[Snoopy05]

I bought an iMac back in September as a total newbie to the Mac world. It was then I realized just how different PCs and Macs are!

After some slight frustration with learning my new programs, I have truly grown to love and appreciate my Mac. I still have one issue that I have yet to figure out, however...

When I try to view the loops in order to create songs in Garageband, I get an error message that says: "No Apple Loops found" and then underneath that it says, "There are no Apple Loops installed on your System. Please reinstall the Apple Loop Package." When I saw this message on the first day I had my computer I wondered why the loops would not already be installed. Since then, I have tried various attempts to install these, since Apple did happen to send me a CD labeled "Apple Loops". If I search for "apple loops" in my finder I find three folders titled "Apple Loops" (no doubt from my various attempts), one folder labeled "Apple Loops for Garageband" and one folder labeled "Apple Loops for Soundtrack".

So, I obviously have loops. The question is, how do I get Garageband to understand that? Do I need to move these files somewhere? I would really like to experiment with Garageband... I bought my Mac for video editing purposes and would really like to experiment with making my own music for my videos. Thanks so much in advacne!

[fisherKing]

and are there files in those folders?

if not, you should have gotten an 'ilife' cd with your mac (was this new?)
you can reinstall garageband, and it's support files, from that...

[Snoopy05]

I have files in most of the folders.

[fisherKing]

Originally Posted by Snoopy05 

I have files in most of the folders.

someone else needs to pitch in (i don't have garageband).

but since the files are there, there should be a way, in garageband, to find the files.
try the 'help' pages!

[butterfly0fdoom]

I never used the loops, so, sorry, can't help there. Just use MIDI and create your own loops.

[Snoopy05]

I really would no be able to make my own loops, I am not that musically inclined.

Any other suggestions?

[Chris Grande]

Have you installed Final Cut Express recently? If so when you install Soundtrack that comes with it it breaks the link between Garageband and its loops. The only way I found to fix it was I re-ran the iLife '06 installer, it didn't do much and only took a few seconds but it corrected the link and fixed Garageband.

[Todd Madson]

Sigh. DROP the folder containing loops on top of the loop browser in Garageband and it will
wake up and realize where they are stored.

Also, if you get loops from other software apps you can dump them in there too.

I've literally got gigabytes of the darn things and many of them come free with british
music magazines like future music or computer music, etc.

[alsonew2mac]

I have a new macbook with Final Cut Express installed by apple. My loops are also invisible in GB.
I tried the above suggestions...
I tried reinstalling GB and loops from the system CD several times
I also tried dragging and dropping the loops folder in the loops browser


Lops are still not visible in GB. When I try to drag and drop the folder a second time it says 'do you want to overwrite' so they are there, I just can see them (or access them)

thanks for your help

[mystic_fm]

I had the same problem on a new MacBook Pro with Final Cut Express HD preinstalled. I spent quite a bit of time today on the phone with AppleCare, and they couldn't solve the problem ... but while I was on hold for their "Applications Dept", I figured it out for myself.

Basically the solution for me was exactly as described on the following page:

Rebuilding the Loop Index in GarageBand

However, these steps did not work for me the first time, even when the AppleCare rep talked me through them. The important thing to making it work was that, in step 14, the folder ITSELF needed to be dragged onto the loop browser ... NOT the actual contents of that folder (even the AppleCare rep directed me to do the latter, thinking it made more sense). Doing the latter simply tried to copy all of the loops to a folder under my home directory, while dragging the folder itself (i.e., while looking in its parent folder in the Finder) caused a much more pleasing message about "reindexing". This process did not make extra copies of the actual loop files, and did result in Garageband being populated with all of the standard loops thereafter.

Note that, as someone above said, reinstalling Garageband did not help with this problem. As described in the above link, the files under the "Apple Loops Index" folders needed to be deleted, and apparently the installer does not remove any existing index files.

I hope this will be helpful to someone.