GarageBand is the digital music-making and recording application of choice for many Mac users, but up-to-date, real-world documentation is hard to find. To fill this gap, TidBITS Publishing (http://www.tidbits.com) has released a pair of ebooks–Take Control of Making Music with GarageBand ’11 and Take Control of Recording with GarageBand ’11.

Written by Seattle-based composer and musician Jeff Tolbert, the ebooks are designed to help readers understand how to work creatively and effectively within GarageBand. The books — priced at US$15 each — include links to audio examples and the actual GarageBand projects that created them, and hundreds of tips for making the most out of GarageBand’s tools.