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Using the onscreen music keyboard

GarageBand includes an onscreen music keyboard you can use to play and record Software Instruments. When you show the onscreen music keyboard, by default it displays four octaves of keys. You can resize the onscreen keyboard up to a maximum of ten octaves.

The onscreen keyboard includes an overview that you can use to quickly change which range of notes the keys play. The overview appears as a miniature keyboard above the main keyboard, with the selected range shown in blue.

Onscreen keyboard

To use the onscreen music keyboard:

You can also connect a USB or MIDI music keyboard to your computer to play and record Software Instruments. To learn how, see Related Topics below.

To learn about velocity, see the Glossary.

Related Topics

Connecting a music keyboard to play Software Instruments

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