Lesson 3. Working with Apple Loops and Arranging a Song

Lesson Files

APTS GarageBand Book Files > Lesson 3 > 3-1 Slow Motion Loops, 3-2 Arranging Loops, 3-3 Rhythm Finished, 3-4 Loopy Ringtone Finished. APTS GarageBand Book Files > Lesson Bonus Projects > 3 Sweet Looping Finished

Time

This lesson takes approximately 60 minutes to complete.

Goals

Explore the Ringtone template

Search for Apple Loops

Customize keyword buttons

Mark loops as favorites

Arrange a ringtone using Apple Loops

Apple Loops are pre-recorded music files that are designed to repeat (loop) over and over seamlessly. Loops are commonly used for drumbeats, rhythm parts, and other repeating musical phrases or riffs within a song. GarageBand has a whopping 2,000 pre-recorded Apple Loops. Five hundred loops come with the free version of GarageBand 10, and you get an additional 1,500 with the onetime in-app purchase. Apple Loops are incredibly flexible instrument regions that can be arranged, trimmed, and repeated to create a song or enhance your recorded tracks.

To extend your Loop Library, you can add third-party loops as well as Apple Loops from Logic Pro. You can also save your own recordings as loops in your Loop Library. You’ll record and save a loop in Lesson 7, “Creating Drum and Percussion Tracks.”

In this lesson, you’ll learn how to search for Apple Loops and use them to arrange a piece of music. In fact, you get to create a ringtone from scratch using only Apple Loops. As you build the project, you’ll learn different search techniques and discover how adaptable loops can be to fit your project. You’ll also explore some advanced music-arranging techniques.

1. Open GarageBand. If GarageBand is already open, choose File > New.

2. In the Project Chooser, click the New Project button to see a list of project templates.

3. Double-click the Ringtone template button to automatically open the project template.

4. Save the project as Loopy Ringtone to your My GarageBand Projects folder.

Now that the project has been opened and saved, let’s get to work.

The default Ringtone template includes five handy ringtone-friendly features:

An empty Audio 1 track—Every project needs at least one audio track. Most of the Apple Loops are audio recording (blue) regions so they can be added to the empty track.

The loop browser showing—This makes it easy to search for Apple Loops to use in your project.

Cycle mode turned on—As the name suggests, ringtones are a short piece of music that repeats over and over to indicate an incoming call. Therefore the music needs to sound good as it repeats, and the best way to hear that is to build and listen to it in Cycle mode. The yellow cycle area is exactly 20 bars (measures) in length, because 20 bars is nearly the limit for a ringtone in iTunes. The actual time-based limit for a ringtone is 40 seconds.

End-of-project marker set to bar 20—This often-overlooked but useful tool indicates the project endpoint. This marker allows you to set where the song ends in the timeline. The default setting for new projects is at bar 32. However, since ringtones need to be fewer than 20 bars (or 40 seconds), the Ringtone preset took care of setting it for you.

The metronome in the toolbar is turned on (purple)—This is so you have a click track to keep time with the project tempo.

Since the last three features listed may not be obvious at first glance, you can easily verify them for yourself.

1. If needed, press Command-Left Arrow/Command-Right Arrow or use the horizontal zoom slider to change the zoom level of the timeline until you see the entire cycle region. As you can see, the cycle area extends from the beginning of bar 1 to the beginning of bar 20.

If you look carefully at bar 20 in the time ruler, you will see the end-of-project marker.

2. Start playback. You can hear the 4/4 time signature (4 clicks for each measure/bar). Follow the playhead in the ruler as you listen to the click track. Beat marks in the ruler coincide with the audible clicks. The first beat of a measure is always at the beginning. Stop playback.

Now that you understand the features in the Ringtone template, it’s time to get to work building the actual ringtone.

1. Choose GarageBand > Preferences. The Preferences window opens.

2. Click the Loops button at the top of the Preferences window to display the Loops preferences.

The Loops preferences include:

Keyword Browsing: Filter for more relevant results—When this checkbox is selected, only loops in keys close to the project key appear in the loop browser.

Keyword Layout: Reset—Clicking this button resets the keyword buttons in the loop browser back to their original positions and names.

