Presently, the maximum length of a ringtone is 30 seconds. For Andrew’s problem, before importing a song, click the small + icon beneath the setting icon in the top right of GarageBand screen, followed by pop-up small screen Section A; then, adjust the numerical number from 8 to whatever number that is large enough to cover the total length of your song ( 1 numerical number = 2 seconds. I haven't use GarageBand in a while, but I'm pretty sure you can't change the volume of the metronome. Forgive me for stating the obvious but you could try to keep the level on your pre-amp/audio card clean but lower the guitar's volume in garageband while recording and then just increase the overall volume?
Cutting and editing music in Garageband is as simple as using the (Command + T) option on your keyboard.
For instance, you line up the “Ruler,” to the point you want to isolate, and then use the (Command + T) function. You can do this in two separate areas of your workspace, in the “Piano Roll Grid,” or in the regular workspace.
One can also edit the music using the Marquee line within the “Piano Roll Grid.” For example, when you zoom in on the audio file, you can highlight the part of it you want to eliminate down to the tiniest detail.
Change Metronome Tempo Garageband
You simply highlight it by hovering the ‘+’ sign over the Audio Region, clicking and dragging over the part you want to delete and then hit the “delete” button your keyboard. This comes in handy for audio rather than MIDI recordings.
However, you have to make sure that you’re isolating just one track, whether it be a sample, an audio recording, or a software instrument track, etc. You can’t cut and edit more than one piece of music at once. It has to be just one.
by the way, I have a list of all the best products for music production on my recommended products page, including the best deals, coupon codes, and bundles, that way you don’t miss out (you’d be surprised what kind of deals are always going on).
How To Undo the Previous Command (Command + Z)
In case you make a mistake, you can always hit the (Command + Z) function to go back to where you were before.
As I’ve explained in my 12 things you should know about Garageband article, one of the great things about Garageband is that all of the commands used for day-to-day use on the computer are transferable to the software. It’s all fairly intuitive.
Many of the commands that you’ve grown accustomed to as a Mac user are all the same functions for Garageband. Best torrent client ubuntu server.
Use Melodyne 5 As An Editing Tool for Vocals and Instruments
My comprehensive tutorial on Melodyne 5 explains everything this amazing plug-in can do. Celemony’s Melodyne 5, from Plugin Boutique, is an editing tool that allows you to spot correct vocal recording errors and other mistakes that are made during the recording process.
You can use this to do things that you would never be able to do with Garageband’s default pitch correction tool, includng spot-correcting errors, converting tracks to MIDI, and the list goes on and on.
How To Zoom In And Out (Command + Left and Right Arrow Key)
You can zoom in and out on your MIDI region to see the audio file in more detail by separating your fingers or moving them closer together.
This is especially useful for when you’re trying to edit minute details, that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to see and thus, isolate.
You can also zoom in and out through the (Command – Left or Right arrow key).
Merging Tracks Together (Command + J)
Another incredibly useful editing tool in Garageband is the (Command + J) function, which allows the user to essentially combine or merge the tracks together.
This stops the user from having to copy and paste every little individual track. Instead, one can just merge all of the music together as one track, and then put it on a loop.
To do this, just select the two or more regions you want to combine and hit the (Command + J) function and it will all come together.
It’s a great way of saving time and energy during the editing process.
Using The Cycle Area For Editing
The cycle area on top of the workspace in Garageband is used for repeating the same bar of a recording over and over again. There are a few purposes for this, including practicing a part just before recording, multiple takes, and editing.
For instance, a user can loop the same part repeatedly to judge whether the proper changes have been made during editing.
In other words, if you’ve recorded vocals (using my guide), and forgot the lyrics during one part and said “um,” or something like that, you can loop the same part over and over again, and figure out what needs to be eliminated down to the last millisecond, without having to press “Play” repeatedly.
You know that Cycle Mode is on when it’s displayed as a yellow trip in the top portion of the ruler. When it’s turned off, it’s no longer yellow.
