Create Unique Music For Your Videos In GarageBand

Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to create unique video background music using GarageBand. 

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So whether you're creating a video just to share with your friends and family or to post online you may want to put some background music in there. You could take some of the canned music that comes with say iMovie or download something online and use it. But you're going to have the same music used by so many other people online. Apple gives you the tool that you need, GarageBand, to create your own unique background music for your videos. It only takes a few minutes to do.

Let's start off here by choosing an empty project in GarageBand. It's going to ask us what kind of track you want to start with. We're going to start with the Drummer track. Now previously to have a drum track you needed to use a loop and there were a certain number of drum loops that you could select from. But now you can create a nearly infinite variety of drum loops by using the special Drummer track. So on the left here you'll see all these different drummers. You can click on the Category here and it jumps up to the category level and you can choose Rock, or you can go to Alternative, all these different ones. Then you can choose a Drummer and then from that you can choose different sounds. Already you have a ton of variety there. So we can stick with this sound here and then we can hit Play and hear what it sounds like. (music). 

Now let's setup the Loop. I'm going to loop here by clicking there and then extend the loop so it covers the sample part of the drum track. Now I can play and it will loop and anything I change we'll hear as it just continues to loop around. So let me double click on it here and go back to this interface. The drummer interface allows you to further customize what you get. So you can select from these presets, all these different ones will go here. Then you can also move this circle to go between loud and soft, complex and simple. Let's put it right in the middle and we can change what instruments play here. For instance, I can change to cymbals, toms, I can add tambourines, maracas, hand claps, that kind of thing. So you can really get it to be customized. You can even play with Fills and how much swing there is. Let's increase that.

So now have our unique drum track already. So since were making this for a video background we already know how long the video is. So say in this case it's two minutes. We want to make sure that the drummer continues playing for those two minutes. So let's switch here from Beats to Time and we'll see time here at the top. Let's also switch this control so we can see as much time as possible. Close the library here to extend this to cover as much area as we can on the screen. I can select the top right or the bottom right of this track. This will extend the track. This will extend it as a loop. It doesn't really matter for the drummer. I'm going to extend it here from the bottom. Click and drag. Drag it all the way out. I'm going to past the end here. We know we want it to go past two minutes. So let's go a little bit past two minutes and then switch back to Beats and Project.

Now if we try to drag this out it's going to snap to a measure. We can see at the bottom playing 51 measures, 52 measures, 53 measures. So let's have it lock to something like 52 measures. So we know that's a little bit over two minutes and it's exactly  52 measures. So the song won't end in the middle of a measure and sound awkward. So now we have our drummer track. Let's add another one.

I'm going to click on Loops here and I'm going to go to Instrument. From Instrument I'm going to select Bass. You can start with anything that you want. You can start with, for instance, synthesizers or piano or guitar or beats. I'm going to do bass here and I'm going to go and look at all the different bass samples. So I can click on one and hear it. Click again to have it stop. But what is more useful is if I hit Play and play this looped area with my drums and whatever I click here it will play over that. So I can see how it sounds. Now I can go through all of this and test all sorts of different bass beats out. So take your time to select something you think fits the mode of your video.

When you find something you like simply drag and drop it to the new track here at the bottom. Let's hit Stop. Now I've got the bass tract here. I can again drag it out. If I drag it from the bottom rightI get nothing because there's only this small sample here. I'll Undo that. I'll drag instead from the top right to loop it. I'm going to extend the loop all the way to the end here. Notice how they line up perfectly because I've done 52 measures here and it's easy to have 52 measures of this bass beat here. So let me hit Play and you hear them together. (music). Great.

So now it's time to go to another instrument. So let's turn off bass here and instead go to electric piano. Again you can choose whatever you want. Maybe an electric guitar or something like that would be more your style for the video you're working on. I can go in here and I can click to hear anyone of these electric piano samples. I can keep sampling them and do it with the Play button on so I can hear them over the music. So I can find one that I like. Let's choose this one. I can drag this in here as well and hit Stop. I'm going to extend that loop to go the entire length of the song. So now I've got three different tracks. A very unique drum track and then these two loops.

Now I can make these sound like a real song by dragging some of these tracks over so they don't come in altogether. So the drum track will come in first and then bass and then I can have the piano come in. So now it sounds like this at the start. (music). Now I can go all the way to the end here and I can see, because I dragged, it pushes these out. So I can actually leave this like that to have each instrument to be removed at the end of the song or I can adjust which instruments get removed first. Do it something like that. Or I can just adjust the ends here so that they all end at the same time. We can add a fade out later on to have the song fade out at the end.

Now you can add further variety by adding another track in that only comes in every once in awhile. Since I've got the whole electric piano thing going on I want to stick with that and find another electric piano piece. So I can sample these different ones and find one I think goes well with this. I can have that come in here. So let me count the measures and make sure it has an even number of measures. So if we have this come in after, say, eight measures here sounds a little bit more natural and maybe come in twice, then I can turn off the looping here so I can now have the playback head go there and I can hear what it sounds like when it comes in.

Now I think in this case it will sound better if the person playing the electric piano actually stops playing one and starts playing the other. So I'm going to move the playback head right there, select this track, and do Command T for Split. You can see that under Edit here. Split regions at playhead. So I'm going to split right there and then I'm going to move the playhead over there. Select it there and split again. So now I've split off this piece and I can delete it. So now it sounds like whoever is playing the electric piano switches what they're playing for two measures. (music). 

I could select this, copy it, and go over another eight measures and paste it right here so now it comes in twice and then do same thing here, splitting and cutting out this piece. Then I've got it playing four measures here at the end. It creates a nice little song. Now to get it to fade out what I want to do is I want to go to Track and then Show Master Track. Then I want to go to Mix, Show Automation. So I'm going to select the Automation track and I'm going to switch to a Volume automation. Now I see that line there. I'm going to click right here near the end to create a dot and another dot here at the very end and drag that dot down. That's a fade out now. So the end of the song now fades. (music)

What I would actually do if I was using this in a video is I wouldn't put the fade here in GarageBand. I'd have it play full volume and then cut off abruptly at the end. Then I would add the fade in in iMovie or Final Cut. So now that we have a complete song here all we need to do is Export it. I go to Share and then do Export Song to Disk. Then I could choose a name, where to save it, and the quality level. AAC high quality is pretty good or you can go a little bit higher than that. Then you can take that background music and bring it into your video and you have music that is different than any other video online.