Loop Browser: Display original tempo and key—When this checkbox is selected, the Tempo and Key columns appear in the loop browser.

3. Keep the Loops preferences open and glance at the lower-right corner of the loop browser to see the number of loops available in your browser.

4. Deselect the Keyword Browsing checkbox. Now your loop browser will list all of your indexed loops, not just the ones close to the project key. (If you don’t know what that means, you will shortly.) Check the number of loops listed in your loop browser. Chances are the number has increased.

5. Click the Reset button to reset the Keyword Layout.

6. Select the “Loop Browser: Display original tempo and key” checkbox. In the results list of the loop browser you’ll see the original tempo and key of each loop. When a loop is added to the timeline, it conforms to the tempo and key of the project, as shown in the LCD display.

7. Deselect the “Loop Browser: Display original tempo and key” checkbox. Close the Loops preferences.

Now you are ready to search for loops to build the song.

As a composer, I need to hear only one catchy loop that fits the type of music I’m going for, and the rest builds from there. So for this project, you’ll follow my lead.

In addition to the 2,000 loops available with GarageBand 10 and the in-app purchase, if you had previous versions of GarageBand or Logic Pro, you will have access to all those loops as well.

Where to start? Because I’m a pianist and don’t have a loopy piano ringtone on my phone (yet), we are looking for a processed piano melody that will work well with electronic beats.

1. In the search field, type piano. Hey, what luck. The results list includes quite a few loops with Piano in the name.

Since we are looking for a loop to carry the melody, let’s sort them by the number of beats to find the longest ones.

2. Click twice on the Beat column header in the results list to sort the piano loops by the number of beats with the highest number (32 beats) at the top of the list.

3. Click Twilight Piano in the results list to preview the loop. When you are done previewing the loop, click it again to stop. Wow! I’m inspired already. All by itself it has a grooving electric, melodic, ringtone-ish quality.

In fact, if you look at the keyword buttons, you’ll see that descriptive keyword buttons for Grooving, Melodic, and Electric are bold type to indicate they apply to the current loops in the results list. Keywords that do not show any loops with the selected keyword are dimmed (inactive). You can use the active buttons to further narrow the results list if needed.

4. Drag Twilight Piano from the results list to the beginning of the Audio 1 track in the timeline.

The track name changes to Twilight Piano, and the blue audio region in the timeline contains the pre-recorded Apple Loop.

Now that we have found the Twilight Piano, let’s find some additional loops to go with it. Since the melody is rather fast-moving, a nice contrast would be to find slower-sounding loops.

5. In the search field, type slow motion. There are four different Slow Motion loops in the list (five if you are working with all 2,000 loops). Each loop has the same root name. That means these pieces were all composed to go together. Let’s try them.

6. Preview all of the Slow Motion variations to decide if they sound like they will fit with the Twilight Piano. Sure, they sound good and feel like they’ll work, but there is only one way to know for sure.

Now you have a choice to either audition the Slow Motion loop variations by previewing them while the Twilight Piano region plays in the timeline or just drag them each to a different track and evaluate them in the timeline. For this exercise, let’s go with the second method and get this song going.

7. Drag Slow Motion Phaser Guitar from the loop browser to the empty space below the first track. Do the same for the Slow Motion Piano, Slow Motion Beat 01, and Slow Motion Beat 02 loops until you have all four in separate tracks in the timeline.

8. Play the loops to hear how they all sound together. Hmm. They sound like they want to work, but something is conflicting with the melody in the first half. Obviously if these loops all carry the same root name they were meant to go together. When in doubt, look for the ones that are a different length.

Beats are beats and generally go together no matter how you arrange them. So that leaves the Slow Motion Piano loop that seems to be half the length of the remaining three loops. Slow Motion Piano is only 16 beats long, whereas the other regions are all 32 beats. This song is using 4/4 time signature (as shown in the LCD display). That means there are 4 beats per bar (measure). The first beat starts at the beginning of each measure.

4 beats × 8 measures = 32 beats for the longer regions.

4 beats × 4 measures = 16 beats in length for the shorter piano variation.

Of course, you don’t have to do the math; you can just look at the Beats column in the loop browser. Chances are the Slow Motion Piano loop was meant to go with the second half of the longer regions to add a little variation and let the song build—what a novel idea.