There are two ways of turning it on and off:
You can press the Cycle button within the control bar, or simply press ‘C’ on your keyboard.
Changing at what point Cycle Mode starts and stops:
Select the top part of the ruler, then drag your cursor to the desired starting and stopping part of the recording.
How to Edit Using The Re-Size Pointer (Trimming)
Change Metronome Sound Garageband 1
Another way of editing the music is through the “Resize Pointer,” which is at the end of every piece of the “event,” as Garageband’s “Quick Help” section calls it.
Take the cursor and grab your recording, moving it from side to side, left to right. Using the “Snap To Grid” setting/function allows for the music to literally “snap” back to the line, and thus, stays more in time.
Snap to Grid Function (Command + G)
It’s a lot easier to edit music in Garageband when you have this option selected within the “Edit” menu on the toolbar on top. You can turn this function on and off, by hitting the (Command + G) function.
Essentially, as I mentioned above, what this does is it literally “snaps” the music right back to the lines on the grid, that way whenever you edit a piece of music, it falls back exactly on the beat.
If you want, you can turn this function off and see how difficult it is to edit music in Garageband. It becomes super annoying, however, there are moments where it’s worth your while to turn it off.
How To Copy and Paste in Garageband (Command + C and Command + V)
Once you’ve isolated the part you want, hit the (Command + C) function to copy it, and then the (Command + V) function to paste as many copies of it that you want.
Usually, after I’ve created a melody with the Steinway Grand Piano and PianoForAll as an accompaniment (their website), I’ll open up a new “Software Instrument” track, and then copy and paste the music into a different instrument track.
This function allows you to fill out your mix, without coming up with an entirely different musical section. In many cases, you can create an entirely different piece of music, just by copy/pasting it onto a new Instrument track.
Another Way Of Copying And Pasting an Instrument Track
1) Select the Audio file you want to copy.
2) Hold down the “Option” key.
3) Drag the cursor to the left or right
4) While holding down the “Option” key, release the mouse and voila, you’ve just copied and pasted a new MIDI region.
Important Things To Note When Chopping Music
Whenever you want to isolate an audio recording, it’s worth noting that it may be helpful to understand at what beats-per-minute the song is, that way you can trim music at a specific beat.
This is especially important whencreating music with samples which I’ve explained how to do before.
For instance, in a track that I made using the theme song written by Bear McCreary for The Walking Dead, I had to figure out the BPM of the track, that way I could make a different drum track for it.
If you don’t have the proper BPM set up, it’ll be almost impossible to make drums for the song, because nothing will line up, and will sound unsynchronized.
Then, when you try and add other melodies through software instruments and so on, synchronization will be almost impossible. So knowing the Beats Per Minute is essential.
The best way of doing this is just counting along to the song by hitting the table with your hand or bobbing your head along to the beat.
Then, grab a metronome – or use one online, on your phone, or in your DAW – and match the tempo of the song with how fast you were slapping the table.I’d recommend using a real metronome like this one from Amazon because they’re better to use.
There are other ways of figuring out the BPM of a song, of course, but this is how I do it.
(Every person knows how to count the BPM intuitively because whenever you’re jamming along to a song by bobbing your head, you move along to the beat. I’ll write a more in-depth article on this topic later).
Moreover, you can check whether you’ve calculated it properly or not through the way the MIDI Region lines up in your DAW.
*There are other options available online, including songbpm.com, and beatsperminuteonline.com. The latter is superior for calculating the beats-per-minute because it’s manual and can be used for the most obscure of music. However, the former is more for commercially available songs.
Using the Score Editor to Fix Your Music (For People Who Can Read Music)
I imagine this topic will be too much for the average DAW user, because frankly, most music producers, especially nowadays, don’t know how to read music. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s just the way it is.
1) You can access the Score Editor simply by double-clicking on your music or “Midi Region.”
2) And then go down into the Smart Controls, and click on the button that says “Score.”
