Despite the lack of MIDI-export option, Garage Band does allow you to save out individual tracks into iTunes as audio files. Here you can see I've got the files into iTunes (running on the right in the background), then pulled the files out of the library onto the desktop in Apple Loop format (top left). From there, getting them into Logic is like importing any other audio file — a simple case of drag and drop.
Despite the lack of MIDI-export option, Garage Band does allow you to save out individual tracks into iTunes as audio files. Here you can see I've got the files into iTunes (running on the right in the background), then pulled the files out of the library onto the desktop in Apple Loop format (top left). From there, getting them into Logic is like importing any other audio file — a simple case of drag and drop.
There are a few things that Garage Band won't do. It won't import a MIDI File, that staple of the old-fashioned consumer application (which of course even the most high-end professional program will do), but I think this says more about the consumers that Apple are aiming at. Their target market would not want to import a MIDI File, preferring instead something built up from loops, which is why the loop engine built for Soundtrack is a major part of Garage Band. You can bring in any loops in the Apple Loop format, thereby facilitating the automatic tempo- and key-matching this file format offers.
More restrictively, the only export route out of Garage Band is into iTunes, using your currently set iTunes quality level. This means you cannot start a song in Garage Band and then develop the MIDI sequences for each track separately in Logic (or indeed any other sequencer application). However, you can solo each track in turn, export them to iTunes as audio files, and then bring the exported tracks into Logic as AIFFs. This works fine, but come on Apple — would it really kill you to let us export a MIDI file for the virtual instrument tracks?
Garage Band will also only accept a few basic MIDI controller messages via MIDI: pitch-bend, mod wheel and sustain pedal. Its resolution for Fix Timing (quantise in more common sequencer speak) is 1/32nd note, and the same seems to apply to moving an individual MIDI Note once it has been recorded. It can only be repositioned on a 32nd-note division (although if a note is recorded between those divisions, it is placed between the grid lines). You can't build your own sounds, samples or effects from scratch, either, nor can you edit the parameters for the preset instruments or effects processing, so you won't be able to spend hours tweaking things to perfection. But then that's not what Garage Band is about. The idea behind it is to make the compositional process as simple as possible, so that you can get an idea down while you feel inspired. Anyone who has been sidetracked into solving a technical problem while they were songwriting, and has found that once they had solved the problem, they couldn't remember the tune, riff or harmonic progression they were working on before they ran into the obstacle should certainly appreciate this!
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug04/articles/panther.htm