9. Drag the Slow Motion Piano region toward the right until it starts at bar 5 and ends at bar 9.

10. Play the project. Press K to kill the metronome (technically the metronome will be fine; that’s just a term used for turning something off). And thinking of k for kill might help you remember the shortcut for turning on and off the metronome. Now this project sounds like a ringtone song.

11. Stop playback and save your progress.

12. In the loop browser, click the Name column header so that the results list will sort the loops alphabetically rather than by the number of beats.

You have successfully built a short musical piece with loops that will work as a ringtone. Then again, anyone can drag four like-named loops to the timeline and call it a song. Time to dive into some more advanced search and loop arrangement techniques to expand this loop inspiration into a head-bobbing, attention-getting, worthy-of-answering ringtone.

1. Select the Slow Motion Beat 01 track header to select the track.

2. Press Command-Delete. A warning dialog appears to tell you that there are regions in the track. This is a helpful warning to stop you from accidentally deleting a track with recorded regions in it. In this case, you are more than willing to delete the tracks and the regions. Click OK.

There should now be only four tracks in the timeline.

The first thing you need to remember to do before starting a new search in the loop browser is to always clear the search field and reset the buttons if needed.

1. Click the clear button (X) on the right side of the search field to clear the field and the results list. You won’t need to reset the keyword buttons yet because you haven’t used them since you reset the preferences.

To make this ringtone stand out, there needs to be some kind of percussion at the beginning that isn’t too overbearing. When in doubt, there is always the iconic first instrument nearly everyone has played at least once in their youth: the maracas.

2. Look over the keyword buttons for Maraca. Unfortunately, you won’t find one, at least not yet. We’ll fix that later. In addition to being an ancient multicultural rhythm-making device known the world over, the maraca is also a percussion instrument. Click the Percussion button.

You’ll see a maracas loop named Big Maracas 02 in the results list.

3. Click Big Maracas 02 in the results list to hear it. Yep. Those are some grooving maracas.

4. Drag Big Maracas 02 from the loop browser to the empty space in the tracks area to create a new Big Maracas 02 track. If necessary, move the region to the beginning of the track.

5. Play the beginning of the song. Listen for the maracas sound with the other tracks.

If it is hard to hear a track, you can turn up the volume on the track header in a minute. First, it’s a good idea to understand how the volume levels were determined when you created the tracks.

Let’s take a minute and adjust the loop browser and track mixer volume levels.

1. Option-click the volume slider in the loop browser to reset it to the default level (–6.0 dB).

2. Double-click the volume slider on the Twilight Piano track to show the Track Volume field. Type -6.0 and press Return.

3. If needed, set the volume levels of the other tracks to –6.0 dB. You can either drag the volume sliders or double-click to use the Track Volume field.

4. Play the project to hear all the loops at equal volume levels.

Now that all of the tracks are the same volume level, you may have noticed that the Slow Motion Phaser Guitar region is overpowering the Twilight Piano. I like how they work together, but let’s save it for the second half of the song.

5. Mute the Slow Motion Phaser Guitar track. Play the song again. Perfect—you can hear the intricate Twilight Piano and there is just enough maracas percussion to go along with the lead melody.

Now that you understand the volume levels of the tracks and loop browser, let’s customize the keyword buttons.

Why would you want to move a button? Good question. Since you know that you want certain instruments for the song, you’ll want to group all the instrument buttons together near a common descriptor so you can spend less time searching for buttons and more time searching for loops.

For this song, you’ll need beats with a grooving, urban sound. Let’s go ahead and move those keyword buttons to the bottom row so they are all together.

1. Click the (orange) Reset button to deselect any currently selected buttons. The Reset button glows orange only if a button has been selected.

2. Locate the Beats button in the loop browser. Hint: It’s in the first column, two buttons below Reset.

3. Drag the Beats button down to the bottom of the first column of buttons and release it over the Sound Effects button in the bottom row.

The Beats and Sound Effects buttons swap positions in the keyword buttons area.

4. Locate the Electronic button (at the top of the fourth column) and drag it to the bottom of the second column.

5. Locate the Grooving button (near the bottom of the third column). It happens to be a mood keyword button so it cannot be moved or changed. Luckily it is so close to the others you just moved that it is fine where it is.

