iLife '04: The Missing Manual

Trouble with Loops

Loops, as described in Chapter 24, are among the greatest joys of GarageBand. So when they don’t work, they’re among the biggest disappointments.

Your Loop Browser Is Empty

Adding more loops to GarageBand isn’t just a matter of stuffing them into a certain folder on your hard drive. You also have to make GarageBand aware of them. To do that, you force GarageBand to index any new loops, building an internal card catalog of which loops you have and where they’re stored.

If anything goes wrong with GarageBand’s loop index, you may discover that all of the buttons in the Loop browser are dimmed and no loops appear in its list. Other wackiness can result, too, like loops that exist in name only or simply misbehave.

In all of these situations, the solution is to rebuild the GarageBand loop index. You do it like this:

1. Quit GarageBand. In the Finder, open your hard drive window. Then open the Library → Application Support → GarageBand → Apple Loops folder (see Figure 11-1, top).

   Inside, you’ll see the actual text files that constitute your current index.

2. Drag the index files to the Trash.

   GarageBand will rebuild fresh, healthy ones in just a moment.

3. Open GarageBand and click the Loop Browser (eyeball) button.

   GarageBand suddenly realizes that it has no loops, and shows the dialog box at bottom in Figure 33-6.

4. In the No Apple Loops Found dialog box, click OK.

   Now return to the Finder.

5. Open your hard drive → Library → Application Support → GarageBand folder. Drag the Apple ...