Clips & the Arrangement

Clips are the blocks your song is built from. This chapter covers making them, moving them, trimming them, slicing them, and getting around the timeline.

What a clip is

A clip is a window onto its own content. An audio clip looks onto a recorded or imported take and draws its waveform. A MIDI clip looks onto its own notes. The clip decides which part of that content plays, and where on the timeline it plays.

Because the clip is only a window, trimming it hides material instead of deleting it. Drag the edge back out later and the hidden part returns. See Resizing a clip.

Creating an empty MIDI clip

Right-click the empty ground of a MIDI track's lane and choose Create Empty Clip. A one-bar clip lands where you clicked. With Snap on it starts at the beginning of that bar.

The new clip is a blank canvas. Double-click it to open the piano roll and draw notes into it.

Audio clips are made by recording or by dropping a file from Finder. Drum clips come from the drum machine.

Moving a clip

Drag a clip by its body to move it in time. With Snap on (press S to toggle) the clip lands on the 8th-note grid.

Clips are also magnetic to their neighbors. Near the edge of another clip on the same lane, the dragged clip sticks to perfect abutment, so butting two clips together is easy. The magnet even beats the grid, because a neighbor may sit off-grid. Turning Snap off turns the magnet off too.

Moving a clip to another track

Drag the clip up or down. Its body previews on the lane where it would land, and lanes that can't take it grey out: only lanes of the same kind accept a clip. Release to commit the move. If the target can't take it, the clip returns to its own lane and keeps only the horizontal move.

Moving several clips at once

Select several clips first (see Selecting), then drag any one of them. The whole selection moves together and keeps its spacing.

Copying by dragging

Hold ⌥ and drag. Copies ride the drag while the originals stay put. One ⌘Z removes the copies and the move together.

Resizing a clip

Move the pointer to a clip's left or right edge until the resize cursor appears, then drag. With Snap on the edge lands on the grid.

• Audio clips stop at the recorded material. You can trim in and back out, but not past what was captured.
• MIDI clips can extend past their content. The new space is simply empty, ready to draw into.

Resizes are non-destructive. A trim narrows the clip's window without touching the content behind it, so you can re-open it any time by dragging the edge out again.

Splitting clips

Hold C to arm the splice blade, then click a clip to cut it at that spot. The cut follows the grid when Snap is on.

To cut several tracks in one stroke, hold C and drag vertically. The blade's position pins where you pressed, and the drag sweeps it across lanes: every clip under the line splits into two abutting halves. One ⌘Z undoes the whole cut.

Selecting clips and ranges

Selecting clips

Click a clip to select it. To select many, right-drag on empty ground: a marquee sweeps across lanes and takes every clip it touches. ⌘A selects every clip on every track.

Selecting a time range

The thin strip above a lane's clips is always a range selector: the pointer turns into a text cursor there. Drag along it to highlight a stretch of that track, the white band. Empty lane ground works the same way, so a selection can start anywhere that isn't a clip.

The band feeds Cut, Copy & Paste, and ⌫ deletes the covered stretch. A plain click clears it.

Deleting

Press ⌫ to delete the selected clips. If a range is highlighted, ⌫ removes that stretch instead: the band always wins over clip selection. Deletes are one undo step, so ⌘Z brings everything back.

You can also right-click a clip and choose Delete Clip.

Zooming and scrolling

• Zoom: use the zoom slider in the top bar, or scroll the wheel over the timeline. The beat under the pointer stays under it while you zoom. On a trackpad, pinch: the content follows your fingers.
• Zoomed all the way out, the whole song fits the window.
• Scroll the track list: scroll the wheel over the header column on the left. The vertical scrollbar lives there too. The wheel zooms over the timeline and scrolls over the headers, so the two never fight.
• Header column width: drag the gutter between the headers and the timeline to resize the column.

Dropping files from Finder

Drag files straight from Finder onto the timeline. A ghost shows exactly where each drop will land.

• Audio files land as clips at the drop point. Dropped on an empty audio track they use that lane; dropped anywhere else they create a new track right where you release. Several files at once stack onto new tracks.
• MIDI files (.mid) import their tracks as instrument lanes. See Import & Export.
• Movies land on a video track.