All three descriptors are near each other at the bottom of the keyword buttons area (just above the results list). Just one last thing: Let’s change the name of a button to an instrument that doesn’t currently have a button showing: the cowbell. Country-style loops wouldn’t be a good fit for this project, so you’ll change the Country button to Cowbell. After all, you never know when you’ll need more cowbell.

6. Locate the Country button (near the top of the third column). Drag it to the bottom of the first column and release it over the Vocals button.

7. Control-click (or right-click) the Country button. From the shortcut menu choose Instruments > Percussion > Cowbell.

You now have a Cowbell button in your keyword buttons area. Chances are, your new Cowbell button is dimmed. That means there are no cowbell loops in your Loop library. No worries, you’ll remedy that in Lesson 7.

8. Click the Reset button.

In the next section you’ll put some of your customized buttons to work to find the beats for the song. In Lesson 7, you will create a new cowbell loop and add it to your Loop Library.

1. In the loop browser, click the Beats button. Notice the number of items in the results list. If you are working with the full set of Apple Loops, your list went from 2,000 to under 500 in one click.

2. Click the Electronic button to further narrow the list of beats.

3. Click the Grooving button. The list narrows by only around 50 loops, so that tells you that most of the Grooving mood beats are also electronic-sounding.

4. Scroll down through the list until you see a family of four loops called Blueprint Beat. Preview each of them, and then add Blueprint Beat 03 and Blueprint Beat 04 to the project.

You have enough loops to start arranging your song, so let’s hide the loop browser for now without resetting the keywords. That way if we need to grab another Grooving Beats loop, we don’t have to do a new search.

5. Press O, or click the loop browser button to hide it. This will make more room in the tracks area to arrange the regions.

6. Press Command-Right Arrow or use the horizontal zoom slider to adjust the zoom level until the cycle area (bar 1 to bar 20) fills the workspace horizontally.

7. Unmute the Phaser Guitar track and play the project once with all of the parts starting at the same time at the beginning. As expected, all of the parts work together and are in time, though they don’t make for a very interesting song—yet.

8. Save your progress.

Now that the basic melody and some rhythm loops are in the timeline, you can move to the next step and start arranging them into a song.

Melody is the plot, or story, of a song. It’s the memorable part that you hum to yourself when you think of the song, and it’s the part other people will remember as well. If you think of the theme song to your favorite movie, you are thinking of the melody. Melody is usually played by the lead instrument, or lead vocal, just as the lead storyline of a movie is played by the lead characters.

In a melody-driven song, you write the melody first, and then add other tracks that work well with the melody. Songs with lyrics usually use the vocals as the melody line.

The song “Dog Walk Ditty,” which you worked on in Lesson 2, “Working with Tracks,” was melody based. I recorded the guitar melody first, and then added the other instrument parts.

Rhythm is the pulse or heartbeat of the song. Rhythm can be played by one instrument or many different instruments. Rhythm is felt as much as it is heard, and it dictates the pacing of the different instrument parts. Rhythm is usually set by the drums and followed by the other rhythm instruments, such as bass, rhythm guitar, and keyboards. The rhythm of a song may be fast or slow depending on the song’s tempo. A slow tempo song might be a ballad with a laid-back rhythm. A fast tempo song might be a rock song with a driving beat.

In a rhythm-driven song, you create the beats, percussion, or rhythm parts first, and then add other instrument parts that fit well with the rhythm. Rhythm-driven songs are often used to score movie trailers (previews), as well as fast-paced promos or commercials. Rap music is often rhythm based, but it depends on the song.

The “Loopy Ringtone” that you are building for this lesson is melody driven. For this piece, I selected the melody loop first. Now that it is in the timeline, the rhythm tracks can be added to supply the heartbeat and driving force that keeps things moving.

With the “Loopy Ringtone,” since it is melody driven we can use the changes in the melody to determine how we build the rhythm tracks.

Rhythm tracks can consist of a bass line, a steady rhythm guitar, or drums—whatever the song uses to convey the rhythm. For this song, the pre-recorded drum parts (beats loops) will carry the rhythm.

