[Some Random Bloke]

Is this possible? I've spent an hour trying to record a 3 minute audio track on my iPhone and get it into Garage Band on my Mac.

Note, the Mac's internal mic isn't suitable and I don't have an external mic so was hoping to use the iPhone, an acceptable compromise for my purposes.

A. Record it in GB on iPad and iPhone. Fail. It only lets me record about 30 seconds. Am I doing something wrong?
B. Record on the iPhone voice recorder app and import into GB on the Mac. What the - you can't import an m4a file in GB! You're freaking kidding me! I thought this was Apple, not Microsoft! Fail.
C. Try to convert file to ACC file in iTunes and import into GB. Just converts it to another m4a file. Fail.
D. Shoot Mac, iDevices and move to Windows.
E. Shoot self.

Does someone have an alternative to D and E? I can't afford an external mic for the mac right now and frankly, even if I could, would prefer the portability of the iDevices.

Signed,

Grumpy.

[Ken Gracey]

Alex last time I did something like that, i recoded to the iPhone, then plugged it in, opened iTunes and saved it as a voice memo, I think from there you can edit it in garage band !

[Some Random Bloke]

I tried that. GB wouldn't accept it.

[Some Random Bloke]

Grrr. Thanks Ken. You prompted me to try importing via the media browser within GB - that worked. I was trying to drag it from the browser onto the GB icon in the dock. I still don't understand why that didn't work, but anyway - I can save some grief next time!

[Ken Gracey]

Glad I was of some sort of help Alex, even if I was only your memory jogger

[Peter Geelong]

Xenophos, on 23 March 2012 - 03:46 PM, said:

Is this possible? I've spent an hour trying to record a 3 minute audio track on my iPhone and get it into Garage Band on my Mac.

Note, the Mac's internal mic isn't suitable and I don't have an external mic so was hoping to use the iPhone, an acceptable compromise for my purposes.

A. Record it in GB on iPad and iPhone. Fail. It only lets me record about 30 seconds. Am I doing something wrong?
B. Record on the iPhone voice recorder app and import into GB on the Mac. What the - you can't import an m4a file in GB! You're freaking kidding me! I thought this was Apple, not Microsoft! Fail.
C. Try to convert file to ACC file in iTunes and import into GB. Just converts it to another m4a file. Fail.
D. Shoot Mac, iDevices and move to Windows.
E. Shoot self.

Does someone have an alternative to D and E? I can't afford an external mic for the mac right now and frankly, even if I could, would prefer the portability of the iDevices.

Signed,

Grumpy.

HOW TO TRANSFER A RECORDING FROM YOUR IPHONE TO YOUR DESKTOP
iMac Core 2 Duo, OS 10.6.8, iPhone 3GS/iPod Touch 4G-5.0.1, iTunes 10.5.3.

I use my iPhone and/or iPod to record meetings of two hours or more, then save them to my iMac Desktop for transcribing as Minutes of Meeting. Let's call your phone 'MyPhone'.

1. Boot up iTunes and connect MyPhone to your Mac

2. When MyPhone appears in the iTunes Sidebar, click on the little black triangle to display the Playlists.

3. Click on Voice Memos to display your recordings.

4. Go to the FILE drop-down menu and click on 'Transfer Purchases from "MyPhone"'. That will put all your voice recordings in the Voice Memos Playlist in iTunes.

5. In the iTunes Sidebar, select Voice Memos in PLAYLISTS, where you will see that your recordings have been copied from the MyPhone playlist.

6. When you view the playlist you can change the recording name from the generic one that Voice Recorder assigns (dd/mm/yy hh:mm AM/PM) to something more meaningful.

7. I have an alias of my Voice Memos on the Sidebar for convenience. In the Sidebar I go Music>iTunes Music> and select the Voice Memos folder, Ctrl-Click, then select 'Make Alias' from the drop-down menu and drag the alias to the Sidebar.

8. When we open either Voice Memos or its alias, we see the recordings as M4a (MPEG-4 audio) files. To play them, just select one and hit the spacebar. To open one in Garage Band, just open the Garage Band app and drag and drop the file. All done.

Because my main use is for writing Minutes, I don't use Garage Band. I have my MS Word file open and my record of the meeting file selected (but not open) in the Finder. I open it with the a press of the spacebar, listen for a bit, then click in my Word file and start typing. When I run out of memory (ME, not the Mac), I click on the recording and it continues from before. So on it goes – listen, click, type, click, listen, click, etc until finished. It's like magic!

Hope this helps.

[Some Random Bloke]

Dragging and dropping wasn't working for me. But thanks for the help.

[Ken Gracey]

Its amazing how many times drag and drop will reject an app or a file, i had this discussion with mick on the phones yesterday afternoon.

[Dylstra]

I have a bibliographic program that has similar problems with drag and drop. If the app is open and I drop a file on the icon it doesn't work. But if the program is closed, dropping the file on the dock icon works a treat.

[Peter Geelong]

I don't drag and drop onto the Garage Band icon, I start a new project and then drag and drop the file from the Voice Memo library into the middle bit where it says 'Drag Apple Loops here'. I've done it with choir and voice recordings and works fine. Mind you, I wouldn't know what to do with it next. No into GB!

[Some Random Bloke]

I think there must have been a glitch in my system somewhere. Maybe I need to reboot my Mac.