Charles on… anything that comes along

One reason I’ve not done more with Apple’s Garageband app is that, while nifty, it’s hard to work out what you really can and can’t do.

For instance, it’s cool that Trent Reznor released his latest single “The Hand That Feeds” in Garageband format so you can play around with the settings. I mean, we all get to tweak the flanger and stuff. Great fun: “more top on the snare!” etc.

However, Garageband 2 has lots of very neat features involving MIDI, but I’m stuffed if I can work out how to really do useful things with them.

So here are my questions. Answers welcomed.
1) you can get a real-time transcription of what you’re playing (through a MIDI keyboard) in GB2. How do you print that out, or copy it to a text editor?
2) can you save something you’ve recorded from a MIDI output (eg keyboard) in a GB2 track as a MIDI file? At all? Rather than having to export it to iTunes?
3) if you have long pauses and other unwanted bits in a GB2 track (which came from a MIDI input..) how do you edit those long pauses out? I haven’t found any way to select part of a track to cut it. I can only find ways to select the whole thing, or nothing.

Plus - and here’s the real killer - it can’t solve sudoku grids. Obviously this will have to be addressed in Garageband 3, or possibly an earlier update.

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