Make music with Touch Instruments
Use Touch Instruments to play keyboards, drums, guitars, strings, and more. Record your own vocals or plug in your guitar or bass, and play through a great selection of amps and stompbox effects.
May 23, 2018 3 Ways to Connect Your Guitar To GarageBand (Mac). A suggested video will automatically play next. How to connect an electric guitar to an iPhone or iPad - Duration.
Garageband Guitar Songs
Build your song
Choose from hundreds of Apple Loops to add to your song, add a drummer that plays along to the music you recorded, and mix your song with effect plug-ins.
Create music like a DJ
Use Live Loops to create electronic music by simply tapping cells and columns in the grid to trigger musical loops. You can build your own arrangements, then improvise and record a Live Loops performance.
Download free loops and instruments
Use the Sound Library to download and manage sound packs containing hundreds of loops, sounds, Touch Instruments, drum kits, and more. GarageBand lets you know when new sound packs are available to download.
To browse the GarageBand User Guide for iPad, click Table of Contents at the top of the page.
GarageBand User Guide for iPad
Using the Guitar, you can play notes, chords, and strumming patterns. You can choose from acoustic or electric guitar sounds, and turn on stompbox effects to customize the sound.
Choose the sound of the Guitar
Tap the guitar icon in the upper-left corner, then tap the sound you want to play. You can also swipe left or right to change to the previous or next sound.
Play chords
Tap the Chords/Notes switch on the right to switch to Chords view.
Do any of the following:
Strum a chord: Swipe across the strings in one of the chord strips. You can also tap strings to play individual notes of a chord.
Play the full chord: Tap the top of a chord strip.
Mute the strings: Touch and hold the fretboard to the left or right of the chord strips as you play.
You can add your own custom chords to play.
Play a strumming pattern
Turn the Autoplay knob to one of the numbered positions.
Tap a chord strip. Tapping a different chord strip plays the same pattern with the notes of that chord, while tapping with two or three fingers plays variations of the pattern.
Tap the chord strip again to stop the pattern playing.
Play individual notes
Tap the Chords/Notes switch on the right to switch to Notes view.
Tap the strings on the fretboard to play notes. You can also bend strings vertically to bend the pitch of a note up.
To play notes of a particular scale, tap the Scale button, then tap the scale you want to play.
The fretboard changes to show note bars. Tap the bars to play the notes of the scale.
Turn stompbox effects on or off
When you choose an electric guitar sound, stompbox effects appear above the Guitar fretboard. You can turn on the effects to change the sound.
Tap the round On/Off button in the lower part of a stompbox. A red light indicates that the stompbox is on.
Connect Guitar To Garageband
Play the Retro Wah guitar with Face Control
If your iPad supports facial recognition, you can move the wah pedal on the Retro Wah guitar by moving your mouth while you play. When you record, any pedal movements you make with Face Control are also recorded.
Tap the guitar icon in the upper-left corner, then tap Retro Wah.
Hold your iPad 10–20 inches (25–50 cm) away from your face, then tap the Face Control button .
The first time you use Face Control, GarageBand asks for permission to access the camera on your iPad.
As you play, open and close your mouth to move the wah pedal up and down.
To turn Face Control off, tap the Face Control button again.
Note: GarageBand uses ARKit face tracking features to translate your facial expressions into instrument effect controls. Your face information is processed on device, and only music is captured during your performance.