How to Loop Recordings in Garageband

Loops are the building blocks of many forms of electronic music.

Looping is a basic function found in most audio and MIDI editors, including Apple’s GarageBand. Used effectively, it's possible to create entire song arrangements out of a small number of short recordings by looping them, a trademark of many subgenres of electronic music. In GarageBand, any audio or MIDI recording can be looped to any point in the timeline using only the mouse. It's also possible to loop sections of an overall arrangement, or an entire song, using GarageBand’s Cycle feature.

Instructions

Looping Individual Audio or MIDI Regions

1. Launch GarageBand and select the project you want to use from the pop-up dialog, then click “Choose.” GarageBand loads and displays the project as it was last saved.

2. Locate the audio or MIDI recording you want to loop. Each recording is represented by a colored region on a track in GarageBand’s timeline. Drum regions are often looped, as are repetitive synthesizer or sampler lines in electronic music.

3. Hover the mouse cursor over the upper right corner of the region you want to loop. The cursor turns into a Loop pointer, resembling a circular arrow.

4. Click and drag to the right. The region will be looped until you stop dragging right and release the mouse button. You can drag left and right to precisely align the end of the loop with any point in your project.

5. Click on the region you want to loop and press “O” if you want the region to loop throughout the entire song, rather than having a specific end-point somewhere within the song.

Looping Sections of a Song with the Cycle Feature

1. Click on the “Cycle” button in the lower right of GarageBand’s interface, to the left of the master volume. This turns on the cycle region, a yellow strip below the beat ruler in the main window. As long as this is turned on, GarageBand will only play back whatever is encompassed by the yellow strip, repeating it until the user clicks “Stop.”

2. Adjust both ends of the cycle region by clicking and dragging the end you want to adjust. The cycle region can be placed at any point in the timeline and can be any length, up to the overall length of the song.

3. Click “Play.” All regions encompassed by the cycle region will play back and loop until you click “Stop.”

References

• GarageBand Help: Loop regions
• GarageBand Help: Record over a specific part of a project