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Hearing your Real Instrument while you play (monitoring)

You can hear, or “monitor,” input from a Real Instrument in GarageBand while you play and record the instrument. Monitoring lets you hear yourself play with the project so you can rehearse the part you want to record.

You can turn on monitoring for a Real Instrument track when you add the track. When you turn on monitoring, you hear the musical instrument or microphone connected to the track’s input channel or channels. You can also turn monitoring on or off in the Track Info pane.

To monitor a Real Instrument track:

  1. Select the Real Instrument track, then click the Track Info button to open the Track Info pane.
  2. Choose On from the Monitor pop-up menu to turn on monitoring for the track, or choose Off to turn off monitoring.

If you connect a microphone or instrument to your computer, you should usually turn off input monitoring when you’re not playing or singing. When monitoring is turned on, your computer can pick up output from your speakers or monitors, causing undesirable feedback. Monitoring is off by default for this reason.

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