FX & Automation, Mixing & Mastering

How to Move Track Automation With Your Regions in GarageBand

Written By : Andrew Siemon

I used to think you couldn’t move automation along with your regions. This caused a considerable amount of problems for me and took a lot of time to fix. It turns out it was unnecessary and there is a way to do it.

How to Move Track Automation with Regions in GarageBand
To move your automation along with your regions and tracks in GarageBand, click the “Mix” button in the top toolbar and then select the option, “Move Track Automation with Regions.”

Normally, I would do a step-by-step walkthrough if I feel the process is more involved, but setting this up is super easy. Essentially, what this does for you is that it moves the automation along with your regions.

In other words, if you set up all of your automation but then you have to move some – or even all – tracks and regions backwards or forward, the automation will go along with it without a problem.

Moving Automation With Your Regions - GarageBand
As you can see here by the space at the beginning of the project, the automation has moved along with the blue regions.

in my opinion, this option should be selected at all times. This way, you won’t have to move your automation ever after having set it up. I don’t see a reason why the automation shouldn’t move along with your regions.

And you’ll be able to add automation as you work on your project, rather than leaving it until the last part of your project which is what I used to do.

If you want to move everything, use the “Cmnd + A” keyboard shortcut to grab all of your regions, and then the automation will move along with it.

Of course, you can use it for individual tracks as well, and not just all of them simultaneously. Another important thing to add is that this will work with not only audio tracks, but also MIDI regions and Drummer Tracks as well.

If you have any other mixing tips for me, be sure to let me know in the comments section below.

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Andrew Siemon is the principal creator of ProducerSociety.com, a website dedicated to all things music, including music production, music theory, recording, and how to use the most popular DAWs. Starting out as a metal guitarist, Andrew has since moved into other areas of music production including hip-hop and fusion