7. Shaping performance

Value bars

Value bars are a strip along the bottom of an Editor pane, with a stem under each note of one track. Each stem stands as high as the note’s value under the pane’s lens: its velocity, its timing, its length or its detune. Drag one stem to change a note, or sweep across them to draw a crescendo, an accent pattern or a laid-back feel in one stroke.

Value bars

Available on every platform.

Show the bars

Turn on Show Value Bars (⌥⌘E)Show Value Bars (Ctrl+Alt+E, Ctrl+Shift+B)Show Value Bars (Ctrl+Alt+E, Ctrl+Shift+B (⌥⌘E, ⇧⌘B on a Mac)), in the View menu or the pane’s ⚙ menu. Each Editor pane keeps its own setting; a Score pane has no value bars, and doesn’t offer them.

The bars show whatever the pane’s lens shows. If the pane was colouring notes by track, turning the bars on switches its lens to Velocity. Pick another lens in Colour Notes By to change what the bars show.

Which notes they show

The bars show one track: the track of the selected notes, or, with nothing selected, the caret’s track. The strip’s left edge names the lens and the track. A clip’s notes show at every place they play, in its linked copies too; in a clip that repeats, the stems after its first time through are drawn lighter, since they’re the same notes.

How to read them

• Velocity stands up from the bottom, 0 to 127. A faint line marks 100, the velocity a new note gets.
• Timing goes up for late and down for early from a centre line, the note’s nearest grid line, as far as half a grid step either way.
• Length goes up or down from the centre line, where a note fills its room exactly (the time up to the next note in its clip); the top is twice its room.
• Detune goes up for sharp and down for flat, 50 cents to the edge.

The stems take the lens’s colours. As you change a note, the strip’s lower left shows its value: a velocity such as “96”, a timing in milliseconds (“+12 ms”, “−8 ms”), a length as a share of its room (“85 %”), a detune in cents (“+5 ¢”, “−20 ¢”).

The Confidence lens shows its bars to read only.

Change one note, or several together

Drag a stem up or down. Grabbing a stem selects its note; holding ⇧ as you press adds it to the selection instead.

Dragging a stem that’s already selected moves every selected note’s value by the same amount, keeping the differences between them: a quick way to bring a whole phrase up or down.

Paint the values

Start a drag in the strip away from any stem, and you paint: each note you sweep across takes the height under the pointer as it passes. Sweep low to high for a crescendo, or zig-zag for alternating accents.

Painting timing moves each note within half a grid step of its nearest grid line. Painting length changes how long each note is held.

Each drag or stroke is one step to undo.

Related

• The brush raises, lowers or softens values right on the notes, across several tracks at once.
• To set exact values for the selected notes, use the note inspector or the Inspector pane.