13. Recording audio

Audio tracks

An audio track holds recordings, as clips, beside the song’s tab and notation: a guitar part you played in, a vocal, a file you brought in. Its clips are regions like any other track’s, with a waveform in place of notes, and they play through the track’s sound, so a guitar recorded dry can go through an amp afterwards.

An audio track plays its recordings as they were played: a clip doesn’t stretch when the song’s tempo changes. To play along with a recording that follows the song’s beat, use a recording lane and sync pins instead.

Audio tracks and their clips

Available on Mac and Windows. Not on Web.

This isn’t on Web.

Adding an audio track

Open a track’s menu (right-click a track’s header) and choose Add Track › Audio. It’s named “Audio 1”, “Audio 2”… Recording the input with no audio track armed makes one for you.

Recording onto it

1. Check the audio input: on, the right device and channel, a level when you play.
2. Arm the audio track: with recording on, click the dot after its name, in its tag over the start of its lane (it turns red). Arming the track you’re working in isn’t needed: Record takes the audio track you’re in.
3. Put the caret where the take should start, and choose Record (⌥⌘R)Record (Ctrl+Alt+R)Record (Ctrl+Alt+R (⌥⌘R on a Mac)). The song counts in and plays; play or sing along.
4. Stop, or choose Record again, to finish.

While it records, a strip along the foot of the pane draws the take’s waveform as it grows, where it lands in the song. When you stop, the take becomes a clip on the track, named after it (“Audio 1 Take 1”), as one undo step, “Record Audio”. A take shorter than a twentieth of a second isn’t kept, and if nothing came in, Stab says why (the input off, the microphone not allowed, no device).

Each take is written to disk the moment you stop, in the Takes folder beside your songs or inside the song itself (Where takes are kept).

At a practice speed: a take recorded slowed down is brought back to the song’s tempo when you stop, its pitch kept, so it plays with the song at full speed.

Takes and retakes: recording again over a clip that starts at the same place, or with the loop going round, keeps each one as a take of that clip. See Audio takes.

Punching in: with Punch In and Out at the Loop Markers, only what’s between the loop’s markers is recorded. See Capture and punch.

Bringing in a file

Clips of audio

An audio clip is moved, copied, resized, trimmed and repeated like any clip (Clips): trim its start and it starts later in the recording; a repeat plays it again. The clip menu’s Gain and fades apply to it. The track’s volume, pan, mute and solo work as on any track.

The Recordings tab of the Audio & MIDI pane lists the recordings your audio tracks play and which tracks use them, with Relink… for one that has moved, and where each take is kept and Show in Finder and Show in File Explorer. When you open a song whose recordings aren’t where they were, Stab looks beside the song and in its Recordings folder, then asks where each one issays which it couldn’t find, an audio clip’s recordings as a lane’s.

Its sound

An audio track’s Sound submenu, in its menu, plays it through an amp: No Amp, or one of the amp presets. The pane says what it now plays through for a moment at its foot (“Vocal: Crunch”), as it does for any track’s sound changed from its menu. Record a guitar straight from the interface, with no amp, and choose or change the amp afterwards; the recording itself doesn’t change. Its full chain is in the Sound pane.

Hearing yourself through the amp

Monitor Input (Headphones) in the track’s menu plays the input live through the track’s sound as you play, so you hear your dry guitar through its amp. One audio track at a time is monitored, and the chip at the Editor pane’s lower right says “(monitored)”. Use headphones: through the speakers, the microphone picks the sound up again and it feeds back.