12. MIDI

Step input

Step input writes what you play: play a note or a chord on a MIDI instrument, and it goes in at the caret with the step length, then the caret moves on. You choose the rhythm with the step length, and play the pitches at your own pace. It’s the quickest way to write a part you can play but not yet in time.

MIDI step input

Available on every platform.

Turning it on

Choose MIDI Step Input (⌥⌘S)MIDI Step Input (Ctrl+Alt+S)MIDI Step Input (Ctrl+Alt+S (⌥⌘S on a Mac)) (the Transport menu or the Transport pane › Record). Choose it again to turn it off. It works stopped or playing, but not while recording (Record takes what’s played then). On an Instrument pane, Step turns it on and Play turns it off.

What you play goes to the caret of the pane you last worked in: an Editor pane, or a Score pane in note input, which takes MIDI notes without turning step input on. Turned on from an Instrument pane, it goes to the Editor or Score pane linked to it, else the one you last worked in, else the song’s first; with no Editor or Score open (a phone showing only the Instrument), to the song’s caret on the track the Instrument shows.

Writing

• A note: play it. It’s written at the caret for the step length, and the caret moves on by a step.
• A chord: hold the notes together. The chord goes in once you’ve let go of them all, so you can build it a finger at a time.
• A rest: press the sustain pedal with nothing held. The caret moves on a step.

Change the step length between notes as you would when typing (see Step and grid). What started within the step at the caret is written over. Each note or chord is one undo step (“Write Note”, “Write Chord”, “Step Rest”).

On each kind of track

• A fretted track: a MIDI guitar’s notes, and the Instrument’s fretboard’s, go on the strings you played them on. A string played again while it still rings (a hammer-on or a pull-off) is a step of its own, marked as a hammer-on or pull-off from the note before. A keyboard’s chord is fretted as a hand would play it, near the fret of the note before the caret; an open string is always in reach.
• A drum track: each pad plays its piece through the kit’s map, and a piece the track has no lane for gets one. Pads struck together are a chord.
• A keys track: the pitches as played.

The Score pane writes its own way: a chord’s notes added to the first, as in note input, and still one undo step. A guitar’s notes stay on the strings they were played on. It doesn’t write a drum kit’s pads.

At the caret or at the playhead

The Editor’s ♪ chip (the step length, in the corner above the tracks; on a tablet worked by touch, in the Keypad’s header) chooses where notes go in while the song plays: Write at the Caret (the default) or Write at the Playhead While Playing. Each Editor pane keeps its own choice, saved with the song; a new pane starts from Settings › Editing › Write at the playhead while playing (off: at the caret).

• At the caret: as above, playing or stopped. The caret moves on a step with each note or chord.
• At the playhead: while the song plays, each note goes in where the playhead was when you played it, rounded to the pane’s grid (with Snap to Grid off, where you played it), a step long, on the caret’s track; the caret stays where it is. With a loop on, every pass adds to the last, so you can build a part as it goes round. A note played where the same note already is takes it off. Each pass is one undo step (“Notes at the Playhead”), and so is a run without a loop, until you stop. The chip reads “♪ 1/8 ▸” in brass, and a brass ring rides the playhead on the caret’s string where the next note lands. Stopped, notes go in at the caret either way.

Typing a fret (or a drum lane’s technique) in the Editor while it plays writes at the playhead the same way, and so does the Instrument’s Edit.

Re-pitch

Re-pitch (the Transport menu or the Transport pane › Record) keeps the rhythm of what’s written and changes only its pitches: the notes starting at the caret take the pitches you play, keeping their start and length, and the caret goes to the next note. It’s for correcting the pitches of a transcription or a part written in rhythm first. Turning it on turns step input on too; turning step input off turns it off.