"Illegal Sequence" message: GarageBand won't open, possibly due to corrupted files

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"Illegal Sequence" message: GarageBand won't open, possibly due to corrupted files

GarageBand recently crashed while trying to save a particularly long composition, around 200 bars long at the time, but it's been laggy since it exceeded around 60 bars. Recently, while saving the song, the app suddenly crashed. Now, whenever I open the app, it attempts to load the song and a prompts me with a pop-up message that says "Illegal Sequence (1)" with the option to either "Repair" or "Quit." Neither option appears to have any effect, and after hitting either of them a few times, the app will crash again.

I have a feeling that some files have become corrupted, and I fear that I will not be able to recover this song. It's the only lengthy composition that I never backed up to iCloud, and I am beside myself for being so careless with a project that I have put over 48 hours into. If I could at least get GarageBand to open to the menu so that I can backup the song to iCloud or email it to myself, the problem would be virtually solved. Even if that didn't work, I could at least have some resolution.

I'm using GarageBand Version 1.4.1 (180.17) on an iPhone 4 running on iOS 6, because I'm one of those people who hated iOS 7 the moment I saw it and refused to update.

If anyone has any idea how to fix this, please help. This happened about an hour ago, and it is destroying me.

iPhone 4S, iOS 6.1.2, iOS Version 6.0.1

Posted on Nov 30, 2014 6:26 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 1, 2015 7:13 PM in response to TheToasterMon

Hi,

I just had this same issue on my MacBook Pro. I was able to recover the real instrument audio that I had recorded and saved previously, but not the MIDI. Hopefully someone can help

Here's what happened: I was saving a composition of about 130 measures, and instead of saving, all of my recorded tracks went blank. They were still in the right places, but none of them made any sound when I hit play. I tried reverting to the saved version, but that just brought up a completely blank file. No recorded tracks, no instruments, nothing. [picture below]

I tried reopening the file, and I got the same message you did, "Illegal Sequence (1)" with options to 'Repair' or 'Quit'. Repair brought up the blank Garageband document as above. "Quit" made garageband crash, producing some sort of divide by zero error in com.apple.main, but my Garageband often crashes instead of quitting so that could be a separate issue.

However, I was able to recover all of the recorded audio that I had saved previously (!!). To anyone else out there with the same problem, just control-click on the damaged Garageband file and choose "Show Package Contents" from the drop down menu. You'll then see a folder with the components of the Garageband file. Any audio recordings you've made will be in the Media folder, and you can make a new Garageband file and drag and drop them in.

I haven't found where the MIDI sequences are stored, and I lost the last 15 minutes of audio I had recorded. Does anyone know if there's a way to recover them?

I'm using Garageband Version 6.0.5 (428.5) on a 13-inch late 2011 MacBook Pro running OS X 10.9.5

Thanks for any help anyone can give!

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