3.4. The Grid

You may notice that a dragged region tends to snap to positions on an underlying grid, whose vertical lines correspond to the markings on the beat ruler across the top of the window. Here are the keys to understanding this snapping motion:

• In general, the snapping is a good thing. It keeps your loops aligned with one another, so that your GarageBand players have a virtual conductor keeping them together.

• A region you're dragging snaps to the nearest measure, quarter note, and so on. One way to control the fineness of this invisible grid is to use the Grid pop-up menu at the upper-right corner of the GarageBand window, as shown in Figure 3-3 on the previous page.

• If you choose Automatic from the Timeline Grid pop-up menu, the grid expands or contracts according to how much you've zoomed in. As you magnify your music, you get more gridlines per measure, which offers you finer positioning options. (The onscreen gray gridlines show you where GarageBand intends to snap.)

• If you want complete dragging freedomno snapping grid at allchoose Control Snap to Grid, or just press -G. Now you can drag a region wherever you like. (Repeat the command to turn the grid on again.)