If you're a fan of blockbuster music videogame Rock Band (casually referred to in the Mac|Life office as the Greatest Thing Ever Invented, Ever), you've probably banged on those plastic drums quite a bit. Perhaps you've even wondered if you could turn them into a real electronic kit.

Loops are wonderful little things. With judicious use of these musical snippets, you can construct entire albums of material from tiny building blocks -- or just scatter a couple over your compositions for flavor. GarageBand comes with a pretty healthy assortment, but spend enough time in the Garage and you may find your songs starting to sound an awful lot like everyone else's.

Learn how-to make your own loops after the jump.

iMovie ’08 lacks the chapter-marker feature found in iMovie ’06, but you can still add chapters to an iMovie ’08 project by using GarageBand.

Purchase a movie from the iTunes Store, or extract a film from a DVD with HandBrake, and you’ll end up with a file containing chapter markers that you can use to skip to specific parts of your video in iTunes, on the Apple TV, or on an iPod. Wouldn’t it be great if you could add such markers to your own home movies too?

Ahhh, the silent ringtone. It’s been on every phone I’ve had in the last eight years or so. But, like voice dialing, one-touch speed dialing, MMS, and the ability to shoot video of my dog running around at the beach, it’s one of the things I’ve had to give up since transitioning to an iPhone.

I can hear you already. “Just flip the switch to make your phone silent, Stupid.”

But I don’t want my phone to be silent; I want the ability to selectively silence my phone for certain callers. Those annoying telemarketing recordings come to mind. Or maybe your crazy ex, or perhaps your parole officer if you’re on the lam. Anyway, the point is, the iPhone doesn’t offer a No Ring option for your contacts. But with a little GarageBand fiddling, you can roll your own non-ring in a couple minutes, with just a few clicks.

Learn how to make your own silent ringtone after the jump.