Make Your Own Loops!!!

GarageBand for Mac OS X is a complete recording program for your Mac. It lets musicians connect microphones, guitars, keyboards, and many other instruments for a completely analog recording session. It has MIDI playback as well as MIDI recording abilities as well, allowing just about anyone who has a MIDI capable keyboard to record alongside others who have instruments instruments.

One of the less talked about features,though, is the Loops section. GarageBand comes packaged with lots of pre-recorded MIDI and sampled audio snippets that can be put together in a myriad of different ways.

Without knowing how to play an instrument, anyone can come up with fantastic sounding music with GarageBand, by simply using the pre-packaged Loops.

Sound good?

First off –  bring up the GarageBand Loops browser. Open GarageBand and select a New Project.

If you already have GarageBand open and are in a project, select New Project from the File menu in the toolbar to get to this window.

Select Loops, and then click the Choose button in the right lower corner. You’ll have a chance to name your file (something memorable will help), and put it somewhere where you will be able to easily find it again. (like your desktop)

The familiar GarageBand window will open. This time, the Loop browser will show up in the right hand pane however. Notice the various filter buttons that top this browser pane.

Select a musical style, like Rock/Blues, Jazz, or Classical from the left column, or click the type of instrumentation you prefer in the column on  the right, filtering your list to show only the Loops containing particular instruments, like strings, Piano, Synths, harps, etc.

The two columns to the right are filters for tone and mood, filtering for loops Apple has categorized as Relaxed, Grooving, Melodic, Dissonant, etc.

Click the buttons to filter the list of available GarageBand Loops to your liking. For  example, click on Electronic in the filter list. If you happen to see the Column browser, or the Jingles, Stingers, or Sound Effects browser, click on the little musical notation item in the tab buttons that are at the upper left of the Loops pane.

Select Beats in the second column, and click any of the beats to get a taste of them. Once you’ve chosen one you like, click and drag the Beat’s name to the Track window. A new track will magically appear, and a big green Plus button will pop up. Make sure to drag your loop over to the far left, this way it will start on the first measure.

Drop the beat there. Hover the mouse over the right hand corner of the resulting green rectangle and you’ll bring up the extend cursor; it looks just like a round arrow. Drag the corner, and GarageBand will automatically extend the Loop, with a visual cue as to the beginning and end of each  section.

Next step, in the Filter list, Select Beats to reset the buttons. Click on Synths, rinse and repeat the above process. Mix and match loops as much as you want, making sure to create a new track for each new sound. This’ll help the editing process later.

Once you find a synth track you like, filter to Bass loops, and bring a nice grooving bassline over.

To hear your masterpiece put together, hit the Play triangle at the bottom. You’re also able to set the Cycle/Loop button so GarageBand only plays the section you’ve selected, over and over. That helps get into the groove of your project.

Give it a shot!

Want more Garageband greatness? Check out The Garageband Guide!