Automation

Automation draws a parameter's value across a section instead of leaving it still. A reverb that opens into the chorus, a filter sweep that builds for four bars, a delay mix that swells and recedes: all automation.

Each automated parameter gets its own lane below the note grid, above the effect strip.

Adding a lane

Click an effect in the strip to open its popup card. Every knob and slider on it has an Automate button carrying that control's name. Click one.

A lane appears below the note grid with a flat line at the parameter's current value. Lanes are created on demand, so you only ever see lanes for parameters you actually automate.

Four lanes are visible at a time and the panel scrolls past that. Each lane header shows the effect and parameter name with a small coloured stripe in the effect's category colour.

Drawing the envelope

A lane is a series of points joined by straight lines. Double-click empty space to add a point, drag a point to move it in time and value, right-click one to delete it.

The line between two points is straight: flat is a hold, sloped is a ramp.

The lane shares its horizontal scale with the piano roll, so a point that lines up with bar 3 in the lane is at bar 3 in the editor, and zooming or scrolling the editor moves the lanes with it.

Shape presets

Drawing common shapes by hand gets tedious, so each lane has a preset dropdown.

Picking a preset fills the lane with the points that make that shape, and you drag from there.

What can be automated

Every knob and slider on an effect can be automated. Toggles and selectors cannot, because they step between values rather than sweep: the Filter's Mode is a selector, so change it at the section level instead.

Master bus effects have no automation at all. They are one setting for the whole song.

Which value wins

When the playhead reaches a tick, the parameter's value is settled in order: the track-wide setting first, then the section's setting, then the automation lane, then a per-note override while that note is sounding. See note effects.

So automation beats the static section setting, and a per-note override beats automation. When an override ends part-way through a ramp, the value returns to wherever the automation curve is at that moment rather than to the static baseline, so there is no audible jump out of it.

Automation in the arrangement

A wavy glyph next to the FX badge on a section cell means that section has lanes with data in them. A coloured marker on the left edge of a cell means the section's effects differ from the previous section, so you can see you are crossing a settings change as well as an automation one.

Automation and built-in triggers

Some effects drive themselves. The guitar wah is the clear example: its mix is normally moved by the strum-step trigger chips.

Draw an automation lane on the wah's mix for a section and the chips are skipped for that section, because an explicit curve should beat an automatic behaviour. Delete the lane to hand control back to the chips. See the guitar editor.

Getting the most from it

Subtle beats dramatic. A small swell across four bars reads as alive; a large one reads as automation.

Automate mix on time-based effects before anything else. Reverb mix and delay mix sweeping in and out are the most musically useful automations there are, because mix is already what a listener hears as more or less effect. Automating an underlying setting like decay or rate usually fights the macro instead.

Build and Drop on the filter, closing through the last bar of a verse and opening on the chorus downbeat, is the cleanest build available.

And check the effect is on first. If a section has reverb switched off entirely, there is nothing for the lane to move.