1.4. Playback

You'll probably spend most of your time in GarageBand playing back music. That, after all, is the only way to fine-tune and perfect your work.

There's a Play button at your disposalthe big triangle indicated in Figure 1-1but that's for suckers. Instead, press the Space bar. That's a much bigger target, and a very convenient start/stop control. (You may recognize it as the start/stop control for iTunes and iMovie, too.)

Once you've got the 01Garage Door file open , press the Space bar to listen to this fonky, fonky piece. It's about a minute long.

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Tip: If you hear nothing, it's probably because your Mac's speakers are turned down. You can adjust your Mac's overall volume by pressing the volume keys on the top row of your keyboard.If you have a very old keyboard (or a very non-Apple one), and you therefore lack these keys, you can also adjust the volume by clicking the speaker menulet (the icon in your menu bar).(If the speaker control doesn't appear on your menu bar, open System Preferences, click the Sound icon, and then turn on "Show volume in menu bar.")

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Whenever music is playing back, you can have all kinds of fun with it. For example:

• Stop the music . Press the Space bar again.

• Slow it down (or speed it up) . Use the Tempo control, as shown in Figure 1-2.

• Adjust the volume . You can drag the master volume slider shown in Figure 1-1, or you can press -up arrow (louder) or -down arrow (softer). (Hey! Those are the same keystrokes as in iMovie and iTunes!)

• Jump around in the song . See the next section for navigation techniques. They work equally well whether the music is playing or not.

Figure 1-2. Left: To adjust the tempo (speed) of your piece, position the arrow cursor on the number shown here (which shows how many beats per minute you're getting).
Right: Hold down the mouse button to produce a slider. You're setting the tempo for the entire piece; you can't program in a change in tempo.