Garageband advice - stretching

[onehappybunny]

Just wondered if it was possible to stretch a section recorded as a 'real instrument' so that it fits with the chosen time signature - looked at the manual and that doesn't seem to help. There are about 10 options for different time signatures and changing these doesn't seem to work.

The end result I'm looking for is that I have been recording some bass riffs and would like to save them as loops, so that I can integrate them with garageband drum loops etc. (I'd rather just capture the bass, and build drums around it)

Thanks folks!!

Stu

[clauster]

You need to convert the section to an apple loop. Can't remember how to do it tho - it's been nearly two years since I've done any recording in Garageband.

[Dubs]

Unless you’ve got some very powerful and expensive software, any time stretching is going to sound awful. You’ll get away with it if it’s just a very minor adjustment and if the part your stretching isn’t really a “vital” or “significant/noticeable” part of what you’re doing, but otherwise I’d just recommend re-recording it. You can’t polish a turd…

Specifically bass loops – Record them with a click set at the tempo you want, and then just loop it. Seen as you’re playing the bass parts yourself it’s not going to be hard to re-record them at the desired tempo, i.e. it’s not going to mean booking the session player/band again etc. Play it (the bass lines) in real time at the tempo you want, and then set the global tempo of the piece to this tempo (I don’t know Garageband at all) so then you can build up the drum loops around the bass parts. Obviously the bass loops have to be the same tempo as the drum loops for this to work (which I think is what you were saying is your original problem). If you can’t re-record or reprogram the drum loops, then the tempo that they are already at is going to determine the tempo of what you’re doing and therefore the tempo that you have to record the bass lines at.

Hope this makes sense, I can be bad at trying to explain myself, but I wouldn’t try making any significant changes to the tempo of any melodic audio. You can change the tempo of drum loops quite easily though, but I only know how to do this in ProTools using some really good plugins. Basically the software breaks the drum loops up into hundreds of samples where there are defined hit points and then plays these samples back at either a faster or slower rate (sooner or later - the individual samples aren't sped up but the time at which they're triggered is changed) than the original - you can make significant time changes without it sounding too obvious.

(I’ve just realised that I’ve probably right gone off topic from what you need )

Edited September 22, 2008 by benwhiteuk

[onehappybunny]

Thanks guys - appreciate the advice. I've done what was suggested, given up on timestretching and just set a simple drum loop to record over. I have a few riffs with no drums but can always re-record them based around a drum track.

many thanks

Stu

[xgsjx]

Just a quick note kinda 1/2 relating to what you're doing. Download Audacity, it's free. I messed with Garageband for ages & it's good for everything except the final mix.
Export each track individually as wav files & make a new project to mix in Audacity, it keeps the sparkle there.

Go & hear what I did at www.myspace.com/frigorificoband

Edited October 21, 2008 by xgsjx