4/14/209:00 am Play Music Using Samples In Mac GarageBand With GarageBand on your Mac you can import audio files as samples and play them using a virtual or MIDI keyboard. The controls to do this are burried deep, so it isn't obvious how to do it. You cna save these instruments as patch files to use again. You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads). Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to use an audio recording as a sample in GarageBand. MacMost is supported by more than 600 viewers just like you. Go to MacMost.com/patreon. There you can read more about the Patreon Campaign. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts. So in GarageBand you can use your Mac's keyboard or a mini keyboard and play a musical instrument. You can use any number of software instruments that come with GarageBand including pianos, synthesizers, string instruments, guitars, all sorts of things. But you can also take an audio file and use it as a sample to create your own instrument. We're going to start off here in GarageBand and create an empty project. Then it's going to give us a default track that we need to choose. So we're going to choose Software Instrument. You can typically use this to play an existing instrument in GarageBand. Here it's chosen for us classic electric piano and it brings up this little musical keyboard. We can dismiss it with Command K. Bring it back up with Command K. We can play it by clicking on the keys or using the keys on the keyboard. We can change the instrument easily enough by selecting another instrument here. There are tons to choose from. But instead the idea is to create an instrument from a sample. So we're going to go and alter this existing track to use a new type of instrument. I'm going to get rid of the keyboard here and with this track selectedI'm going to look down at the bottom. If I don't see this here at the bottom I could go to View and Show Smart Controls. Then make sure Track is selected and you'll see Plug-ins. Expand where it says Plug-ins and see it says E-Piano. I'm going to click on the right side of the button here to select a new type of instrument. I'm going to select AU Instruments, Apple, then AUSampler, then Stereo. Then it's going to bring up this really complex interface that I bet a lot of people didn't even know was in GarageBand. Now this is going to have a default sample of just a simple sine wave and a keyboard. I can actually play that sample using the keyboard there. Now what I want to do is I want to bring in my own sample instead of this default. So I'm going to click on this button here at the bottom and then Add Samples. It's going to prompt me for a file. Now you need to have a file that's an AIF file or alternatively a lot of wave files work as well. But what won't work are MP3 files and things like that. So you need to convert anything preferably to an AIF file. Let's go and create a sample using this AIF file here. Just a chirping canary. That's all it is. Just a recording of that. Now you can see I have both in here now. The sine wave and the chirping canary. I'm going to select the sine wave there and hit Minus so just the chirp is left. Now when I play the keyboard you'll hear the canary sound and notice it gets pitched down depending upon which key I'm playing. If you look here make sure you have this selected. Not Layer but this. You'll see the Root here is C4 meaning C4 is basically playing the sound as is. Everything else is changing its pitch. So if you wanted to say change it to C3 now C3 plays it as is and C4 is pitched up a whole octave. You could also change other things like looping. So now I can hold it and it will keep looping. So now that I've got that I can simply close this window here and this track changes to instrument 1 and it will play that sample. I'm going to bring up the keyboard there and you can see it works. Now I probably want to save this because I may want to use it in future tracks as well. So I'm going to hit Save here at the bottom and then choose a name for it. You can see it's going to save it inside the Music folder, Audio Music Apps, Patches, and then Instrument. I'll change it to Chirp. Now I can easily select it. You can see here under Sounds you've got all the regular sounds and you also have a new folder at the top called User Patches and in that it will list anything in that folder that's a patch file. So this is set to Chirp. Let me turn off the Count In and the Metronome and let's record something using the keyboard. (Chirping sound) You can see it has recorded those notes and it will play them back using that instrument. Now let's try it with something that's a little more interesting. An actual vocal sound. So I'm going to change this track here by selecting it and going to AUSampler. I don't need to click on the right side and make that selection again. I can just click here and it instantly brings this up. Now I can go and add another sample. Add Samples. This time I'm to go and pick this Music Spoken AIF file. This is just the word Music spoken out. I'm going to get rid of the chirp. Now I can play this. (Music, music, music) Great. So I want to keep that. I'm going to close it. I'm going to hit Save for this one. I'm going to save this out as a patch file. Now I can actually play this same track here because I still have those recorded notes. I can just as easily record my own voice as well. So let me create a new GarageBand project, an empty project. This time I'm going to choose Microphone as the track. So now it's listening and recording my voice. I'm going to get rid of the Metronome and the Count In and simply record me saying something. MacMost. So now I've got that there. I'm going to go and grab the right side marker, which is at the top right part of this, and drag it all the way over to make this smaller. Let's bring it in here a bit more so I can see exactly what's going to be exported. Just a small sample. I can even bring it in here and have it start a little bit quicker there at the beginning. Now I'm going to Share this out as an AIF file. You can see I can do it right there. I'll just call this MacMost. Now back here in my original file I've got this sample here. I can select it. Change the sampler again. Import In that spoken MacMost there. I can get rid of that music spoken word. (MacMost, MacMost, MacMost) Now I've got that spoken here. You could see I still have that track with those notes in it. I could hit Save here and save this out as a patch file as well. So now you can see I've got a new file here. I put it as just a beat loop here in one track. In the other track I have it set to the electric piano. But I'm going to select that and then bring up the Library here on the left. I'm going to go all the way to the top. Go to User Patches. Select one of these samples I've got here. Bring the keyboard back.Then I could play this and you'll here the looped track play. Since I have the first track selected I can play that on the keyboard. (music plays). Related Subjects: GarageBand (43 videos) Related Video Tutorials: 50 Mac Features Hidden Behind the Option Key
