I have been doing some video work lately and have been getting more into GarageBand 11 to help me with the soundtrack work. I wanted to give a quick review of some of the new features of GarageBand 11 I have been most impressed with.

While the latest version of GarageBand brings no new podcasting features, it’s more musical thanks to an expanded group of keyboard and guitar lessons, additional modeled guitar amps and effects, and two features brought over from Logic and Logic Express—Flex Time and Groove Matching—that let you easily adjust timing.

Those familiar with GarageBand ’09 needn’t fear that they’ll be presented with a wildly different interface. In fact when you launch the latest version of GarageBand, it looks identical to the previous version. Where you see differences emerge with GarageBand ’11 is in the working environments. Open a new Piano project, for example, and you see that items in the Tracks list are less cluttered. There’s no longer a Record Enable button because all you need to do to make a track ready for recording is select it.

GarageBand ’11 inherits two very useful features from Apple’s professional digital audio workstation (DAW) applications, Logic and Logic Express—Flex Time and Groove Matching. Flex Time lets you easily move digital audio snippets—a guitar chord, drum hit, or snatch of vocals, for example—in time. So, for instance, if a recorded kick drum hits a little too much before the beat, you can select that one thump and move it later in time. Groove Matching is a way to direct selected tracks to follow the timing of a specific track.

While I have mostly been using GarageBand for its editing features, I can really appreciate the enhancements for those that record live music. I wish I was that talented, because the interface (especially “How Did I Play”) is awesome.

All in all I have been really happy with the update, and in using music editing software more on my own. You really can do a lot and don’t have to pay for canned tracks anymore. This has really enhanced my video work.