Ending Your Song with a Fadeout

When it’s time for your song to end, you don’t want to just stop it abruptly. With GarageBand, you can create a fadeout to let your song end gradually.

A fadeout indicates your song is ending and makes it possible to transition smoothly to another song.

Tips

Fade in and out by creating control points in the volume curve

In addition to fading out your song at the end, you can set the volume to increase or decrease at any point in the recording. For example, you might want to fade in the song at the beginning. Just click the volume curve to create an insertion point, and then drag the curve up or down to increase or decrease the volume at that point in the song.

Set Volume and Pan curves on each track

Rather than control the volume and pan of all the tracks in your song, you can control each track individually. Click the triangle in the track header to reveal the Track Volume/Pan curves. Select Track Volume and then adjust the curves in the track to set the volume of the track over time. Select Track Pan to set the sound to move from stereo left to stereo right over time.

Steps

Gradually fade out your song

From the Track menu, choose Show Master Track. A new track appears.
Select the Master Volume option. Notice the volume curve in the timeline is enabled.
Click the volume curve at the point in your song that you want to start the fadeout. Notice that a circle appears in the volume curve.
Click the volume curve at the end of the song and drag it down.
Click Play to hear your song with the fadeout.