Fun With GarageBand Drummers

The latest version of GarageBand allows you to create drum tracks using various settings rather than picking a fixed drum loop. You can select a drummer, and then change the style, which drums are used and many other factor to create a unique drum loop for your project. If nothing else, the drummer function in GarageBand is fun to play with!

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com.
On today's episode let's have some fun playing around with Drummers in GarageBand.
Let's use GarageBand. I'm using version 10.0.3 for this. Let's create an empty project and I'm going to add not a Software Instrument or an Audio input but a Drummer. This will create the interface here for adding a Drummer.
Now let's get rid of the stuff here on the left since we are not going to use it and just be able to see everything here for this Drummer.
We can change the Drummer right here by selecting something different like say Alternative or Songwriter. All these different styles. But notice the only one here that has the name in color is the one I have installed which is the one installed by default.
You can get the other drummers by going into the GarageBand menu and you can download more sounds. You can select to download the Drummers. But we're just going to focus on this default one here called Kyle.
We can select some presets here. Then we have this matrix where we can select between loud and soft and simple and complex. We'll see that Drummer is inserted here with some sound. Let's here what it sounds like if we just use these settings.
Now let's look if we drag this down here to simple and soft.
Now let's go to loud and complex.
So we can experiment by moving the dot around here, changing the preset, and also setting which parts of the drum kit to use and just some settings that will change what is being played.
So let's try some things here. First I'm going to get rid of this second piece here to the drummer set. Basically there are two pieces you can select. I'm going to get rid of the second one and keep the first one here set to loop. It's going to loop through here.
I'm going to change this section for the Drummer and it is going to continue the loop so I can hear it as I experiment. 
You can see it changes right here instantly. 
I can even add things like tambourine, maracas, and claps.
I can change the fill. That will be a steady constant there while this will fill more in. You can see right there and there. I can make the drum swing a little.
The great thing about all this is that there are so many different settings and so many different ways you can change things that you've got a much wider variety of drums than before.
Before you just had a bunch that you could choose from, a bunch of loops you could choose from. So even if you had a hundred loops chances are if you made something original to put say as background music for a video or something you were playing around with putting into a project you were working on it was going to sound a little bit like what somebody else would have created in GarageBand.
But now we have so many settings here, let alone if you go and download all the other Drummers and their styles, that you can make something that probably no one else has ever used or will ever use because your settings will be unique.

Comments: 2 Responses to “Fun With GarageBand Drummers”

Will

10 years ago

Hi,
I have two tracks of different tempos.
One is 121 BPM, and one is 130 BPM.
I want to make it so that they match at the same tempo in a Garageband 6.0.5 track, 121 BPM perhaps.
Is there a way to do this?

Gary Rosenzweig

Yes. But I'm not sure what you mean by "tracks." Do you literally mean GarageBand tracks? If so, I don't know how you have one that is a different BPM than the other in the same file. But I haven't been using it much lately so I am a bit rusty. If you mean two audio files you haven't yet brought into GarageBand, then it will be just a matter of learning how to use the controls to adjust the tempo of tracks. Search here at MacMost for more GarageBand tutorials as I talk about this in some of them.

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Fun With GarageBand Drummers

Comments: 2 Responses to “Fun With GarageBand Drummers”

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