Section 23.5. Navigating the Music


23.5. Navigating the Music

Your current position in the songthat is, the spot from which you'll start recording or playingis always indicated by the Playhead (Figure 23-1) and the moving vertical line beneath it.

You can drag the Playhead around manually, of course; you can also click anywhere in the beat ruler to make the Playhead snap to that spot. You can even jump to a spot in your piece by typing in its time or measures-and-beats position into the digital time display (Section 25.13).

But you'll feel much more efficient if you take the time to learn GarageBand's navigational keyboard shortcuts:

  • Jump back to the beginning . Pressing either the letter Z key or the Home key rewinds the piece to the beginning without missing a beat.


    Tip: On Mac laptops, the Z key is easier to press than the Home key, because triggering the Home function requires first pressing the Fn key in the lower-left corner. Too much trouble.
  • Jump to the end . Press Option-Z or the End key. That's a great technique for people who like to build up their songs section by section. After you've finished the first part, you can jump to the end of it, ready to begin recording the second.


    Note: As far as GarageBand's playback is concerned , the end of your piece isn't necessarily where the music stops. It's the point indicated by the small left-pointing triangle on the ruler.Sometimes you'll trim a piece to make it shorterand wind up stranding the End marker way off to the right, so that GarageBand "plays" a minute of silence after the actual music ends. In that case, you can fix the problem by dragging the End marker inward until it lines up with the end of the colored musical regions . (You can never drag it inward past the end of the music, though.)
  • Jump back, or ahead, a measure at a time . As you may recall from your childhood music lessons, a measure is the natural building block of musical time. It's usually two, three, or four beats long. (You can think of a beat as one foot -tap, if you were tapping along with the music.)

    In GarageBand, the measures are indicated on a numbered beat ruler (identified in Figure 23-1) that helps you figure out where you are in the music. You can jump forward or back a measure at a time by pressing the left and right arrow keys. (Clicking the Rewind and Fast-forward buttons serves the same purpose.)


    Tip: You can also hold down the arrow keys, or the onscreen Rewind and Fast-forward buttons, to zoom faster through the piece. Both of these techniques work even when the music is playing.
  • Jump right or left one screenful at a time . Press the Page Up or Page Down key. (It may feel a little odd to press up/down keys to scroll right/left , but you'll get used to it.)

  • Zoom in or out . Once you begin editing your own music, you'll occasionally want a God's-eye view of your whole piece for a visual overview of its structure. Or you'll want to zoom in to see the individual sound waves or notes of a certain musical passage.

    That's what the Control-right arrow and Control-left arrow keystrokes are for. They stretch and collapse the ruler, respectively, making the onscreen representation of your music take up more or less space. (You can also drag the Zoom slider beneath the instrument names , but that's more effort.)




iLife 05. The Missing Manual
iLife 05: The Missing Manual
ISBN: 0596100361
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 314
Authors: David Pogue

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