Sequencer

The sequencer is the four connected panels you write in: the track list, the arrangement, the melody editor and the mixer. This page explains what each one holds. For the first hour with the app, start at getting started instead.

Track list

The track list runs down the left edge. Each row is one track, a single instrument or voice in the song.

A track carries a name, the instrument assigned to it, and a type. The type, melodic, guitar, drum, wind or bowed strings, decides which editor opens when you edit its patterns. Bass parts live on melodic tracks. Each track also has its own mute and solo, and a colour that carries across to its blocks on the timeline.

Adding one. Click Add Track at the bottom of the list, choose a type, then pick an instrument. For a bass part, add a melodic track and give it a bass instrument. The track arrives empty, with no blocks on the timeline.

Reordering. Drag a track header up or down. This changes the arrangement and mixer order and nothing else.

Deleting. Right-click the header and choose Delete Track. It removes the track and its blocks, and it is undoable.

Arrangement

The arrangement is a horizontal timeline. Time runs left to right and each row belongs to one track. You place section blocks on it to say what plays and when.

A block is one pattern assigned to a stretch of time: play this pattern, for this many bars, from here.

There is a second way to lay a song out, a free-form timeline with no sections at all. See arrangement views.

The loop region is the highlighted range the sequencer repeats when loop mode is on. Drag across the ruler at the top to set it, and drag either edge to adjust. It is independent of the blocks; it only tells playback where to go round.

The playhead is the vertical line that moves during playback. Click anywhere on the ruler to jump there, and press Space to play or stop.

Melody editor

Double-clicking a melodic block opens the melody editor, which shows the notes in that pattern as bars on a grid.

The editor sits in the Compose Zone at the top of the pane, with a collapsible Sound Design Drawer at the bottom holding the effect strip and any open automation lanes. Above the note grid is the compose toolbar, which drives pattern generation.

The grid

Time runs left to right, with grid lines on beats and bars. Pitch runs bottom to top, with a small keyboard drawn on the left edge for the note names. A note is a rectangle: its left edge is where it starts, its right edge where it ends, and the row it sits on is its pitch.

The grid opens on a four-octave range and scrolls vertically past it.

Quantise

The quantise value snaps note starts to the nearest grid division as you draw and move. A finer value gives more expressive freedom, a coarser one keeps everything locked to the grid.

Scale guides

Pitches outside the active scale are dimmed, on the keyboard and in the grid rows, so you can see which notes belong to the key. Nothing is forced onto a scale tone: chromatic passing tones and anything else you want are still yours to place. The guides inform, they do not restrict.

The active scale is set per track, from the track header or the editor toolbar.

Ghost notes

Faint notes behind your own show what other tracks are playing in the same section. It is tracing paper over another musician's part: you can see what they are doing, so you neither clash with it nor double it by accident.

Ghost notes are read-only and update when you change track or section. Guitar chords from other tracks are resolved into their individual notes, so you see exactly which pitches are sounding.

Velocity

Every note has a velocity, how hard it is played. The ramp button in the editor toolbar opens the velocity lane below the grid, with one bar per note column sitting under the notes it belongs to. A taller bar is a louder note.

Drag across the lane to shape a phrase: every bar you sweep follows the pointer, so a whole run takes one gesture. Shift+drag draws a straight line between where you pressed and where you are now, which is how a crescendo or a fading fill happens in one move. The scroll wheel over a bar nudges one note in small steps.

Notes that sound together share one bar. It shows the loudest voice in the chord with a thin line marking the quietest, so you can see how far the voices spread. Select part of a chord first and the lane only changes what you selected, which is how you lift the top note and leave the rest.

Velocity you set by hand is remembered as yours: natural feel and generated parts will not overwrite it. On generated tracks the lane shows the velocities but cannot be edited; change the recipe instead.

Mixer

The mixer gives every track a channel strip, with a master strip on the right, and it is where you balance the song. It has its own page: see mixer.

Each track also has an effect chain, processed in order, with instrument-level effects that hold across the song and section-level ones that can change from section to section. The master strip hosts the master bus chain for the whole mix. See effects and master bus effects.

The mixer and the track list stay in sync. Muting in one mutes in the other, and changing a track's instrument updates its strip immediately.

Keyboard shortcuts

See keyboard shortcuts for the full reference.