Tag Archives: computers

Create Your Own GarageBand Loops

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Today’s post is rather geeky! Since for this year’s RPM Challenge I am working with a musical partner for the first time we decided to do our recording projects using Apple’s GarageBand. GB is fairly easy to use and at this point has been improved and cross-pollinated from Apple’s pro Logic app sufficiently to get decent results.

One of the functions that makes GB easy is Apple Loops. GB comes with a large collection of pre-recorded/programmed live and electronic (MIDI) snippets that can be dropped into your song project and then “dragged” with your mouse to duplicate as many times as you wish.In the screen shot below (click to enlarge) I have dragged the loop “club beat 001” from the list of loops at the bottom right into the track area in the middle, and when this was captured I was using my mouse to drag from left to right on the loop to cause it to start copying itself:

Gb loop

 

But suppose you want to create your own loops? First, a legal caveat: do NOT use music you did not create yourself unless you have obtained the rights to sample it! (Apple’s built-in loops are royalty-free for commercial use).

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Transferring Files To Others

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I’ve recently shown you how to share files among your various devices. But you probably will also want to share files to other people. While your first thought is probably to send them a file attached to an email, that is not always workable for several reasons, including:

  • the file is just too big for your or their email server’s limits (usually over 5 MB is problematic).
  • the file is of a type that their email server prohibits in order to avoid the delivery of a virus (usually files ending in .exe, and frequently in .zip)

If the intended recipient is someone you see in person, you can always put the files on a flash drive or burn to a CD or DVD and hand the device/disk to them. But in many cases the recipient is not local – what then?

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Sharing Files Across Multiple Devices Part 2: Carbonite

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In Part 1 I discussed using Dropbox as a cloud storage solution for sharing files among your devices. Today I want to discuss using Carbonite, which is advertised as a backup solution but can also be used to retrieve files.

You ARE backing up your computer, aren’t you? Unless you are only using it to read Facebook and your Gmail account, you really ought to be doing so. If you are a Mac owner, all you need for basic local backup is an external hard drive and the built-in Time Machine software (you do not need to buy a special Time Machine Capsule from Apple). If you have a PC, you need an external drive and either Windows built-in backup application or another one.

But even if you do perform regular backups to a local hard drive, that does you no good if your home is damaged due to flood or fire, or someone breaks in to seal all of your electronics. To cover you in those instances, or if you don’t want to need to remember to connect to something to back up, a cloud backup service like Carbonite can save your data bacon, as it is constantly updating its copy of your files in little bits every time you are connected to the internet.

But there is another trick you can perform with Carbonite once it has backed up your files:

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Sharing Files Across Multiple Devices Part 1: Dropbox

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I use several different applications for storing and accessing files across the different devices I use: Mac and Windows computers, iPhone, iPod Touch, sometimes Linux, occasionally Android, formerly Blackberry. Today I want to tell you about Dropbox:

 Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring all your photos, documents, and videos anywhere. This means that any file you save to your Dropbox on any device will automatically synchronize to ALL of your devices where you have installed it: computers, smartphones, iPod Touch, and also to your account on their website. In addition you can designate certain folders or files to share with other people by giving them a link address. If you lose or crash your computer the files will still be in on their site to restore.

Here are some ways I use Dropbox:

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