MIDI Pitch Bend

Our Expert: Joey Biagas

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Joey Biagas is an audio engineer with a degree in Audio Recording from California State University Dominguez Hills. He picked up his first guitar at age 16 and has been working on musical projects ever since. He wrote, produced and recorded two solo EPs under his band name Setting Sunrise. In his musical work, Joey believes in the power of artistic creations and strives to produce the best sounds possible.

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Using Pitch Blend

The pitch bend feature in GarageBand bends the notes of your audio region to give them a turning up or down effect. GarageBand allows you to write in your own pitches and graph them out with the editor. 




Pitch Bend in Track Editor

To bend the pitch, first select the track you want to work on. You can click the Solo button so that you only hear this track. Then open up the track editor window by clicking on the Track Editor button.

On the left side of the track editor window, find the View bar. Click the bar and scroll to the Pitchbend View option. You'll see a graph numbered from 60 to -60.

Points of Pitch Bend

Click the Apple key to get the pen tool. Using the pen tool, place one dot on the zero mark near the beginning of the audio region graph. It will produce a horizontal line through the track.





Place another dot where you want the pitch bend to end. This will be where the bend tails down or up. Garageband will automatically connect the two points with a line.







To adjust the timing of your pitch bend, click on a point within the connecting line. This will produce a dot within the line. You can click and drag this dot up or down to change the time of the pitch bend.