Adding Interest with Key Changes

You can give a sense of movement and progression to your song by changing the key. When you first set up your GarageBand project you choose a key signature, which determines the root note of your song.

You can create a key change in your song by changing the Master Pitch and all the tracks in your song will be changed. This is called transposing.

Tips

Transpose part of your song up a fifth

It’s very common in many musical styles to change from the "root" key of a song, which you set up when you created your song, to the "fifth" or "dominant" key. To do this, just find the spot where you want to transpose your song, and then move the Master Pitch curve up to "+7". Because scales use a combination of whole and half steps, but transposing uses half steps, +7 half steps will always transpose your song to the fifth note of a scale.

Transpose your entire song to fit a singer’s range

If you’ve got a great song but your lead vocalist can’t quite reach the high notes, just use the Master Pitch curve to transpose the entire song down a bit. When a song matches her range she’ll be able to give a much better performance!

Steps

Change the key of a section of your song

Listen to your song and determine where you want a key change, and move the playhead to the beginning of that measure.
Go to the Track menu and choose Show Master Track. Notice the new track that appears at the bottom of the track editor.
Select Master Pitch from the pop-up menu in the Master Track header. Notice the line that appears at the "0" point in the track.
Click to add a marker to the Master Pitch line at the playhead.
Drag the marker up to +7.
Click to add a second marker where you would like the key to change back.
Drag the second marker down to 0.
Click Play to hear your song.