Jon, we're actually in a period of radical change in terms of electric music, and your original question here is evidence of that.  It used to be that if you wanted different sounds (distortion, chorus, wah-wah, etc,) you had to buy a separate foot pedal to achieve each one. But now there are "modeling" amplifiers that can do it all.  They can mimic the sound of a telecaster going through a distortion pedal into a Marshall amp, and you don't have to have a telecaster, a pedal or the Marshall amp!  Everything can be altered electronically.  McCafferty's fanciest dulcimers are equipped with a midi synthesizer.  You can play your dulcimer and it can sound like a trumpet or a violin or a piano or anything you want.  Of course, you have to have the computer software to do all that.

People adept at the technology  can make fully-produced recordings with rhythm sections and horns and back-up singers and everything, just using their one instrument.

Then again, I just play my dulcimer and hope that it sounds, well, like a dulcimer.  Steel strings resonating in the wooden body of a dulcimer still make the most beautiful music to my ears.

--
Dusty T., Northern California
Site Moderator

As a musician, you have to keep one foot back in the past and one foot forward into the future.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

Well after Ken's and Dusty's explanation I went over to Terry McCafferty web site and Under support And found some interesting information on going Electric. all I can say is wow going  Electric is really complicated. All the equipment and filters and pedals it's all bid overwhelming. I don't think I'll make it in my lifetime. I'm getting way ahead of myself. But I guess that's part of the fun about learning things. 

Well kids thanks for getting back to me with all the good information a little bit over my head.

 I must say it sounds like it could be fun I guess. a little abstract to say the least.Also one might start to think why bother practicing to make a good clean note. Thanks Ken thanks Dusty 

Hey Jon. Ken has more experience with Garage Band than I do and explains the basics well. You are correct that it is not a physical amp.  In the analog world, a clean amp is just an amp that provides a very clean sound (meaning with no distortion) that is best for use with guitar pedals.  In the digital world, it is more like a setting you choose for the virtual amp you use with Garage Band.  And people do indeed plug into computers, but not directly. In between you use a digital audio interface that converts the audio signal of a guitar, dulcimer, or other instrument into a digital signal that can be mixed by a computer.  I have little experience with this--and my digital audio interface has been sitting in the closet for years--but I assume you would want a clean amp in Garage Band for the same reason you would in the analog world: to start with a really clean sound that you could then play with, adding different effects.

--
Dusty T., Northern California
Site Moderator

As a musician, you have to keep one foot back in the past and one foot forward into the future.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

Garage Band is an app that comes with Apple computers, iPads, and iPhones. As far as I know Clean AMP is a way to process your recording in the app. I use Garage Band to record (using a microphone) but haven't used any of the amp modeling for processing the signal. There are so many different settings in Garage Band it is often difficult to decide how to proceed. I took a course in Garage Band many years ago offered by our Guitar Center. That was a 130 mile round trip for six weeks. Luckily a friend and I shared the driving and cost of gas. The course was free. Garage Band has gone through so many changes since then that I hardly recognize it anymore.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

Well I'm scratching the top of my cranium trying to figure out what the Is this thing? Garage Band Clean AMP?

I came across this when I was surfing YouTube and never could find anything that gave any really detailed information. I'm getting the impression that it is not a real amp, meaning a physical object. 

I understand how a real amp works and for example a Looper pedal you plug the instrument into it and the looper records what you're playing as far as a Looper pedal goes. So if this thing Garage Band Clean AMP? is just a piece of software not a real amp then I don't get how it works I mean you can't plug your instrument into your laptop and you can't really plug it into your iPhone or Etc. Anyone out there know anything about this thing and how does the thing work