newbie help with beat making and syncing vocals

[nqcowboy87]

ive recently been making a few songs/remixes after years of mucking around. i have no problem with melody as i play guitar and just transpsoe my knowledge of scales/chords/notes to the midi keyboard. i am however having trouble with making beats. im using garageband (i know its not everyones favourite but its siple and is capable of a lot more than people give it credit for, plus ive been using it since it came out and i feel loyal to it) and creating beats is kind of a bug bare. also syncing vocals is kinda difficult. i would like t know how you change the speed of say a drumline like those snare hits that ascend in speed and lead into the chorus

http://soundcloud.com/lorduechtritz/my-song-6-2

just a remix of bobd by green day. im probably gonna go with a different synth for the melody line with maybe some ol square wave tremolo or maybe even something entirely different to that.

i also realise mixing sounds together on a software program isnt real dj'ing in case i offend some hardcore djs out there (like my cousin)

[Ignotus]

change the speed as in go from quarter notes to eighth notes?

[mostapha]

There are good ways to correct for an accelerando, but I don't think Garage Band can do any of them.

1. Time Stretching. Ableton Live (and it's warping facility) would be the easiest way, but Logic and Pro Tools can both do it. I think Logic calls its stuff "audio quantize" or something and Pro Tools calls it "elastic audio." Basically, you can change the timing of a track without altering pitch in a way that you can move around hits. You just can't separate the drums from what's happening around them. I think basically every major DAW has some way to do it, but I don't know how any of the others work or what they're called.
2. Sampling/Chopping/whatever. Depending on what the track is actually like, you can sample it into Maschine, an MPC, or anything like them in software, define "this section of audio is this 16th note" kinds of things and either have it play straight through or re-arrange it.
3. Don't worry about it. Depending on the rest of the track and how you want it to be used, you might be able to just ignore those sections as long as the intro and outro loop properly and the track is mixable. That depends on what kind of music you're trying to make.

I didn't listen to the audio you gave because I'm lazy. In the hip hop world, option 2 seems by far the most prevalent. In EDM, option 1 probably wins along the same terms.