Incredible App! (With some flaws)

Let me just start off by saying that GarageBand is, without a question, one of the greatest applications made ever. The ability to create and produce high quality music on mobile devices is a dream come true. It has almost every instrument you could ever want, with almost perfect integration with midi keyboards and drum sets.

However, there are a few issues that I have noticed, some of which are of much higher consequence than others. A small thing I have noticed is that you are unable to move (for example) a guitar track to a piano track. I do realize that the instruments and their notes are represented differently in GarageBand, but this would really make take ability to try all sorts of sounds with your song to the next level.

Next small issue I have noticed is that when a midi compatible drum set is plugged into GarageBand (I use the Lightning to camera/USB adapter), some kits (in GB) dont recognize that the drum sets toms are being played. If the versatility of the drum interface could be improved (such as the user being able to choose the drum/cymbal to be played when a specific pad is hit), it would be a tremendous help to certainly not just me.

The final issue that I have noticed (this is a huge bug, and it just started occurring in the last two updates) is exporting songs. The feature of being able to upload the entire .band file (not just an audio track) is great, so you can continue tweaking the song to perfection. However, recently I have noticed that when a song is going to be exported to another app or iTunes, the app will usually crash. Typically, the result of this is just that it is impossible for me to export the song (it will continue to happening with all other songs as well), but sometimes it is more drastic. Several times, after GarageBand will crash after I try to export a song, the song will not be able to open anymore. This is an enormous problem, because once the bug occurs, there is no way to actually save the song, and the only way to get rid of the bug (temporarily) is to delete and reinstall GarageBand, and all songs that were not saved are permanently lost.

If these flaws could be remedied, this is a five star app no question. But until then, it is a four star app from me.

[anonymous review] about GarageBand, v2.2.2