If you’re new to playing an instrument, these pages can be helpful. The Glossary entries are very basic, including such concepts as articulation, chords, hand position and posture, dynamics, music notation, and scales. Within this screen you can access the new Glossary feature, which presents common musical concepts linked to pages that offer text and, sometimes, video examples taken from the lessons. The additional lessons are as good as the basic lessons-clearly presented in a nice interface that shows Tim in widescreen at the top of the window, a keyboard or fretboard below, and a speed slider, play controls, and volume controls along the bottom of the screen. This isn’t surprising given that the complete collection of free lessons is over 25GB. This can be slow going-it took my Mac an entire day to download all of the lessons over a 4Mbit DSL connection.

As with the basic lessons (excluding the first guitar and keyboard lessons, which are bundled with GarageBand), you must download these lessons via GarageBand’s Lesson Store. In addition to the eight basic guitar and keyboard lessons that were available with GarageBand ’09, GarageBand ’11 offers four additional free collections-Rock Guitar (five lessons), Blues Guitar (seven lessons), Pop Piano (six lessons), and Classical Piano (four lessons). Tim, the engaging instructor from GarageBand ’09, reappears in GarageBand ’11’s lessons.

Rather than repeat myself, let’s exame how useful and robust these new features are. I’ve covered the basics of the interface changes and these new features in my First look: GarageBand ’11.

Show track lock in garageband 10.0.3