3.10. Joining Regions

3.10. Joining Regions

What the Split command hath rendered asunder, the Join Selected command shall restore.

Combining two or more regions on a track into a single, unified one has a number of benefits. For example, musical riffs that you've painstakingly assembled and positioned turn into a single, easy-to-manipulate block. Copying, pasting, and dragging regions around is much simpler, too, if you can select the music in question with one quick click, without having to select a bunch of itty-bitty individual regions one at a time. And, of course, you can loop a region that you've created by joining them.

There is, however, one condition: The Join Selected command is dimmed if you've selected blue regions ”that is, Real Instrument Apple loops . It works only on two green regions (MIDI, aka Software Instruments), two purple ones (those you've recorded yourself), or two orange ones (sound files you've dragged in from the Finder).

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Tip: According to GarageBand's online help, there are other conditions, too ”but don't believe it. For example, the regions you're about to join do not have to be adjacent. In fact, you can even Shift-click two regions that are separated by other regions! They'll still merge into one long region that appears to float behind the intervening ones ”the only time you'll ever see superimposed regions in GarageBand. Weird!

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Figure 3-6 shows the routine.

Figure 3-6. Top: Select two green or purple regions by clicking the first, then Shift-clicking the second. They don't have to be immediately next to each other; they can even be separated by other regions. Choose Edit Join Selected.
Middle: If you select purple regions, you get the dialog box shown here. Click Create.
Bottom: The separate regions have now merged into one, making them easier to work with as a group .