Automation

Automation changes a setting while the song plays: a track’s volume rising into the chorus, a filter opening over eight bars, the sustain pedal going down and up. Each setting you automate gets a lane of points under its track. For a simpler change to a whole passage, a clip’s modifiers turn it up or down, fade it in or out, or move it to another key, without touching its notes.

Automation lanes

Available on every platform.

Add a lane

Right-click a track’s header and open Add Automation Lane. It offers:

Volume and Pan: the track’s fader and pan.
Pitch Bend, Pressure and Program.
Effect: each effect on the track’s sound, with its controls. A track playing the Stab Synth also has Stab Synth, its controls by section (Oscillator 1, Filter, LFO 1…).
Controller: the common MIDI controllers by number and name (1 Modulation, 7 Volume, 11 Expression, 64 Sustain…), and Other… for any number.
Drum Lane, on a drum track: each lane’s Volume, Pan, Tune and Decay.

A setting that already has a lane is greyed out. The lane appears under the track’s rows in the Editor, its name faint at the lane’s start (it fades out before the lane’s first point, isn’t shown when a point sits right at the start, and hides during playback), and a ▾ in the rail at the left. An effect’s lane starts with a point at the control’s current value.

Points

Double-click an empty place in the lane to add a point there (on the grid when Snap to Grid is on); double-click a point to remove it.
Drag a point to move it in time and value.
Click a point to select it, ⇧ to add more; drag across an empty part of the lane to select the points in a box. Dragging one moves them all. ⌫ deletes the selected points.
⌥-drag (Alt on Windows and the web) draws: points follow the pointer, on the grid when snapping, replacing those already there.

Between two points the value moves along a line. Right-click a point for its Shape: Hold (Step), Linear, Curve (Ease In), Curve (Ease Out) or S-Curve, and Delete Point. Program lanes always step from one value to the next.

Automation clips

A lane’s points live in clips, like notes do. The first point you add makes a clip a bar long around it. Automation clips work as note clips do: drag the header to move one (⌥ to copy it, ⇧⌥ for a linked copy that shares its points), drag the ↻ corner to repeat it, the right edge to change its length, the header’s left end to trim its start. The header’s menu has Duplicate, Duplicate Linked, Make Unique and Delete Clip.

Right-click the lane:

Collapse Lane shrinks it to a thin strip (or click its ▾ in the rail); Expand Lane opens it again.
Hold Between Clips, on at first: between the lane’s clips, the last value holds. Off, the setting goes back to its own value between clips, such as the fader’s position.
14-bit (with CC + 32), on controllers 0 to 31, for finer steps (the controller and its partner 32 above).
Clear Clips removes the lane’s points and clips; Remove Lane removes the lane.

Automation imported from a MIDI file (controllers, bends, pressure, program changes) or a Guitar Pro file (its mix changes) arrives as lanes, and MIDI export writes them back.

Clip gain, fades and velocity ramps

Available on every platform.

A clip’s modifiers change how the whole clip sounds, without changing its notes. They belong to the clip, so every linked copy shares them.

Right-click a clip. Each choice applies to every selected clip, as one undo step.

Gain: +6 dB down to −60 dB, or Other… to type a value, from −60 to +12 dB.
Transpose: up or down by semitones, +12 (Octave Up) to −12 (Octave Down), or Other… (up to two octaves either way). It changes what sounds, not what’s written: the frets stay as they are.
Fade In and Fade Out: None, 1 Beat, 2 Beats, 1 Bar, 2 Bars or Whole Clip. A fade that wouldn’t fit beside the other is greyed out. A repeated clip fades on each repeat.
Velocity: As Played, Crescendo (from 40 % softer up to as played), Decrescendo, Softer or Harder. The ramp scales each note’s velocity by where it starts in the clip.
Reset Modifiers puts them all back.

You can also drag a fade: the small handles at the top corners of a clip’s body set the fade in and the fade out. The Inspector has every modifier as a row, with the velocity ramp’s start and end set separately.

The clip’s strip shows what’s set: a badge such as “−6.0 dB +2 st vel −40→0%”, and the fades as ramps. For a recording’s clip, the Inspector offers gain and the fades.