Garageband Tutorial – how to use Garageband on iPad & iPhone

There’s not much of a learning curve to GarageBand, but there are a few features that are worth seeking out as you get started. First of all, plug in a pair of headphones, as the internal speaker can’t hope to do it justice. If you want to play through speakers, it’s best to use the headphone socket and find a suitable cable to plug into your speakers. Bluetooth or Airplay will result in a delay between playing a note and hearing it, which will make it extremely tricky to perform.

The app starts with a list of existing songs, and tapping the + button starts a new one. You’ll then be given a choice of instruments, which we’ll cover in more detail below. For now, choose Keyboard, as this is one of the simpler ones. You’ll see an icon of a grand piano and a keyboard. Tap the icon to change instrument, and the keyboard to play it.

The iPad recognises up to 10 fingers, and while it’s a bit of a squeeze fitting 10 fingers onto the virtual keyboard at once, it’s no problem to play chords with three or four fingers. However, four or more fingers may be mistaken for multitasking gestures and cause the device to switch to another app. If this happens, it’s probably best to disable Multitasking Gestures in the iOS Settings, under the General tab.

Back in GarageBand, tap the spanner icon to set the tempo, key and time signature of the composition. The tempo is how fast the music is. The key is the root chord, the one that feels like the home of the song. The time signature is the number of beats in the bar. 4/4 means four beats to a bar, and nearly all pop music uses this time signature, but 3/4 and 6/8 can make for a refreshing change. They also unlock additional sets of musical phrases for the Smart Instruments (more on this below).

Record a performance at any time simply by hitting the red button at the top. You’ll hear a one-bar count in and then you’re off. At first it’s useful to hear a metronome to keep you in time with GarageBand’s tempo, but as you layer up instruments you might prefer to switch it off via the Metronome switch just above the Tempo settings.

By default, GarageBand records in eight bar sections that loop automatically, but we don’t find this particularly useful. To fix this, tap the + symbol near the top-right of the screen to reveal the Song Sections controls. Tap where it says 8 bars and enable Automatic mode. This makes Section A expand to fit whatever you record into it.

Once you’ve recorded an instrument, it’s time to add another. Tap Instruments and you can plough straight ahead, but you may want to visit the sequencer screen first – tap the button with an icon that resembles three rows of bricks. The sequencer shows a track for each instrument, and horizontal blocks for each recorded performance.