Import MIDI into GarageBand

How to import Midi into GarageBand

Introduction.

If you've got any Midi files, get Bery Rinaldo's excellent Dent du Midi! We have a quick fast guide on how to import Midi files into GarageBand using Bery's excellent Dent du Midi program.

A brief history of MIDI

When I first heard about GarageBand, I was very excited about what Apple could do to the audio sequencer market. In the days before Pro Tools and Logic. Computer musicians had something called MIDI - musical instrument digital interface. Which meant you could connect keyboards to drum machines or even to your computer. When I first started making music with computers. I bought an Atari 1040 STE which had a whole mega byte of memory, no hard drive, but had a floppy disk drive. It also had something that even the latest G5's lack - MIDI in and out ports! So armed with Cubase version 2 this thing was great! It actually had great midi timing as it was the only computer with midi ports built in. That is why Atari's are still considered cool!

No GarageBand 1.0 MIDI import

So no music was made from the computer itself, it just was a sequencer for you to control your external synths and samplers. You could even sync to tape machines with it. So GarageBand had to import Midi right? No (:-(

Enter our knight in shining armor...

Mr Bery Rinaldo creator of Dent du Midi cue applause...

This is a freeware - yes a freeware application that does everything that you would want it to do!

Import MIDI into GarageBand

Step 1

Download Dent du Midi - grab the latest version(v0.3 when I wrote this). He seems to be developing new improved versions all the time - good on him!

Step 2

Install as per Bery's instructions.

Step 3

Open Dent du Midi and drag your favourite midi file on top of it.

Step 4

Wait for the 'completed' message then quit Dent du Midi.

Step 5

Find the newly created folder on your desktop with your GB files in and drag all these files straight into your GarageBand arrangement window. - Drag them as far left as you can go, without going over GB's mixers. This makes sure your tracks all line up right at the beginning. Now all you need to do is assign the right type of instrument to each track, choose the right tempo and press play!

Bohemian Rhapsody GarageBand Style...

GarageBand Hot Tips:

I tried this with 2 'commercial' MIDI files which I purchased a few years ago. I found the bass track was an octave too low, both times I tried it. To get round this. Find the transpose function for that particular track and set it to 12.

You may as well find that your computer can not handle 16 complete tracks on a typical 'commercial' midi file, you may have to mute a few tracks to get it to play properley - Now if I had a G5....

Thanks Bery!