In this section, you can edit the music through standard notation which I talked more about in my guide on using the score editor. I actually use this every once in a while, because I learned how to read music when I was a kid (although, I’m not nearly as good as I was as a kid).
I usually use it for creating bass lines. Sometimes, it’s harder to hear if your bass line is off-key, so you can either push it up a few octaves so you can hear it or, you can look at the standard notation to figure out if the music is off-key or not.
Naming Your Tracks
If you want to name your track, use the “Secondary Click” function (“right-click,” and that’ll bring up your options where you can see where it says, “Rename Track.”
You can do the very same thing to the actual MIDI Region.
This seems like an obvious one because it is. If you’re going to be making music in a DAW, naming each track region will save you a ton of time, running through each one, trying to figure out which one is the kick and which one is the snare.
Reordering Tracks Through Drag and Drop
By clicking on and dragging the “Track Headers,” Garageband users can actually easily move each software instrument track to and from wherever they want.
For instance, grouping the guitars together, or the kick and bassline. You don’t have to manually move the MIDI Region either; it will move with the Track Header.
Time Quantizing
As you’d know if you’ve read my piano roll guide, rather than dragging and dropping each note so it falls exactly on the grid-lines in the Piano Roll, which is normally what I would do, you can use the Time Quantize function down in the DAW’s Smart Controls.
For instance, if you’ve recorded music with a MIDI Keyboard, and some of the notes are offbeat, using the Time Quantizing function will bring each note to where it needs to be, rather than doing it all manually (more time quantizing tips in my guide).
1) First things first, in the Software Instrument track, choose the option “Region,” rather than “Notes,” in the Smart Controls.
2) In your Smart Controls, underneath the setting, “Time Quantize,” select 1/8 Note, and keep your Quantizing strength at around ’75 to 100.’ This should suck in all of the notes accordingly.
Obviously, there are more Timing settings one can use, but this is as far as I’ve ever used the quantizing function.
Some people argue against the use of Time Quantizing, accusing the practice of robbing the music of its “soul.” The argument goes that there are idiosyncrasies and personality traits eliminated from the music through the quantization practice.
For instance, when playing a guitar riff, if something is slightly off-key or not in proper time, the inaccuracy and “incorrectness” of the note may precisely be, the exact thing that gives it its unique flavor.
The Blues Scale, probably one of the most used scales in guitar playing, is the epitome of this. The Blues Scale isn’t classically “correct,” due to its flattened fifth in relation to the minor pentatonic scale, or flattened third in relation to the major pentatonic.
How to Select and De-Select Options Way Faster
This is another one that I just came across. Rather than manually selecting, say, for example, the “Mute” button on a bunch of tracks, and having to go through each one individually, there is a way of hitting all of them at once.
For instance, if I want to hit the “Mute” button on 10 of my 20 Software Instrument tracks, I’ll hover my cursor over the “Mute” button, and then click the track-pad and hold it while I drag the cursor down the screen. This will hit every “Mute” button on the way down.
It’s the same practice for turning them off.
Conclusion
That’s all for now. I hope this helped you out. Be a trooper and share it on social media.
Raps are fun ways to work on musical concepts such as song form, rhythm notation, and lyric writing. They are also a good way to begin working with GarageBand, because you are not dealing with the additional concept of melody or melodic instrumentation and notation.
Part One: Write the Rap Lyrics
- Generate a simple rap. An easy way to do this is by compiling a list of words or phrases on a specific topic (for example: favorite foods, emotions, summer activities, sports in the Olympics, what does “back to school” mean to you?, etc.).
The start of an “Emotions” rap — the brainstormed list is divided into “happy” and “sad” emotions and rhythmic values are added.
- Then make your list “rhythmic,” so that you can read it in rhythm. You may need to rearrange words on the list to make it fit into a 4/4 rhythm.
- Optional: make the rap rhyme by ending each line with a rhyming word.
- Optional: write out the rhythm for the rap in music notation, either by hand or using notation software.
