Making Changes to Real Instrument Tracks

Whether you’re jamming with your band, or your GarageBand tracks, you can’t expect every note to be perfect. When you record regions that have the right feel but not the right timing or tuning, you can make changes to perfect your performance.

With GarageBand your Real Instrument tracks are flexible. You can alter the timing or tuning of any single-note region (a melody or bass line for example) so it fits perfectly with the rest of your song.

Tips

Create your own loop

When you record a keeper performance, you can make it a loop and use it in all your songs. Cycle a region of your track to find something that works, and then create split points at the beginning and end of the cycle. To save the loop, go to the Edit menu and choose Add to Loop Library.

Changing the tempo of Real Instrument tracks

The Real Instrument loops in GarageBand are optimized for a particular tempo. In general, if you make a tempo change, you’ll get better results by increasing the tempo, rather than slowing it down.

Edit your digital audio

You can select portions of your recorded Real Instrument track and cut, copy, or paste the audio within the track to other tracks, or even to other GarageBand songs. This can be a quick way to cut out mistakes or remove extra silence at the end of a performance.

Steps

Enhance the tuning of your Real Instrument track

In the timeline, select the Real Instrument track you want to enhance.
Drag the Enhance Tuning slider right to increase the amount of tuning changes. To limit tuning enhancement to the song’s key, select the "Limit to key" checkbox.
Click Play to hear your track.