Digital Commons at Penn State

Select a Portion of a Track
1. To select a portion of a track, first select the track in GarageBand by clicking once on it.

2. Then, select the Track Editor button, which will open the track editor window at the bottom of the screen. The selected track will appear as a waveform in the Track Editor.

3. Move the cursor over a point on the waveform, until the crosshairs appear, left click, and drag left or right to select a portion of the waveform.

4. Release the mouse button to finish the selection process. Once a portion of the waveform is selected, there are numerous operations that can be performed on that chunk of the waveform.

Listen to the Track
Press the play button to listen to the track.

Delete a Portion of a Track
1. To delete a portion of a track, first select the portion to delete by moving the cursor over a point on the waveform until the crosshairs appear, left-click, and drag left or right. The selected area will be highlighted in blue.

Note: You can only select the track using the crosshairs.

2. Next, select Edit > Cut from the menu bar. This will remove the selected portion of the currently selected track.

Move a Track
1. To move audio in a track, left-click once on the waveform, when the crosshairs appear, click and drag to select the portion of track you want to move.

2. Move the cursor above the top wave until the double-sided arrow appears, , left click, hold, and slide it left or right in the track. This will move that sound backwards or forwards in time.

Resize Regions
You can resize regions by either shortening or lengthening them.
When you shorten a region, only the visible part of the loop plays.
When you lengthen a region, you add silence (blank space) to its beginning or end.

To resize a region:

1. Move the pointer over the lower half of either edge of the region. The pointer changes to a resize pointer, with an arrow pointing away from the region.

2. Drag the edge of the region to shorten it or lengthen it.

3. Resizing a region by lengthening adds silence to the region. This can be useful if you want to make copies of the region, each lasting for a certain number of beats.

Note: You can’t lengthen a Real Instrument region beyond its original length.

Loop Regions
You can loop a region so that it plays repeatedly. When you loop a region, it plays repeatedly
from the start point to the end point.

To loop a region:

1. Move the pointer over the upper half of the right edge of the region. The pointer changes to a loop pointer, with a circular arrow.

2. Drag the edge of the region to the point where you want it to stop playing. The region will loop repeatedly to that point.

3. When you loop a region, the notches at the top and bottom of the region show the beginning and end of each repetition. You can drag to the end of a repetition, or have it end in the middle of a repetition.

Zoom In and Out
To zoom the timeline in or out, slide the zoom bar right or left, respectively.
The zoom bar is at the left bottom of the screen.