CUTTING YOUR SONG IN GARAGE BAND, CONVERTING IT TO AN MP3, AND IMPORTING IT INTO FLASH

STEP 1
Cutting and editing your song is easy. There are multiple ways to do this, but since it is free and accessable on the Mac, I will be using Garage Band. As preparation, have your song icon available in the Finder window and open up Garage Band.

STEP 2
CS4 users select Create New Music Project.
*CS5 users select Piano (it doesn’t matter what instrument, but that’s how you create a project).

STEP 3
Name your project, leaving all other settings at their default.

STEP 4
In order to import your song, open up the finder window that contains your icon and click and drag it into the gray area below the Piano (or other instrument) area.

STEP 5
Here’s how you control the playhead (red vertical line with triangle on top). SPACE plays the song, while another rendition of SPACE will pause it again. You can move to a precise area of the song by dragging the playhead triangle to where you want it (while paused). Once you have found an area you want to cut out, make sure the playhead is directly at the end of the section. Go to EDIT, and click SPLIT.

STEP 6
To delete that section, click on the gray area that says “Drage Apple Loops Here” and then click the section you want deleted. Hit the Delete key to delete it.

STEP 7
Click the section remaining and drag it to the beginning of the first measure. This is important, because otherwise you will have a certain amount of silence that plays before your song.

STEP 8
Repeat steps 5 through 7 as needed, making sure there are no breaks in the song.
*As a side note, double clicking a section of song will zoom in to the waveform.

CONVERTING YOUR SONG TO AN MP3


STEP 1
After you are finished editing your song, navigate to SHARE and click SEND SONG TO iTUNES.

STEP 2
Change the Artist name, etc., as needed. Click AAC Encoder and a drop down menu will appear. Click MP3 Encoder. Leave the quality at High and click SHARE.

IMPORTING YOUR SONG INTO FLASH


STEP 1
An easy way to locate your file is to have it open in iTunes and click and drag it to the desktop.

STEP 2
In Flash, make a new layer for your music. Then, go to FILE, IMPORT, and click IMPORT TO LIBRARY.

STEP 3
Locate your file and click Import to Library. Make sure you are selected on your music layer and drag the file from your library to the stage. That’s all there is to it!