Audio takes

Few parts go down right the first time. Every attempt you record over the same place on an audio track is kept as a take of one clip: the clip plays one of them, and you can switch, compare, or take each bar from the attempt where it went best.

Takes are recorded on the Mac, Windows, the iPad, the iPhone and Android: the web app doesn’t record audio.

Takes, retakes and punching in

Available on Mac and Windows. Not on Web.

This isn’t on Web.

Recording takes

There are two ways to get several takes:

Loop it. Set the loop round the passage and record (Audio tracks). Each time the loop comes round, the pass just played becomes a take, and the next starts. Stop when you have a good one.
Record it again. Put the caret back where the clip starts and record: a recording that starts where a clip of the track starts becomes a new take of that clip.

Takes are numbered in order (“Audio 1 Take 1”, “Audio 1 Take 2”…), and the clip plays the latest. Each is written to disk as its own file the moment you stop, so it’s safe even if the app is closed straight after. A take shorter than a twentieth of a second isn’t kept.

Choosing a take

From the clip’s menu: right-click the clip, and under Takes choose the take it plays (the one playing is checked).
From the take lanes: open the track’s lanes with the ▸ on its header. Under the track, each take has a lane of its own; click one to make the clip play it. ▾ folds them away. (The lanes show in the Editor pane, not in the Arranger.)

Comping: the best bars of each

To build one performance from several:

In the take lanes, drag across the part of a take you want: that range of it goes into the clip, the rest stays as it was.
From the clip’s menu, with the pointer over a bar: Takes › Use This Bar From and a take puts that bar of it into the clip.

Each choice is one undo step. When it’s right, Takes › Keep Only the Take Playing removes the others.

Where takes are kept

A take is kept in one of two places, and you can move it in one click:

In Takes (the usual place): in a Takes folder beside your songs. The song’s file stays small and saves quickly.
In the Song: inside the song’s own file, so the song travels whole: send it or copy it, and its takes go with it.

In the Recordings tab of the Audio & MIDI pane, each take’s row says where it is and has a button, In Takes or In the Song, that moves it to the other place. All in the Song and All in Takes move every take of the song at once.

Where new takes go is a setting: Settings › Audio & MIDI › Takes › Keep new takes: In Takes or In the Song. A take kept in the song is still written to disk the moment you stop; the song’s next save adds it to the song’s file without writing the rest again.

Save a Copy… always makes a song that’s whole in one file, with every take inside it.

A Stab Cloud song’s takes stay in Takes.

Renaming a song or moving it within your songs doesn’t lose its takes: a song finds them by the song itself, not by its name. A take you delete from a song stays on disk for 30 days in case the song needs it again (an undo, a copy, a song put back from Recently Deleted), then it’s removed.

Punching in

To replace only a few bars of a recording: set the loop markers round them, turn the loop off, and turn on Punch In and Out at the Loop Markers (the Transport menu or the Transport pane › Record). Record then starts a bar before the first marker, so you play into it, and keeps only what you play between the markers. See Capture and punch.

MIDI takes

MIDI recording keeps takes too, when the Transport pane’s record menu is set to Keep Each Loop Pass as a Take: see Loops, passes and takes.