Effects

Every track has a built-in effect chain. The effects run in the native audio engine, in the order they appear in the chain, so what you hear during playback is what the track sounds like.

The chain

The signal leaves the instrument, passes through each effect in turn, and arrives at the mixer. The default order follows standard mixing practice: shape first, then color, then space, then character, with volume last.

Compressor  Sidekick  Saturation  Bitcrusher
Tone  EQ  Graphic EQ  Phaser  Chorus  Pitch  Filter
Stereo Widener  Auto-Pan  Delay  Reverb
Vinyl  Scratch  Gate  Volume

Effects come in two scopes.

Instrument-level effects are set once per track and stay the same across every section. Section-level effects can differ per section, so a verse can be dry while the chorus has reverb and delay.

Effect categories

Shape: dynamics and distortion

These effects shape the waveform itself.

Compressor, evens out volume differences. Instrument-level.
Sidekick, pumps the volume in time with the beat. Section-level.
Saturation, adds warmth and grit. Instrument-level.
Bitcrusher, retro lo-fi sound. Instrument-level.
Volume, controls overall track loudness. Section-level.

Color: modulation, filtering and pitch

These effects color the tone.

Tone, one knob, darker or brighter. Instrument-level.
EQ, three bands for everyday tone shaping. Instrument-level.
Graphic EQ, eight bands for clearing space between tracks. Instrument-level.
Phaser, sweeping filter movement. Instrument-level.
Chorus, width and thickness. Instrument-level.
Pitch, shifts pitch up or down. Instrument-level.
Filter, low-, high- or band-pass for sweeps, builds and drops. Section-level.

Space: stereo and time-based

These effects place the sound in stereo space and add echoes or ambience.

Stereo Widener, controls stereo width. Section-level.
Auto-Pan, automatic left and right panning. Section-level.
Delay, rhythmic echoes. Section-level.
Reverb, room and hall ambience. Section-level.

Character: novelty and texture

These effects add lo-fi character and atmosphere.

Vinyl, crackle, hiss and warmth. Section-level.
Scratch, tempo-synced turntable scratch. Section-level.
Gate, rhythmic volume chop. Section-level.

Cards in the effect strip are tinted by category: orange for shape, purple for color, cyan for space, amber for character. The same colour appears as a thin stripe on notes that have per-note overrides for that category, so you can tell at a glance which kind of effect a note is overriding.

The guitar track has one more effect, the wah pedal. It is not in the picker, because the guitar editor switches it on and off. See the guitar editor.

Using effects in the mixer

Each track's mixer strip shows a card per effect slot. A card carries an enable toggle in its header, a preset selector, and the effect's macro controls: knobs, sliders, toggles or selectors. Effects with more controls than fit on a card keep the rest behind Advanced in the popup. Changes are heard immediately during playback.

Adding and reordering effects

The [+] button at the right of the effect strip opens the effect picker, a categorised list of every effect not currently on the track. Picking one inserts it at its recommended position in the chain.

Drag a card by its header to reorder it. The small close button on the card removes the effect. Removing a section-level effect drops only that section's settings, and the slot can be added again later.

Master bus effects

Alongside the per-track chains there is a master bus chain that processes the whole mix at once, every track summed together. It is the place for glue compression, saturation and final tone shaping. Open it from Master FX at the bottom of the expanded mixer panel. See master bus.

Automation

Most effect macros can be automated, drawn as an envelope across a section so the parameter moves over time. Open an effect's popup card and click Automate [knob name]. A new automation lane appears below the note editor with a flat line at the current value, and dragging points shapes the curve. See automation.

Per-note overrides

In the piano roll a single note can carry its own effect settings, say a one-bar reverb soak on a held note while everything else stays dry. Right-click the note, choose Note effects, then pick a slot to override. The note grows a thin coloured stripe to show it has overrides. See note effects.

Section-level effects

To give sections different settings, select a section in the arrangement, adjust the section-level macros in the mixer, then move to another section and set different values. The settings are stored per section, and playback switches to the right ones as the playhead enters each section.

Section-level effects are Sidekick, Filter, Stereo Widener, Auto-Pan, Delay, Reverb, Vinyl, Scratch, Gate and Volume. Everything else is instrument-level.

Presets

Each effect slot has built-in presets that set all macros to a useful starting point. Pick one from the card's preset row, then adjust the macros to taste. Presets and macro values are saved with the project.

Combining effects

Each effect changes the signal before it reaches the next one, so combinations behave differently from any effect alone.

Saturation then Tone. Saturation adds harmonics across the whole frequency range. If the result is harsh, Tone tilts the balance back toward warmth; if it is dull, Tone brings brightness back. Shape the distortion first, then polish.

Compressor then Saturation. Compression evens out the dynamics before the signal hits the saturator. Without it, loud peaks distort heavily while quiet passages barely clip and the distortion sounds inconsistent. With it, the level arriving at the saturator is steadier and so is the character.

Chorus, Delay, Reverb. The classic space stack. Chorus widens the source, delay gives it rhythmic echoes, reverb wraps it in an acoustic space. Subtle settings on all three build a three-dimensional sound. Heavy settings on all three produce a wash, which suits ambient music and little else.

Filter then Reverb. Closing the filter while the reverb stays open puts the instrument in another room: the direct signal is muffled but the tail stays full. Opening the filter brings it forward again. It is one of the simplest ways to build contrast between sections.

Gate then Reverb. The gate chops the sound into pulses and the reverb fills the gaps. Without reverb, hard gating sounds abrupt. With it, each pulse gets a tail, which is where the trance pad sound comes from: rhythm from the gate, atmosphere from the reverb.

Saturation then Filter. Heavy saturation generates high harmonics that can sound harsh. Closing the filter afterwards tames the brightness and keeps the body. Many aggressive bass sounds are made this way: distort first, then filter off the fizz.

Bitcrusher and Vinyl. Both are lo-fi, and they degrade the signal in different ways. Bitcrusher adds digital artifacts, aliasing and staircase distortion; Vinyl adds analog ones, crackle, hiss and warmth. Together they sound like a chiptune sample played off a dusty record.

Compressor then Gate. Compression raises the quiet parts, which makes the gate's chop more dramatic: the sound drops from consistently loud to silence rather than from varying levels to silence.

What to watch out for

Too many time-based effects. Chorus, Delay and Reverb all at high mix settings turn any sound into an indistinct wash. If things sound muddy, pull back the mix on one of them.
Distortion after reverb. Saturation and Bitcrusher sit before Reverb, which is the standard order. Distorted reverb tails need heavy saturation with a high reverb mix, and the result gets noisy quickly.
Gate and Delay at competing rates. If the gate chops at one rhythm and the delay echoes at another, the result is chaotic rather than rhythmic. Pick a delay time that complements the gate rate.
Compression squashing reverb tails. The Compressor sits before the Reverb, so this is rarely a problem, but heavy compression removes the dynamic range that reverb needs to sound natural.