It’s just going to be confusing unless you know exactly what BPM the tune is. This creates a new track from the imported song with an orange waveform.
The cursor will get a little green plus sign next to it to show that you can move the file there. Click, drag, and drop the track into the dark-grey center of the GarageBand window. Open the OSX Finder in front of the GarageBand window and locate the track you want to transpose. Delete all existing tracks if you start with a template (click to highlight then press “command” and “delete”). The first step to changing the pitch of an MP3 is to open GarageBand and create a new blank project file. I’m using the latest version of GarageBand as of September 2014.