Change Software Instrument Timbre

Timbre (pronounced TAM-ber) can be described as instrumental tone color or sound quality. Imagine a piano, a guitar, and a bagpipe all playing the same note. Timbre is the color of the sound that enables you to tell the instruments apart.

Sometimes you may find a loop you like but the wrong instrument is playing it. If it’s a Software Instrument (that is, if the loop is green), you can easily change it to a different instrument or to a variation of the existing instrument. If the loop sounds like an acoustic guitar, for example, you can change it to an electric guitar, a piano, or any number of other instruments. You may want to think about doing this in the middle of a song: have a part that starts on flute and switches to organ partway through.

To change the instrument sound, double-click the track header to open the Track Info window. You’ll see a list of instrument families (horns, organs, pianos, etc.) on the left, and specific instrument sounds on the right. Choose a different sound for variation, or choose a completely different kind of instrument and see what that sounds like. You never know how it’s going to work until you try it. GarageBand comes with a wide variety of software instrument sounds. It’s fun to try out new ones and see how they work with your song.

Try this: drag the loop 80s Dance Bass Synth 01 (it’s the first of the Bass loops) up to the timeline. Now double-click its track header and select Fingerstyle Electric Bass from the menu on the right. This changes the timbre quite a bit, yet the bass is still playing the same notes.

Edit the Notes of a Software Instrument Loop

You don’t need a MIDI keyboard to create your own parts—you can assemble them by hand in the Track Editor. This is a bit tedious, however, so it helps if you can find a software instrument loop whose notes are close to what you want. You can then add and delete notes from the loop and get exactly the line you’re looking for.

For this example, you’re going to continue working with the bass loop from the previous example. It would be great if the notes were held longer and the part had less decoration. With the bass track still selected, click the Track Editor button (the one labeled with a pair of scissors). Editing will be easier if you expand the track editor. To do this, grab the dark gray bar to the right of the track editor button and drag up.

You’re going to edit the notes of the bass line so that it plays a simpler part. Figure 2 shows before and after screenshots of what the parts will look like. (You won’t see notes like the ones in the screenshot if you have zoomed the track editor in to a different part of the song. If this is the case, double-click the bass region in the timeline to make the track editor show you the notes.

Figure 2: The bass line before editing (top) and after editing (bottom).

You can also zoom in and out in the track editor just as in the timeline. Slide the zoom control in the lower-left corner of the track editor until you can see the entire bass region in the editor.)

Here’s how to edit the bass notes:

1. 1. In the track editor, move the pointer over the first note in the loop.
   2. Drag the right end of the first note as far to the right as you can without having it touch the next note. You want to lengthen the note, not move it; if you drag anywhere other than the right end of the note, you’ll move the entire note.
   3. Leave the second note, and drag the third note so that it almost touches the next note on the same line. It should end one tick mark away from measure 30.
   4. Delete the two notes below note 3. To delete a note, click to select it and then press Delete.
   5. Delete note 5 and extend note 4 as you did the others.
   6. Delete what is now note 7.
   7. You should see something similar to Figure 3, below.

      Figure 3: The bass line after step 6.
      

   8. Extend note 6 until it lines up with the beginning of the note above it.
   9. Listen to your new bass line. It sounds a little too low. Too fix this, use the Transpose slider, to the left of the notes you were just editing. Move the slider until the transpose field reads 12 (see Figure 4). That raises the bass notes one octave.
      Figure 4: Transposing the bass line up one octave.