I’m sure many people have pined for a hotrock electric guitar and a pumped up amplifier that can power an entire stadium for all your dream solo rock concerts. Let me show you how to achieve that this very second, with nothing more than your iPhone and GarageBand 09 on your mac. Let’s get started!

Meet iPhone App Store app iShred (iTunes Download). This powerful app is a complete steal for $4.99: it’s basically an electric guitar PLUS all the effects boxes you’ll ever need PLUS every chord-bank in the world compressed into a mere 19MB on your iPhone. And, everyone of course knowsGarageBand (Product Page), a modest part of Apple’s iLife 09 suite.

iShred and GarageBand 09 was a match made in the mac heavens. Here’s what’s needed:

• iShred
• GarageBand (not necessarily 09, but I worked off 09. It’s got the latest improvements to the effects boxes and amps)
• A mac with a line-in port (this is most recent macs, I believe)
• A 3.5mm male-male audio cable
• An iPhone audio cable adapter, male-female (only for the 1st-gen iPhones with a recessed audio port

Set up the cables such that the iPhone is connected to your Mac’s line-in port via the 3.5mm audio cable (with the adapted if required). Fire up GarageBand and start a new song. Create a new track for a real electric guitar:

Once in the main editing interface, click over the right side and play with the amplifier settings. There are quite a few built-in options, but go over and change the master amplifier settings by clicking on the image of the amplifier and selecting edit. Turn Monitor on or on with feedback protection. Now, open up iShred on your iPhone (Go ahead and buy it: it’s a guaranteed amazement!) and play around with the interface. Set up a few user chords or use the ones built-in. Play those chords: if your setup is correct, your iPhone should be acting like an electric guitar! Mess with the settings and effects.

The following are my screenshots of my recording of Gotta Be Somebody by Nickelback. I’ve added a bass line and some drum loops, set the small portion of the song to loop, and with monitor on with some crunch effects, recorded the guitar line with iShred!

I’m sure you get the idea by now. This system is now akin to an electric guitar plus amplifier, minus the cost, and plus the GEEK factor! For all who are interested in hearing the quality, check out my recording of a small loop of Gotta Be Somebody here.

Hope this was interesting and helpful. Let us know what you think in the comments section! Later.

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