Learn an instrument in Garageband

1 Finding lessons

You will find guitar and piano lessons listed under the ‘Learn To Play’ tab of Garageband’s New Project dialog. They will appear here after downloading them from Lesson Store tab.

2 Open a lesson

With lessons downloading or available, simply select the one you wish to open and double-click or hit the ‘Choose’ button to begin. The lesson will open and start.

3 Meet the teacher

A teacher who instructs directly from the main window hosts each lesson. You can toggle play/pause via the controls at the bottom or skip/scrub forwards and back.

4 Advanced playback

Beyond basic transport controls, clicking the chapter markers skips progress. Toggle on the yellow cycle region via the loop button or slow playback with the slider.

5 Input monitoring

With a guitar or MIDI keyboard interfaced, you are invited to play along and monitor output. The light next to the metronome glows red to indicate the input signal.

6 Play chapter

Hover over the teacher pane to switch to the play chapter. Here you can use the record button to capture your playing and grade progress with the ‘How Did I Play?’ feature.

7 Guitar tuner

During guitar lessons, you can access a tuner from the menu in the top-right. Here you can click on each individual string to pluck and get tips on fine-tuning your instrument.

8 Mixer controls

Pick the Mixer menu option to view sliders for setting the teacher’s voice and instrument volume, as well as the accompanying band and your own instrument or recordings.

9 Setup options

The setup options provide controls for choosing instrument inputs and toggling monitoring. Personalised lesson options for notation and instruments are also found here.