Example of an irrational 4 3 time signature: here there are four (4) third notes (3) per measure. A 'third note' would be one third of a whole note, and thus is a half-note triplet. The second measure of 4 2 presents the same notes, so the 4 3 time signature serves to indicate the precise speed relationship between the notes in the two measures. The default key in GarageBand is C Major; Time Signature: Change the time signature of your song with this button. Cycle Tool, Tuner, Count-in, Click. Located on the right side of the LCD screen is a collection of four buttons in the order written above. Nov 20, 2013 4. Add loops of various time signatures to the Loop Library. Create a loop or ostinato for every time signature (or at least the ones you want to focus on in class) and add it to your Loop Library by selecting “Add to Loop Library” from the Edit Menu. Software used: GarageBand ’09, Version 5.1. Amanda Louise Miller is pursuing an MM. Dec 21, 2015 GarageBand will let you set and use pretty much any time or key signature, but you only get one time and key signature per project (at any given time). If your song is all in 7/8 it's easy and the time signature can be set from the adjacent control in the 'LCD' as the key signature. Changing the key signature and pitch in Garageband is pretty straightforward. 1) Open your GarageBand file. 2) At the top-center of the DAW, you should see four icons in order from left-to-right: the beat, the tempo, the time signature, and the key signature.
Producers that use our loops and samples are always asking ”How do I import Apple Loops in Garageband or Logic?”, so we put together this simple tutorial to show you how it’s done.
Importing and indexing our Apple loops into Garageband is really, very easy. In a nutshell you simply drag and drop the apple loops from a ‘Finder’ window directly into your loop browser while Garageband or Logic is open.
Here’s a Step by Step Guide.
1 – Open a Finder window and navigate to the folder on your hard drive that contains the apple loops. Make sure that you have unzipped the apple loops from the zip file first.
For older versions of Garageband, you need to make sure that you are viewing the actual .aiff files and not just the folders.
You cannot drag folders into the older Garageband loop browser, only files.
2 – Open Garageband, expand the loop browser if required. To open the loop browser, click the Loop Browser button (with the eye icon) in the control bar. Next go to the Finder window and select the apple loops (.aiff files) that you want to index and simply drag and drop them directly into the open loop browser.
3 – Depending on the amount of loops that you are importing, it could take some time, so go and make some coffee while you wait. The fast your machine ,the faster the loops will get indexed. If you’re good at keeping your disk defragmented you’ll also see a benefit in speed during massive file dumps.
4 – When the apple loops have finished indexing go to the Preferences > General tab and uncheck the “Filter for more relevant results” option as this will increase the number of apple loops that you’ll be able to see. You might want to try doing this before indexing the loops.
Top Tip 1
If you have purchased our Max Producer Pack or simply have lots of collections of apple loops it’s going to take a long time to navigate to all the sub folders that contain your files. The best thing to do in this instance is to dump all of your apple loops into one large folder and then use Finder to search only for .aiff files within that folder.
You can then select the search results and drag and drop them into the Garageband loop browser. It will take a long time to index the files but you’ll have saved a lot of time manually digging down to sub folders to find your apple loops.
Top Tip 2
GarageBand 1 installs its loop content in:
/Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Apple Loops/
GarageBand 2 and later and Logic Pro/Express 7.1 install their loops in:
/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/
Or
~/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/User Loops
Just be careful what you delete. Make sure you only delete files that failed to index and always have a backup of anything you intend to delete.
Top Tip 3
Garageband will not display loops in the loop browser if they are tagged with a different time signature to your Project. So, if your song is in 4/4 time don’t expect to see any 5/4 time loops in the loop browser. Only matching time signatures will display.
Introduction
While most music compositions and arrangements you’re likely to work on will be written in just one time signature, you may well find yourself needing to handle two or more time signatures in the same piece of music.
It’s generally accepted that GarageBand, Apple’s free music creation software for the Mac, cannot do this for you.
GarageBand 10 will happily handle tempo and key transposition changes, as well as a host of other automation, but time signatures are not its bag.
The “Ignore It” Solution
One solution to this issue is to ignore the written time signature completely and simply compose and construct your music with the tempos and keys you require, keeping a mental note (and perhaps through naming and note taking) of where time signatures need to change.
A couple of issues immediately spring to mind with this approach:
1. Some Apple loops are designed to only work with particular time signatures – that is a 4/4 loop won’t work in 3/4. This isn’t a big problem if you don’t plan to use loops, or can otherwise work around it by only using loops for one time signature.
2. If you plan on using the musical notation feature to view your music, you may well run into problems as many of the bar/measure lines and note values will be out of place.
The MIDI Solution
While there is not (yet) any way to directly change the time signature part way through a song, there is a workaround which uses MIDI files.
For this, you will need some software which is:
- capable of creating a musical structure with various time signature changes in it
- able to export standard MIDI files
Because I do a lot of score editing in its own right, I use the excellent (and free) MuseScore 2. Not only can it produce top-grade printed music, but it’ll output straight to MIDI.
I’ll be using it for the first part of the tutorial, as it’s what I’m used to. If you use another software package, you’ll need to find out how to export the required MIDI file in your own format, and then skip to the GarageBand instructions further down.
Here we go.
In MuseScore:
1. Create a blank manuscript (Apple-N). You can skip the score information on the first screen so click “Next”.
2. Create a treble clef document – it’s all that’s needed.
3. If you want to put in the initial key and tempo you can do so, but as GarageBand can change those, it may not be worth it. Either click one or click “Next”.
4. Enter the main time signature of your piece. I’d recommend using whatever the majority of your musical score is composed it.
In MuseScore, the top number can be anything from 1-63 and the bottom (note value) number 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 or 64.
Enter the number of bars (measures) your piece has. Although you don’t have to create every bar in MuseScore, you at least need enough bars to accommodate all the time signature changes.
Click “Finish”
5. Here’s the manuscript you’ve created.
On the left-hand side of the window, you’ll see some Palettes. (If you don’t, make them visible from the “View” menu.)
Click open the Time Signatures palette.
Click the bar where you want the time signature to change, and then double-click the required time signature. Alternatively, drag and drop the required time signature to the required measure.
(Here I’ve got a 4/4 piece of music with 3/4 from bars 4 to 7 and 6/4 from bars 5 to 11).
If the time signature you want isn’t in the palette, you can create it from the master palette. Press Shift-T, click on Time Signatures, then add the time signature you require. Here I’m adding 7/4. Click on “Add”.
Now drag-and-drop this new time signature to where you want it. I’ve added 7/4 to bars 12-14.
Keep doing this until you have the structure required. Don’t forget to change back to the original time signature (if needed).
You don’t need to add any notes – just the bar structure is adequate.
6. Click “File” and “Export” and then select “Standard MIDI File (*.mid)” from the drop-down file type menu. Give the file a name.
In GarageBand
Garageband 5/ 4 Time Signature Online
7. Find the file, right click and select “Open with GarageBand”. (If this option isn’t available, you can open it directly in GarageBand from the file menu).
8. Your MIDI file should open in GarageBand. Look at the top timeline and you will see the time signatures and varying beat divisions exactly as created in the MIDI file.
You can now go ahead and create your music.
The only caveat is that (as far as I know) you can’t move time signatures around. You also can’t insert or delete blocks of time. So if you change your mind on the structure later, you’ll have to go back to your MIDI file creation software and redo the basic structure.
Garageband 5/ 4 Time Signature Definition
That said, if you already have a good idea of the structure of your song, this is a way of getting GarageBand to do what you want.
Was this helpful to you? We’d really like to know if this tutorial has helped you out in any way.