I can't hear my "Bluebird" drum track when trying to record guitar with GarageBand 10.6.1 and a MacBook Pro

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I can't hear my "Bluebird" drum track when trying to record guitar with GarageBand 10.6.1 and a MacBook Pro

My first Apple Communities Post! I can't hear the drums when trying to record guitar tracks with GarageBand 10.1.6 with a MacBook Pro. I'm using a Tascam US2X2 audio interface. I even left "I want to hear my instrument when recording and playing back unchecked when creating a new audio track and it had no effect. I can "hear" the drums but they are not loud enough to get a good recording level of the guitar and to be able to play with the drum part

MacBook Pro, macOS Sierra (10.12.3), Tascam US2X2 Interface

Posted on Mar 11, 2017 10:35 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 12, 2017 6:41 PM in response to idmrine

There are a few things that could be wrong; the recording level of your track may be too low:

The record level is not the same thing as volume, it's better to think of it as microphone sensitivity. You don't want it to be so high that your recordings pick up background noises and clip, and you don't want it to be so low that your microphone isn't picking up what you want it to.

Adjust it to where it feels right (using input monitoring to check) before recording. When you adjust the recording level after recording it does nothing, since you've already tracked the sound into GarageBand.

There are other ways to improve recordings for drums, primarily by using EQ and compression presets:

which will give you a good starting point for what kind of changes you can make. From there you can adjust it to your liking. I hope this helps!

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