The trick now is to arrange them in a way that creates an interesting rhythm pattern for the song. Using the same loop or loops over and over might start off sounding cool, but eventually it becomes monotonous. Your goal in the next section is to spread the loops around a bit in the timeline to give each one a chance to be heard and create natural changes in the song’s overall rhythm pattern.

Since you are building the song around the melody region (Places Unknown Arpeggio), we’ll start there.

1. Drag the top right edge of the Twilight Piano region toward the right to the beginning of bar 20. Use the yellow cycle area as a guide if needed.

2. Mute all three of the Slow Motion tracks and both Blueprint tracks. You’ll unmute and move them as needed.

3. Play the entire piece while listening to the changes in the Twilight Piano melody as it plays.

Here are some things to listen for:

The interesting Doppler-like changes to the music, as if it were on a yo-yo moving closer, then further away repeatedly

Parts of the melody where you anticipate change and it happens just as you thought it would (bars 3, 5, 7)

Part of the melody that repeats (bar 5, 9)

Parts of the melody that build (bar 2, 5, 8)

Parts of the melody that slow, or soften (bars 3, 6)

Any of these musical moments could be excellent places to make dramatic changes in the rhythm track to support the melodic changes.

Let’s start with the maracas.

4. Extend the Big Maracas 02 region so that it repeats two times (the loop stops at bar 5).

5. Play the beginning of the project to hear the maracas with the melody. So far so good, though I think it’s time to kick in the Slow Motion Beat. How about bar 3, where the first part of the melody changes and begins to retreat acoustically as if it is moving away?

6. Unmute the Slow Motion Beat 02 track. Drag the region in that track to the right until it begins at bar 3. This is also where the maracas region repeats. Play the beginning to hear the new arrangement.

Sounds pretty cool. Starts lively, and then the Slow Motion Beat joins in with the maracas and brings the percussion to life as though an audience just joined in with claps and stomps to the beat.

7. Unmute the Blueprint Beat 03 track. Drag the region in that track so that it starts at bar 7. This is where the melody instrumentation change repeats and intensifies as though it is coming toward us. Overlapping the two beats will intensify the beat as well. Also, the new heavier beat indicates this delicate piano melody is ready to switch things up to dance mode.

Instead of manually extending the Blueprint Beat 03 region to the end of the project, you’ll use a handy looping shortcut.

8. Select the Blueprint Beat 03 region if it isn’t already selected. Press L.

The region extends to the end-of-project marker that is conveniently located for this project at bar 20.

9. Play the project. Sounds good, but the second half gets pretty boring pretty fast with no changes to the rhythm. Let’s reuse the Slow Motion Beat 02 region later in the track.

10. Option-drag the Slow Motion Beat 02 region and place the duplicate so it starts at bar 12. Notice that the full name of the duplicate beat is called Slow Motion Beat 02.2 because it is the second version of the original Slow Motion Beat 02 file in the timeline.

Let’s trim the beginning of the Slow Motion Beat 02.2 region so that it starts at bar 13. The reason you are trimming rather than dragging it to bar 13 in the first place is because dragging the region so that it stops beyond the end-of-project marker would move the marker accordingly to the end of the last region. Also, I wanted the region to have a different starting beat than the first.

11. Drag the lower-left edge of the Slow Motion Beat 02.2 region right to bar 13.

Dragging the lower edge of a region trims the region. Dragging the upper-right edge creates loops (repeated clones) of the original region.

To shorten the length of the Blueprint Beat 03 looped region, let’s try a click trick with the Loop tool that only works for trimming repeated segments of a loop.

12. In the Blueprint Beat 03 track, hover over the top half of the repeated segments of the loop. The cursor becomes a Loop tool. Click the loop at bar 17 with the Loop tool.

The repeated segments of the loop stop at bar 17. If you didn’t click exactly at bar 17 you can drag the lower-right edge of the region to trim it to bar 17 as needed.

13. Play the project and save your work.

Well done. You’ve created a rhythm track that accentuates parts of the melody and punches up the feel of the overall song.

