Garage Band 10 legacy presets. Sound effects kit

Your own custom kits from GarageBand '11 should appear in the User Channel Strips section, like this:

Try to enter "Sound Effects" into the search field, if you do not see them.

One problem you might encounter: When I tried to use my custom sampler instruments, I got an error message "Instrument not found". I fixed this by copying all custom instruments from the Instruments Library in my User library to the corresponding folders in the System library.

Better make a backup, before you try to move things around in the libraries.

Locate the following folder in your User Library in your Home folder:

~/Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Instrument Library/Sampler/Sampler Instruments/Sound Effects/

~/Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Instrument Library/Sampler/Sampler Files/Sound Effects/

Then move the contents of these folders to the corresponding folders in the System Library on your harddisk:

/Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Instrument Library/Sampler/Sampler Instruments/Sound Effects/

/Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Instrument Library/Sampler/Sampler Files/Sound Effects/

You user library may still be hidden, as is the default:

• Quit GarageBand .
• Select the "Home" folder icon (the little house) in the Finder's sidebar and press the key combination ⌘J to open the "view options". Enable "Show Library Folder".

Then open the Home folder and open the Library folder inside and navigate to

~/Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Instrument Library/Sampler/.

-- Léonie

Thanks so much! You had the only answer!

You're welcome 🙂

Hi Leonie,

I cannot create any custom instrument, cannot find the Sound Effects. I cannot find any solution to assign a sound to a key of the keyboard.

Thanks a lot for your help,

I cannot create any custom instrument, cannot find the Sound Effects. I cannot find any solution to assign a sound to a key of the keyboard.

This is no longer available in GarageBand 10. You can use the work-around I posted only, if you had previously GarageBAnd '11 installed, did not uninstall it, and have a previous saved custom sound effects instrument. And even then it will no longer work well., because the samples cannot be saved. You have to finish the session in one go, without quitting GarageBand.

You may want to send feedback to Apple, that a sampler instrument is urgently required. Use this form: Apple - GarageBand Mac- Feedback

I spent an hour and a half on apple support trying to understand why the legacy instruments were not showing up after downloading the 'additional sounds'. The Sound Effects instruments that allow you to sample sounds are very important and I cannot believe that it isn't included in this version. I have sent feedback and hope this issue is resolved soon.

I would be happy to buy this instrument online if it were available for download. But it is not.

The thing that bothers me the most, is that I upgraded from a old laptop with garageband that had the sampling feature (2006) but - if I had happened to have a Mac from 2011 then I would be able to transfer the instrument files for free with no trouble? Why? If that is the case why can't we get a download link for the legacy instruments?? This makes no sense.

Any ℹ or update on this would be greatly appreciated.

I had a similar issue, but found out that you can download the missing sound effect files, or other instruments from GB '11 from the below Apple link.

Straight from Apple's servers: http://swcdn.apple.c...xtraContent.tar (1.12 GB)

Give this a go and see it it helps.

My comment below should assist you. I couldn't play 'Nature Sounds' since my upgrade, but found the below extract, installed it and many other sound effects now work in GarageBand 10.1.2. It even installed them right where they were supposed to.

Straight from Apple's servers: http://swcdn.apple.c...xtraContent.tar (1.12 GB)

I also still have GB 6.0.5 installed on my computer, so not sure if that is also why it works.