B.3. Edit Menu

As you would expect, the commands in the Edit menu help you move sections of your piece from one place to another. The standard Cut, Copy, and Paste commands operate on selected notes and regions as normal.

B.3.1. Undo

Where would this world be without Undo? In GarageBand, you even have a multiple Undo. Using this command (and its keyboard equivalent, -Z), you can reverse your last 30 actions, backing out of your bad decisions with no harm done. How nice to know that if you go too heavy on the reverb, delete an important performance, or rearrange your piece into incoherence, there's a quick and easy way out (Figure B-2).

Figure B-2. Just about any action you perform in GarageBand can be reversed with the Undo command. The menu command itself always spells out exactly what it's about to undoUndo Create Track, Undo Change Position of Region, and so onso that you know which action you're backing out of.

B.3.2. Redo

Redo (Shift- -Z) lets you undo what you just undid. In other words, it reapplies the action you just reversed via the Undo command.

B.3.3. Cut, Copy, Paste

These commands work exactly the way they would in a word processor, only now you're editing regions in the timeline, notes in the Track Editor, or selected bits of Real Instrument regions in the Track Editor. You make a selection and then use Cut or Copy to bring it to your invisible Macintosh clipboard. Then you click elsewhere in the timeline and use the Paste command to deposit those notes or pieces of regions in a new location. Keyboard shortcuts : -X for cut, -C for Copy, -V for Paste.

B.3.4. Delete

This command removes the selected notes, regions, track, or Track Editor selection from the piece without placing it onto the Clipboard. Keyboard shortcut : Delete key.

B.3.5. Select All

This command behaves in different ways, depending on when you use it in GarageBand.

• It selects all regions visible in the timeline, in all tracks.

• In the Track Editor, it selects all regions in the track, or (if only one region is highlighted in the timeline) all notes in the region.

Keyboard shortcut : -A.

B.3.6. Split

This command chops the selected region or regions in two at the location of the Playhead's vertical line. (Exactly which regions it splits has to do with which ones you selected first, by clicking or Shift-clicking.) Keyboard shortcut : -T, which is the same as the Split command in iMovie.

B.3.7. Join

You can use this command to connect any two green Software Instrument regions, or any two purple Real Instrument regions, into a single unified region. (It doesn't work on blue Apple Loops .)

Join Selected is especially useful because it lets you combine regions into one, making them (it) easier to copy, paste, loop, and so on. Keyboard shortcut : -J.

B.3.8. Add to Loop Library

New in GarageBand 2: This option lets you create your very own Apple loops. Step-by-step instructions appear on Section 9.1.

B.3.9. Special Characters

This little item is a standard member of the Edit menu in many Mac OS X programs. It brings up the Character Palette, a little table of symbols (currency, mathematical, punctuation, and so on) from all of your fonts, making it easy to find and insert a particular symbol.

It has absolutely no relevance or use in GarageBand.