Your goal is to find the Beats loop called Twilight Beat in the loop browser. Drag it to the timeline to create a new track and place it so that it starts at bar 5 and stops at bar 9. Option-drag the Twilight Beat region and place the copy so that it starts at bar 13 and stops at bar 17. Next you’ll unmute the bass track and move the region so that it starts at bar 9. Listen to the finished rhythm track. When you’re done, you’ll reset the keyword buttons and save your progress. Feel free to go ahead, but if you need a little help, use the following steps as a guide.

1. Open the loop browser. Find the loop called Twilight Beat. You may need to click Reset in the loop browser before you search.

2. Drag Twilight Beat from the browser to the tracks area and release it below the lowest track.

3. Clear the search field. Hide the loop browser.

4. In the Twilight Beat track, drag Twilight Beat to the right until starts at bar 5 and stops at bar 9. Option-drag Twilight Beat and release the copy so that it starts at bar 13 and stops at bar 17.

5. Unmute the Slow Motion Phaser Guitar track and move the region down the track until it starts at bar 9. This is the beginning of the second repetition of the melody region. Adding the phaser guitar part at this point in the song supports the melody and the rhythm of the song.

6. Unmute the Blueprint Beat 04 track. Drag the region and place it so that it starts at bar 16. Drag the upper-right edge of the region so that it loops one measure and stops at bar 19.

7. Click the empty space to deselect any selected regions. Play the song to hear the finished rhythm tracks with the melody.

8. When you are finished, display the loop browser and click the Reset button.

9. Save your progress.

This ringtone now has a strong rhythm and will definitely get someone’s attention.

With 500 to 2,000 loops to choose from, sometimes it’s a good idea to mark your favorites or the loops you plan to use for a specific song. That way, when you’re ready to start building the tracks you won’t have to break your creative flow to go hunting for loops. Instead, they’ll all be located in one category—Favorites.

You can easily locate any loop that is marked as a favorite by using the Favorites button in Button view or the Favorites column in Column view. Since you haven’t searched in Column view yet, let’s start our search for favorites there.

1. In the top left of the loop browser, click the Column view button. The loop browser search area changes from Button view to Column view.

2. Select the Moods category in the first column. A list of all the mood keywords appears in a second column.

3. In the second column, choose Grooving. The third column shows how many Grooving loops are in each keyword instrument or genre category. Scroll through the third column to see the list of descriptive keywords, ranging from Grooving at the top of the column to World at the bottom.

If you aren’t sure which keywords to start with, try looking at keywords that describe the melody loop file.

4. In the search field, type Twilight Piano. The Descriptive Keyword column shows keywords that apply to that specific loop.

5. In the first column, click Genres. In the second column, the only genre that applies is Urban. That certainly narrows things.

6. In the first column, select Instruments to see a list of instruments used to create the Twilight Piano loop. Since the song doesn’t have any bass or synth parts, let’s find one of each that will work.

7. Clear the search field. Choose Genres > Urban > Synths. Scroll down through the results list. There are plenty of loops from which to choose; perhaps one of them will work.

8. Click Barricade Arpeggio in the results list. Sounds like it will fit perfectly near the middle of the song. Rather than drag it over, click the checkbox on the Favorites column. The Favorites column is the column of checkboxes at the far right of the results list—the one with a heart in the header.

9. In the search area, select the Favorites category. All of the keywords used by your favorite loop are listed in the second column. And since you have only one favorite marked, it is the only loop in the results list.

Marking favorites is like gathering items in a grocery basket. Let’s use the search field to locate the remaining melody loops and mark each as a favorite. When you are finished, all the loops you need to finish the song will be in one place, without crowding the timeline workspace until you need them.

10. Search for the following loops in the loop browser (using either Column or Button view) and mark each as a favorite:

All Your Base Gated Synth

Rhyming Scheme Sub Bass

Rhyming Scheme Synth Lead

11. Clear the search field if needed. Change the loop browser to Button view if it is in Column view. Click the Favorites button to see all your favorites in the results list.

You have completed your search for the melody loops and marked them as favorites. Now all you have to do is arrange them in the timeline.

1. Unmute the Solo Motion Piano track. Drag the top-right edge of the region until the loops stop at bar 17.

2. Drag the Barricade Arpeggio loop from the loop browser to the timeline so that it starts at bar 8. Extend it by one measure so that it stops at bar 10. This loop will overlap one measure in either direction of bar 9 when the melody loop repeats. This will act as an acoustic distraction from the melody repetition and an accent to the overall music.

