OAA Music

Garageband Tutorials

Basic Tutorials

Starting Off

Garageband Tutorial for Beginners

This tutorial covers:

Setting Up
Track Selection
Loops
Musical Typing

Software Instruments

Software Instrument Tutorial

This tutorial also covers:

Overdubbing vs takes
How to create takes
How to record
How to quantise

Connecting a Guitar

How to connect Guitar on Garageband.mp4

How to Connect a Guitar

Arrangement Track

How to use the Arrangement Track

Tempo and Meter

How to use the Metronome and Change the Tempo and Meter

Copying and Pasting

How to Copy and Paste in Garageband

The Piano Roll Part One

Piano Roll - delete and move.mp4

How to use the Piano Roll

What is the piano roll
Delete notes
Move notes

The Piano Roll Part Two

How to use the Piano Roll

Velocity

Piano Roll - Velocity.mp4

The Piano Roll Part Three

Piano Roll - Quantise.mp4

How to use the Piano Roll

Quantising using the piano roll

The Piano Roll Part Four

How to use the Piano Roll

Using the piano roll to add notes and create phrases of music

Piano Roll - Create Music.mp4

Drummer Part One

Selecting a Drummer and Preset.mp4

How to Select a Drummer and a Preset

Drummer Part Two

How to use the Drum Editor Part One

Drum Editor Part One.mp4

Drummer Part Three

Drum Editor Part Two.mp4

How to use the Drum Editor Part Two

Drummer Part Four

Using the Smart Controls

Guitar Amps

Guitar Amos.mp4

How to use Different Guitar Amps

Splitting

How to Split a Region

Loops

How to use Loops in Garageband

Exporting

Exporting Songs to Your Hard Drive

Sharing to hardrive.mp4

Multiple Takes

How to Record Multiple Takes

This tutorial also shows you how to put together different parts of different takes

**Please make sure that cycle takes is selected in settings**

Further Tutorials

Quantize

Quantize Part One.mp4

Quantize Part One

Quantizing a whole selection

Quantize Part Two.mp4

Quantize Part Two

Quantizing individual notes

Apple Loops

How to Make Your Own Apple Loops

Autotune

How to use Autotune

**If you are unsure what key your project is in then please ask**

Automation

How to use Automation

This tutorial will show you how to automate:

Volume
Panning
Gain
Fade in

** You can also use automation to change reverb and echo**

Master of Groove

GarageBand can help with iffy timing. Choose Track > Configure Track Header (or hit Alt+T and tick the Groove Track box), mouse over the left edge of your drum track and click the yellow star to make it the ‘groove master’. All other tracks now have checkboxes in their headers - tick the dodgy ones and they should now follow the timing of the drums more closely.

Drum Loops

Made available with GarageBand 10.2, Drummer Loops are essentially Drummer performances captured as Apple Loops and stored in the loop library. The advantage is that you can flick through the parts with your project running and only drag in the ones you like, after which they can be edited in the Drummer Editor, just like regular Drummer regions.

Advanced Tutorials

EQ Vocals

How to EQ Vocals

Exporting

Exporting your Garageband Project

This tutorial covers how to export:

To itunes
To IOS
To your harddrive
To Soundcloud
To Airdrop

Tempo Changes

How to add Tempo Changes in a Track

Design Your Own Amp

Amp Designer.mp4

How to Design Your Own Guitar Amp

Secret Sampler

GarageBand’s 'hidden' sampler, AUSampler, lets you drag and drop audio files into it to build new instruments. Create a Software Instrument track and click the Smart Controls button, then open the Plug-ins pane to the left of the control panel. You’ll find AUSampler (which can also load EXS24 files) in the popup plugin menu.

Pitch Perfect

If you find yourself restricted to a particular key because you only have one version of a particular Apple loop, select Show Transposition Track from the Track menu and you can transpose whole sections of your project by plotting points on a curve. This affects Software Instrument tracks, pitched Apple Loops and audio tracks with the Follow Tempo and Pitch box checked.

Auto Arranging Drummer

GarageBand’s Arrangement Track is useful for trying out new layouts of existing projects (reveal it by selecting Show Arrangement Track from the Track menu), but if you set up an array of arrangement markers at the start of a project, then add a Drummer Track, the Drummer Track will automatically populate your arrangement with different regions for each section. Very cool!

Beyone Musical Typing

Type out sophisticated beats using the computers keyboard

Step 1: GarageBand’s Musical Typing keyboard - summoned either from the Window menu or using the Cmd+K keyboard shortcut - can be used to quickly assign audio samples to keys on your MIDI keyboard. Start by locating the samples you want to assign in Finder.

Step 2: On a Software Instrument track, open the Library pane and browse to Legacy/GarageBand/Sound Effects/Radio Sounds. Look closely and you’ll see a small icon on each virtual key of the Musical Typing keyboard. Click the Details triangle to reveal the names of the audio files already assigned to them.

Step 3: Adjust the octave range to display some empty slots, then drag the samples over one at a time and drop them onto the keys you want to trigger them with. The name should appear in the table if you’ve been successful, and the sound should now be assigned to that key.

Colour Shift

GarageBand’s colour-coding of regions is based on the type of material they contain. MIDI regions are green, Drummer regions are yellow, recorded audio regions are blue, and imported audio regions are brown. But here’s a nifty trick: pressing Ctrl+Alt+G converts all brown regions to blue ones, enabling you to adjust their tuning and timing via the Follow Tempo and Pitch feature.

Loud and Proud

Make sure your mixes are loud enough to compete with commercial tracks by checking the Auto Normalize checkbox (Preferences > Advanced > Auto Normalize). This will ensure that your projects are exported at full loudness when you mix them down. A range of export options are available from the Share menu, including sharing to Soundcloud, iTunes or bouncing to disc or CD.

Amps and Pedals

Step 1: Stompboxes and cabinet models can transform any track. Here we have a Rhodes electric piano part, programmed in MIDI, that could do with spicing up a bit. Let’s start by adding a Pedalboard. Select the track header, then open the Smart Controls pane.

Step 2: Click the Track button in the top-left corner of the panel, then click an empty slot in the plugin rack and select Pedalboard from the Amps and Pedals section of the Plug-in menu. Load a preset combination of pedals. We’re using Boutique Grit here.

Step 3: In the next slot, insert an Amp Designer to make it sound like we’re sending the sound out through an amplifier and miking up the cab. You can choose preset combos, swap amps and cabs around, change mics, and even adjust the mic position to vary the sound.

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