Arrangement

The arrangement lays out when each track plays. Tracks run down the left; time runs to the right in bars. Choose Arrange in the Studio rail to open it.

Understand tracks and clips#

A track has an instrument, sound settings and a note pattern. An arrangement clip places that pattern at a start point for a particular length. It does not contain an independent set of notes.

For example, two clips on a bass track repeat the same bass phrase in different places. Editing the notes through either clip changes that track's phrase. Use separate tracks when you want different timeline material. Launcher clips can each carry their own notes, but selecting one also copies its material into the track's editing pattern. Bear this in mind if you combine launcher work and arrangement work.

An ordinary pattern has 32 sixteenth-note steps. That is two bars in 4/4. Arrangement placements can be longer and repeat the pattern. The song extends to its last clip edge; a project without clips uses an eight-bar default.

Manage tracks#

Click a header to select its track and show its devices. Double-click the header to open its phrase in the note editor. Double-click the name to rename it; Enter or clicking away keeps the name, and Escape cancels. Names can contain up to 80 characters.

The header's controls are:

Right-click the header for Rename, Colour, Duplicate track, Delete track, Mute, Solo, Arm to record, Change instrument, Save patch, Move up, Move down and automation. It also offers track freezing; see performance.

The colour menu offers Orange, Sky, Lavender, Mint, Coral and Yellow. Clips normally follow their track colour unless you give the clip its own colour.

Use Add track in the mixer to create another track. A new track starts as Analog Poly with EQ-5 and Plate Reverb, and an eight-bar New phrase placement. You can keep at most 32 tracks and cannot delete the last one.

With the arrangement focused, Up and Down select the adjacent track. Drag the small resize handle in a header to change its row height; double-click the handle to reset it. Rows can be 40–240 pixels tall. Showing automation gives an unresized row more room automatically.

Create, select and move clips#

Double-click empty lane space to create New clip, one grid division long. Or choose Draw and drag through empty space to make a longer clip. A click with Draw makes one grid division. New clips use the existing track pattern; create or edit that pattern in the piano roll.

With Select active:

• Click a clip to select it and open its editor.
• Shift-click, Ctrl-click or Cmd-click to add or remove a clip from the selection.
• Drag a box through empty lane space to select clips it touches. Shift adds to the selection.
• Drag a clip horizontally to move it. Hold Alt while dropping to bypass snapping.

A drag changes the clip's start on its original track. Dropping over a different lane does not transfer the phrase to that track. The start is limited to the currently displayed song range, so one drag cannot place a clip beyond that range.

There is no arrangement clip edge-resize control. Draw the length you need when creating a placement, or use splits and duplicates to shape its extent.

Copy, duplicate and split#

Use the editing shortcuts for the selected clips. Copy and Cut keep the clips' spacing and source tracks. Paste starts at the playhead's whole bar. When a single track's clips are pasted using a destination track's clip menu, they can be placed on that track instead. The destination still plays its own note pattern.

Duplicate places a copy after the whole selection's span. For a single clip, that means directly after the clip. Delete or Backspace removes selected clips. If notes are selected in the open editor, those keys act on the notes first.

Choose Split and click inside a clip to cut it there. The cut snaps to Grid snap; Alt bypasses snapping. The second half continues from the appropriate place in the phrase. Split at playhead in the clip menu cuts at the current playback position when it is inside the clip.

Right-click a clip for Cut, Copy, Paste, Duplicate, Delete, Split at playhead, Rename, Colour, Loop clip and Open in piano roll. Loop clip controls phrase repetition within that placement. Check the menu's checkmark after changing it.

Bounce to new track currently copies the track and its placements. It does not produce an audio recording. For rendering and reusable sample material, use sampling; for audio files, use exporting.

Navigate the timeline#

Click the ruler or empty lane space to move the playhead. Grid snap sets divisions from 1/1 to 1/64 and starts at 1/16. Alt allows an exact click position. Grid lines become less dense when there is too little space to draw every division.

Pinch on a trackpad, or hold Shift while using the mouse wheel, to zoom horizontally around the pointer. Zooming out stops once the song fits. When the lanes are wider than the window, use the horizontal scroll strip beneath them. Track headers stay visible.

The ruler menu offers Set loop start here, Set loop end here and Go here. Add marker has no visible, saved marker result in the current editor, so do not use it to keep song landmarks.

Loop a section#

The thin strip under the ruler shows the loop region. Loop in the transport enables or disables repetition.

Drag either end of the region to resize it. Drag the middle to move the whole region, or double-click the strip to reset it to the whole song. Focus a handle and use the arrows to move it by one grid division; Shift moves it by a bar. Alt bypasses pointer snapping.

The ruler's loop-start and loop-end actions also enable looping. Loop boundaries are used by loop export, but they are playback settings rather than part of a saved song version.