Making a song template

Making a song template is one way of getting round a few things I find slightly annoying about GarageBand.

Firstly, it stops GarageBand automatically opening up the last song you were working on when in fact you want to start a new song. If you've got an idea you're dying to get down, having to close one song and start a new one can seem like a long wait.

Secondly, it's a way of getting round the fact that GarageBand doesn't allow you to save general preferences for certain elements of its interface, such as the Count in feature, which, if you use it, you have to remember to turn on each time you start a new song. It's annoying to find you've forgotten to turn it on only when you hit record and there's no count in! I also prefer to have the time read-out show minutes and seconds rather than bars and beats (after all, you can tell which bar you're on by looking at the playhead), so that's another thing I have to click each time I create a new song.

Thirdly, GarageBand's default first track in each new song you create — a grand piano — isn't, in most cases, helpful. The first track I want is a drum track, even if only to use it as a better click track which I can discard later.

Fortunately, OS X provides a way of making a template file for almost any application, by turning it into a Stationery Pad. You just open the Finder's Info window and click the Stationery Pad option. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for GarageBand, because GarageBand songs aren't normal files but packages, which are more like folders, and you can't turn a folder into a Stationery Pad.

There is, however, a way round it.

First make your template song

The first thing to do is make your template.

Start up GarageBand and create a new song. Save it with the name Template.

Now set it up to be how you want your new songs to be when you first start. If you're like me, you'll want to choose Count In from the Control menu, then click the little clock icon on the time indicator to change the read out to minutes and seconds. Then, convert that piano track to a drum track. I even put in a basic drum part — bass drum on the 1st and 3rd beats, snare on the 2nd and 4th — just to act as a skeleton I can build on for each song.

You can, of course, add other basic tracks you want as standard in most songs, such as bass track, vocal track, guitar track and so on. (You can always delete them if you don't need them in your new song. You can also create different templates for different musical situations, if you want.)

That done, save the song again and quit GarageBand.

Turn it into a template

Now locate the song file you've just created in the Finder. Bring up the Finder's Info window by selecting the file and hitting -I (or choosing Get Info from the Finder's File menu).

You'll notice the Stationery Pad option is greyed-out. Click the Locked box to put a tick in it, then close the Info window. (This changes the song file's icon, by adding a little padlock in the lower left corner.)

Now double-click your song template file. It opens in GarageBand as normal. Make a change or two — add a new track, for instance — and hit -S to save it. GarageBand will come up with an alert telling you the document couldn't be saved:

So you'll simply have to choose Save As (or hit shift--S) each time you use your template for the first time. Remember not to overwrite your existing template! Once you've saved your new song this way, you can save it as normal.

Having to Save As the first time might seem like an inconvenience, but remember that creating a template saves you various other first-time clicks, including setting the Count in feature, getting rid of that piano track, and so on. The whole point is to customise the template to how you use GarageBand.

Using the template

Now, whenever you want to start a new song, don't click on GarageBand's icon, but double-click the template. You can always put it into your dock for easy access, or put an alias on your desktop.

If you want to edit your template at any time, it's easy. Simply turn off the Locked setting via the Finder's Info window, then edit the template, save it, and re-lock the file when you're done.