever I want by making adjustments in the guitar plug-in. The downside? Unless the re-amping is done correctly, re-amped signals lack the boldness of a real tube amp.

The opposite of re-amping your guitar signal in the computer is to get a mic and record your amp. That’s not as easy as it sounds, but it's very rewarding if you hit the recording sweet spot.

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Reader Glenn Henderson is interested in updating his old GarageBand tunes. He writes:

I have some old GarageBand projects that include electric guitar parts I played with my MIDI keyboard using GarageBand’s software instruments. I now have GarageBand ’09 and would like to use the new guitar amps and stomp boxes with these tracks. Is there a way to convert these tracks so I can use them with the new amps and stomp boxes?

GarageBand ’09 doesn’t provide an obvious way to do it, but yes, it’s possible. Like so:

Select the track you want to convert in GarageBand and choose Edit -> Add To Loop Library. In the sheet that appears, name the track, assign any descriptors to it you like—Guitars, Elect Guitar, and Grooving, for example—and click Create. The track will be added to GarageBand’s collection of loops.

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You can use your Mac to record late-night jam sessions, snatch work-in-progress tunes hummed into a microphone, turn the MIDI data transmitted by a keyboard or drum pad into something worth listening to, and capture LPs and convert them into samples. But to do any of these things, you’ll need to carefully consider the type of input device that will best suit your needs and help you get high-quality sounds into your Mac.

Microphones

For musical matters, a Mac’s built-in microphone is a terrible choice. It offers too little fidelity and picks up far too much room noise. Headset mics aren’t much better, since they’re not very versatile (try using one to record a guitar), and the headset microphones that people often use for Skype and iChat calls or podcasting don’t provide broad enough fidelity. When you need to record a voice or instrument, a real microphone is the only way to go. You have a couple of options in this regard. The most convenient is a microphone that plugs directly into your Mac’s USB port. In most cases, these microphones don’t require any additional software to work.

Using a USB microphone was once a compromise—there weren’t a lot of them around, and those that were available didn’t offer the kind of quality professionals demand. That has changed.

Today you have your choice of a variety of high-quality USB microphones from such manufacturers as Audio-Technica, Blue Microphones, Marshall Electronics, Rode Microphones, and Samson. They range in price from around $100 to $300 (I reviewed a handful of these USB mics in July 2008).

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Podcasting means many things to many people: self-expression, self-promotion, or even a career. Regardless of what you plan to do with your podcast, you must produce a quality show if you expect anyone to listen—especially given that there are more than 100,000 podcasts to compete with.

This article focuses on audio podcasting. Remember that you’re creating a podcast, not a music album, so simplicity and voice quality are most important. Your audience needs to be able to understand you and your guests. This requires reasonably good equipment, good techniques, and good post-production.

Most people listen to an audio podcast while doing something else; they are walking, running, driving, or working. They often want something to fill that time. Keeping that in mind, 30 to 90 minutes is a good bet for length. Here’s what you need to know to get started.

Gear

To start a podcast, you only need a mic and your Mac. For software, you can record your voice with Apple’s $29 QuickTime Pro or GarageBand ‘08 ( ; part of the $79 iLife suite). But you need a mic that you can put close to your mouth. Your Mac’s internal mic picks up too much of the sound around you to be useful. I suggest picking up a USB audio interface and an XLR microphone (with XLR, you have more flexibility and potentially higher-quality audio than with a USB mic).

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