Issue with splitting tracks at playhead in GarageBand

Question

Issue with splitting tracks at playhead in GarageBand

I recorded a band practice (~1hr 30 min) and am in the process of converting the GarageBand file that had the full audio into different GarageBand files with each of the songs that we played.

I am having no problem splitting the tracks at the playhead and setting up individual GarageBand files, however, I am having an issue with the file size that is resulting from this. It looks like, despite splitting a track at a playhead, it is still retaining the full data of the original track. If you look at the attached photos you can see that in the first one even though it has been split at the playhead, once I drag out the track (second photo) it still retained everything from the original hour and a half long track.

Is there a way to actually delete the sections past where the track is split so that I don't end up with 11 different GarageBand files that are each the same size as the original full band practice length GarageBand file?

Thanks!

Posted on Feb 15, 2019 11:00 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

HangTime

Level 9

53,853 points

Feb 16, 2019 7:11 AM in response to ericplaysdrums

one of the major features of GB (and Logic Pro X) is "non-destructive editing," which means you can do almost anything you want to a region (editing, effecting...) without altering the original file; everything is processed in real-time, at playback.

as you've found, this means you can't truly cut off a piece of a region, it's all still there in the project.

one of the rare features that is destructive is joining two separate pieces of audio (regions) together.

if you record a very very tiny piece of silent audio, you can place that at the end of a region you've split, select both regions and use the Join Regions menuItem under the Edit menu. you'll be warned that a new audio file must be created, and this newly created region/file will only contain the part you wanted

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Answer 2

Feb 16, 2019 7:00 AM in response to Keith Barkley

Yeah I believe you are right about being able to undo, unfortunately, even after saving and reopening the files, I am still having the same issue. This would definitely be a nice feature if the originals weren't so long, but I wish there was a way I could tell GarageBand that I do not want it to retain anything outside of where it was split.

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