So I've been using the drum loops that came with the installation of Garageband '11. But I want to be able to make my own. I notice that there are the individual drum sounds in the loops browser. How would I go about taking those individually (like bass drum, snare, tom tom, etc.) and make my own beat and loop out of them?
MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)
Don't use the loops, use a drum instrument:
- Create a new software instrument track and select one of the drum sets. Make yourself familiar with what drum pad is on what key (like bass drum on C1, snare on D1 etc.)
- Pick the length of your loop (like 4 or 8 bars) by extending the yellow cycle bar to that number of measures.
- Hit record and punch in e.g. all the bass drum notes, then all the snare notes etc. If you don't have a midi keyboard, use GB's little screen keyboard or "Musical Typing" with the computer's keyboard. The recording will cycle, adding new notes to your region with every pass.
- If you stop the recording and want to add notes later: create a new track, record a section there and join it to the old region (using cmd-j.)
- If the entered notes aren't exaclty where you want them (which is likely with this input method,) quantize the region to 1/16th notes or any other value.
You can now loop that region and use it throughout your song. If you want to use the loop in other songs too, add it to the Loop Library using the menu command "Add to Loop Library ..."
Don't use the loops, use a drum instrument:
- Create a new software instrument track and select one of the drum sets. Make yourself familiar with what drum pad is on what key (like bass drum on C1, snare on D1 etc.)
- Pick the length of your loop (like 4 or 8 bars) by extending the yellow cycle bar to that number of measures.
- Hit record and punch in e.g. all the bass drum notes, then all the snare notes etc. If you don't have a midi keyboard, use GB's little screen keyboard or "Musical Typing" with the computer's keyboard. The recording will cycle, adding new notes to your region with every pass.
- If you stop the recording and want to add notes later: create a new track, record a section there and join it to the old region (using cmd-j.)
- If the entered notes aren't exaclty where you want them (which is likely with this input method,) quantize the region to 1/16th notes or any other value.
You can now loop that region and use it throughout your song. If you want to use the loop in other songs too, add it to the Loop Library using the menu command "Add to Loop Library ..."
Can you explain what quantizing is?
Isn't it basically placing the notes or drum parts into a grid so that they play in time? How exactly would I "quantize the region" like you suggested?
In the Editor pane, there is a slider named "Automatic Quantization." You can pick the note value that you want to quantize to, the slider determines the extent to which the notes are "pulled" towards the grid lines. In this case, I would pull the slider all the way to the right.
How do I make my own drum loops in Garageband?