- If you want to use this rap to teach song structure, you can create segments for verses, choruses, bridges, etc. A lot of contemporary rap music has a sung chorus – this could be something you have prepared ahead of time, an applicable folk song or nursery rhyme, or it could be something students create as well.
Here are some examples:
- Practice and edit your rap acapella until you are satisfied with the results. Here is an example of a very simple rap, based on the “Emotions” pictures above.
Part Two: Create Your Audio Track
Now it is time to create a backing track for your rap using GarageBand. Screen capture mac os catalina. Before you begin working in the software, though, you need to make some decisions about what your final project will sound like. (GarageBand has SO many options for accompaniment and instrumentation; it will speed up your process immensely if you have a clear vision of what you want before you begin on the computer.)
- Decide on an overall mood or theme for your rap before you begin. Do you want your rap to be happy? Sad? Playful? Angry? You will be choosing loops and backing instrumentation that match this criteria.
- Determine an approximate tempo for your rap. By default, GarageBand sets tempos at 120, but you can change this easily. (see image in the next section)
- Determine what instrumentation you want to use with your rap – drums only? Drums and bass? Drums and Keyboard loop? (Hint: instructors can have pre-made these decisions or can let students make them. Much of this decision will be determined by how much time is available for the project. It is wise to familiarize yourself with the loop and instrumentation content within GarageBand ahead of time, particularly if you are going to be letting students decide on the fly what they want for accompaniments.)
Now, you can create your rap accompaniment track in GarageBand.
- Make sure the tempo of your track is the same tempo you decided on in the previous section.
Switch playback window to “Project;” then click on the tempo to change it.
- Make sure the metronome is turned on.
When “Metronome” is checked, the metronome will sound when recording only.
- Record a “starter” audio file of one or more students performing the rap in tempo with the metronome. This may or may not be the audio track you use for your final product, but it will help keep the accompaniment creation process focused.
- Add desired accompaniment tracks one-by-one to compliment the recorded vocal track, beginning with the percussion/rhythm track. Use the description words you came up with the previous section to guide your choice of accompaniment loops and instruments. (Hints: select “All Drums” as a search filter in the loops area. “Club Dance Beats” are good choices for raps, but there are many percussion loops to choose from.)
- If you have different “sections” in your rap, you may want to use different accompaniment loops for each section.
- The “Electronic” filter includes many loops that could be added to your rap.
- Accompaniments can also be recorded live using GarageBand’s recording capabilities, either via midi or “real audio” microphone tools. (Hint: you may want to use headphones if you are recording audio accompaniment snippets live, as metronome or vocal sound will bleed onto the accompaniment track when you record.)
- You can create an intro or outro with extra loops before and after the vocals.
- Optional: rerecord the vocal track after the accompaniment is created.
- Optional: use the track editors to manipulate the sounds in your rap. Editing the vocal tracks can be very effective. Some of my favorite settings are “Live Performance” under the “Vocals” section (for a very clean, prominent, resonant sound), and “Telephone Lines” under the “Effects” section (for a fun, filtered sound). GarageBand has advanced sound editing capabilities that can be utilized if you are comfortable with them.
Here is an example of a finished product – both what it looks like in GarageBand and what it sounds like:
Finally, you need to export your rap to iTunes so it can be shared and performed.
- Hint: If you want to export a “karaoke” track, click the “mute” button on the track(s) with the vocals before Sharing.
Mute or unmute tracks by clicking the “sound” icon.
- Select “Send Song to iTunes” from the Sharing menu and follow the onscreen prompts to export and share your audio file.
- Optional: use a website like SoundCloud.com to upload the audio file into a format that can be shared with a simple email link (or embed it in a blog like I did in this post!)
Software Used: GarageBand ’09, Version 5.1
Cross-Subject Correlation: ANYTHING! Pick a subject-specific topic for your rap (such as a historical event, a mathematical concept, or a piece of literature) and create your rap about it.
Amanda Louise Miller is pursuing an MM in Music Composition at Oklahoma City University. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education and extensive experience working in online learning and faculty development.
Contact her at amandalouisemiller@gmail.com