Creating your own Software Instrument parts

So you want to create your own musical parts using GarageBand's software instruments but don't own a MIDI keyboard you can plug into your Mac. How do you go about doing it?

You have three options. You can program a music part manually, note-by-note, using the mouse. You can record using GarageBand's on-screen keyboard to play notes live, again using the mouse. Finally, with GarageBand 2, you can play your computer's QWERTY keyboard as if it was a musical keyboard with the musical typing feature.

The second two options are poor alternatives to using a MIDI keyboard, but (obviously) are a lot cheaper. The first option, however, is useful to know even if you use a MIDI keyboard, as you are bound to want at some point to edit the music you've recorded, or even hand-program a part occasionally (this method is good for putting together drum parts).

What follows is a quick guide to each method.

Click-and-drag blues

First, control-click (-click) the timeline of the track where you want to create a part. GarageBand creates an empty 1-bar part for you. Move it to where you want it to be, and adjust its length by hovering over the end of the part until you get the extend cursor (the straight rather than the curved arrow), then drag it to the right size. You might also want to loop around the part while you write it, so hit C (no command key required) or click the cycle button, and adjust the yellow loop region to span the length of the blank part you've created.

Now to create some notes. Hit -E (or click the scissors/edit button at the bottom of the GarageBand window.) You should see the empty part you've just created. If you don't (if the tracks and editor's playheads are out of sync) click the sync timelines button (so becomes ). Also for this article, make sure you're editing in graphical view rather than musical notation view (check the option is as follows: )

To create a note, hold down the control () key and click on the grid in the editor. A note will appear, in the form of a green block. You can lengthen or shorten it by hovering the mouse over one end till you see the extend cursor, then click and drag. You can move the note you've created by grabbing it in the middle and dragging. When moving notes, GarageBand automatically snaps it to the grid. To change the grid's resolution, click the ruler in the top right of the editor () to bring up a menu of note-timing options. (You can also do this by changing the zoom slider.)

Once you've created your note, you can change its relative volume using the velocity slider. GarageBand has a slight bug in that this slider is greyed-out when you have just created a new note. You have to click off the note, then click back onto it to get the slider to activate. Differing volumes are visible in different shades of grey in the notes you've created.

This method is the slowest for creating music, but is the most precise.

Mouse music

To record a part using the on-screen keyboard, first set the region you want to record by pressing C or clicking the cycle button, then dragging the yellow cycle region to the size of the part you want to record. (Or you can just record a part of any length by turning off cycling.) Select the track you want to record with, then bring up the on-screen keyboard by hitting -K, or choosing Keyboard from the Window menu.

Resize the keyboard as required, or just click the green maximize button, then select the octave region you want to play by clicking on the smaller keyboard with the highlighted blue section at the top of the on-screen keyboard.

Click on any of the keys and you'll hear the currently-selected software instrument. You can drag the mouse over the keys to create a run, or keep the mouse button held down and just bring it in over the keys to sound notes. Experiment with where you click each key, and you'll notice that clicking the keys at the top plays them at low velocity, while clicking them at the bottom plays them at a higher velocity.

To record a part, hit R, or press the red record button. If you're cycling over an area, GarageBand will add to the recording on each pass, so you can play just some of the notes you want to play and add more each time round. Don't panic if you hit the wrong note or your timing isn't perfect, as you can use the manual editing methods described above to perfect your musical part. (You can also use GarageBand's Align function to snap recorded notes to the grid. This is only available when you stop recording, and only affects the notes you select.)

Once you've finished recording, press R or click the record button again.

Poor-man's piano

To record a part using your QWERTY keyboard, set up the cycle region you want to record in as above, then bring up the musical typing keyboard by pressing shift--K or choose Musical Typing from the Window menu. Once the musical typing window is up, your QWERTY keyboard becomes a musical keyboard. (This blocks out some of GarageBand's key controls. Pressing C no longer toggles the cycle function, for instance.)

Notice that there are more controls than simply for playing musical notes. You have keys to control velocity, pitch bend, modulation, sustain, and the octave you're playing in. If you want to use these functions, remember that when cycle-recording, you can add pitch bend, modulation or sustain on a subsequent pass once you've played the notes (as long as you keep recording). (You can also, of course, modify pitch blend, modulation and sustain manually, but this will be covered in a separate article).

Record the part you want to play (after practising it), just as you would for the on-screen keyboard.

Musical typing is the closest you can get to playing a real keyboard without actually owning one. But I must say that playing a real keyboard is still miles away from musical typing. If you're going to invest a little money in one addition to GarageBand, I'd recommend a MIDI controller keyboard. In the meantime, experiment with the above three methods and make your music!