3. Drag Rhyming Scheme Sub Bass from the browser to the timeline and loop it so that it starts at bar 9 and stops at bar 19.

4. Drag Rhyming Scheme Synth Lead from the browser to the timeline so that it starts at bar 3 and stops at bar 5. Option-drag the Rhyming Scheme Synth Lead region and place the duplicate down the track so that it starts at bar 15 and stops at bar 17.

5. Drag All Your Base Gated Synth from the browser to the timeline so that it starts at bar 13 and stops at bar 17. Hide the loop browser.

6. Play the finished song. Sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it?

7. In the loop browser, uncheck each of the favorite loops to clear your favorites for the next project. Click the Reset button and hide the loop browser.

Congratulations! You built a song from scratch using only Apple Loops. Along the way you learned some advanced search techniques, how to customize keyword buttons, and how to arrange loops to build a song.

The song still needs mixing, which you’ll learn how to do in Lesson 8, to balance the volume levels between tracks and add effects to enhance the overall sound. The ending also could use a little finessing, which you’ll see in Lesson 9, “Sharing Your Finished Projects,” when you learn to share the project as a ringtone.

In the next lesson you’ll learn how to record and edit Software Instruments.

Instead of a ringtone, you’ll create a 30-second song for a company website. They want something sweet, fun, and contemporary but not tacky or overly sappy and sentimental. Sound like fun? (I’ve been asked to write a piece of music by a client who used these exact words. Says more about the client than the song—but a gig is a gig and the client is always right.)

In step 3 you’ll see a list of the loops you need to find and where they go on separate tracks. After the loops have been arranged, you’ll change the sound of one instrument.

The finished project is called 3 Sweet Looping Finished, and you can find it in APTS GarageBand Book Files > Lesson Bonus Projects.

1. Create a new project with the Empty Project template. You’ll be prompted to choose the type of track you want to start with; choose “Audio - Record using a microphone or line input.”

2. Save the project as Sweet Looping.

3. In the loop browser, find the following loops and add them to the timeline accordingly:

Sparks Fly Piano: bar 1 to the third beat of bar 9 (9 3 1 1)

True Love Electric Piano: bar 1 to bar 15

Deep Electric Piano 07: bar 4 to bar 9, Option-drag duplicate to the fourth beat of bar 12 (12 4 1 1). Trim the duplicate region so that it stops at 15 4 1 1.

Breathless Piano: bar 13 to 15 2 1 1

Cali Vibes Piano: bar 9 to bar 13

White Light Sample Vox: bar 8 to 15 3 1 1

Super Strength Beat 02: bar 11 to 14 3 1 1

Super Strength Beat 01: bar 11 to bar 13

Tambourine Tap Topper: bar 9 to bar 12

4. Double-click the Deep Electric Piano 07 track header. Since it is a Software instrument, you can change the instrument. In the Library, choose Synthesizer > Dreamy Bells > Bell.

5. Play the finished song and save your work.

2. Do all Apple Loops in the browser have the same tempo and key?

3. What are the two different ways you can view keywords in the loop browser?

4. How do you move a keyword button to a new position in the loop browser?

5. Which side of a loop can be extended in the timeline so it repeats?

6. Can you change the keyword on a specific button? If so, how?

7. What happens when you click the Reset button in the loop browser?

8. How do you reset all of the keyword buttons back to the original names and locations?

2. Apple Loops in the browser have a native tempo and key in which they were recorded originally. When you preview them in the browser or add them to a song, they match the tempo and key of the project.

3. You can view keywords in Button or Column view in the loop browser.

4. You can move a keyword button to a new position in the loop browser by dragging it over another button. The two buttons swap positions.

5. You extend or trim a loop from the right side with the Loop tool.

6. You can change the keyword on a specific button. Control-click (or right-click) the button and choose a different keyword from the shortcut menu.

7. When you click the Reset button in the loop browser, all of the buttons become deselected so you can begin a new search.

8. You can reset all of the keyword buttons back to the original names and locations with the Reset control in the Loop preferences.