8. Smart Tracks

Smart Clips

A Smart Clip is a Smart Track for a few bars: a bass for the last chorus only, a different style for the bridge, a drummer who comes in at the second verse. It follows the song’s chords like a Smart Track, with the same settings, but only between its two edges. Intro and Ending, at the end of this page, are settings of every Smart part, Smart Track or Smart Clip.

Smart Clips, intros and endings

Available on every platform.

Adding a Smart Clip

1. Right-click a track’s lanes, in an Editor pane, where it has no clip.
2. Choose Add Smart Clip Here, then a style.

The clip covers the loop when you open the menu inside it; otherwise four bars, from the bar you chose. It plays on a drum, guitar, bass or keys track, and a kit gets the lanes the style needs if it lacks them. Like a new Smart Track, it follows the sections’ intensity, plays at complexity 3 and fills before each section (Styles and feel). It’s one undo step.

Its stretch is tinted lighter than a clip, under a header that says Smart Clip and its style, and its notes are drawn paler than written ones. Parts other than drums need chords there to play: see Chords.

Making it longer or shorter

Drag either edge of a Smart Clip. The edges follow the grid (unless Snap to Grid is off), and a Smart Clip is a beat long at least. Each drag is one undo step.

What plays where

On one track, the most specific part plays:

• A clip of the track’s own always wins, so the notes you write are heard.
• A Smart Clip plays over its bars, in its own style.
• The track’s Smart Track, if it has one, plays everywhere else.

So a drum track can play Rock all through with a Smart Clip of Blues Shuffle over the bridge, and a fill you write yourself in the bar before the chorus. The menu also offers Add Smart Clip Here where a Smart Track plays.

Its settings

Click a Smart Clip to pick it: its card opens with the bars it covers (“Smart Clip · Bars 5–8”) and its settings: style, Intensity, Complexity, Fills on drums, Feel, Intro and Ending, with Another Take, Convert and Remove. ⇧-click other parts to set several at once. The card shows while Show Note Inspector is on for the pane; while an Inspector pane is open, its Smart section has the same settings.

Its menu (right-click it) has them too, with Convert This Bar to Notes, Convert to Notes and Remove Smart Clip. Converting writes what the clip plays into clips of the track’s own, as for a Smart Track (Making the notes your own).

Intro and Ending

Both belong to the song’s first and last bars. The song starts at the bar of its first chord and ends where its last clip ends.

• Intro: the drums play the first two bars alone, softly, the second a fill, and the band comes in after it (with a crash, in most styles). A song under six bars gets a one-bar intro, and a song under three bars none.
• Ending: the bar before the last is a fill, then everyone plays the last bar’s downbeat together and lets it ring: the kick and a crash, the bass’s root, the chord.

Each part has its own Intro and Ending. On a drum part, Intro is the soft start and the fill; on the bass, guitar or keys, it means resting through those bars. So for drums alone, turn Intro on for every part: pick them all and turn it on once on the card. A Smart Clip plays an intro or an ending only if it covers those bars.

Changing a Smart Track’s style keeps its intro and ending. The Stage’s Band menu turns the ending on for every part it adds (Presets, parts and the band).