Humusbeta

The timeline

The timeline sits below the patcher: a ruler in bars and beats, the playhead, a loop band and one row per track. Drag across the loop band to set a loop, then drag its ends or its body to change it.

Tracks

The + above the tracks adds an Audio Track, a MIDI Track or a Video Track.

  • A MIDI Track holds clips of notes and plays them into whatever it is corded to. Notes you play on a keyboard land on the MIDI Track feeding the instrument you play, and Capture makes one, corded in, when there is none.
  • An Audio Track records and plays audio. Cord whatever you want to record into it, arm its record button and play.
  • A Video Track plays its clips against the transport and records what reaches its inlet.

Each header has M (mute) and S (solo), and audio, video and MIDI tracks a round record button, all mappable to a controller. M silences the row whatever drives it: its clips, the cord feeding it and the keyboard through it. A note already sounding is allowed to end, and nothing new starts until you unmute, so a muted row never hands over a pile of notes at once. A muted row still records what you play into it. S leaves only the soloed rows audible. Double-click a header to find its organism in the patcher. Drop audio or video files straight onto a lane.

Rows go in the order you give them. Drag a header up or down and a line shows where the row will land; its lanes and its automation travel with it, selected rows move as one block, and Esc cancels. A new track lands below the selected row, or at the bottom with nothing selected, and a consolidated or stretched copy lands directly below its source. Consolidate to Audio leaves the source playing, because it bounces only the bars you chose: mute the source, or delete those bars from it, once you are happy with the bounce. An instrument's automation row sits directly above the MIDI track that plays it, so the notes you play stay closest to your hands, until you drag either somewhere else.

A PianoRoll is not a track: it is a looping note source you cord into as many instruments as you like. Right-click it and pick MIDI to Track to move its notes onto the timeline.

Clips

Drag to move, drag an edge to trim, Cmd-drag an edge to stretch, Cmd- or Ctrl-drag to copy; a Cmd-click that does not move copies nothing. Right-click a clip for the rest: split, loop, duplicate, rename, colour, gain, pitch, fades, reverse, warp and more.

Right-click empty timeline for Cut at Playhead, which splits every clip the playhead crosses. On an audio clip, Convert to MIDI Track traces its melody into notes you can cord into any instrument.

Notes

Double-click a MIDI clip to edit its notes in place. The tool strip holds Pointer, Pencil, Line, Scissors and Eraser, each on a number key. Lanes below the notes carry velocity, controllers and pitch bend. Right-click a note, or a selection of them, and choose Color to mark them with one of the clip colours or any colour of your own. The PianoRoll's editor follows the same gestures.

Automation

Right-click any knob and choose Automate to give it a lane. A track with lanes shows a fold arrow on its header: open it to draw with the pencil, rule straight lines, drag points, or double-click a point to type its bar and value. Points snap to the grid unless you hold alt.

With the pointer, a lane is for selecting time, the way the clip editor does: drag to take a stretch, snapped to the grid, and drag across several lanes to take the same stretch from all of them. A click clears it; a double-click on empty lane adds a point. Copy takes the curve's value at both edges, so a stretch with no points in it still copies true; Paste Here replaces exactly that length; Delete clears the stretch without bending what is outside it. Right-click for those, plus Quantise to Grid, Thin Points (what a recorded knob move needs), Smooth, and Curve: the points between the first and the last one selected are replaced by one linear, logarithmic or exponential segment. Dragging a selected point moves the whole selection. Clips and automation boxes can be selected together, with shift-click or a marquee, and dragging any one of them moves them all. Shift-click takes every clip between the last one clicked and this one; Option-click (Alt on Windows and Linux) adds a single clip to the selection, or takes it out again.

The tempo automates the same way, from a right-click on the tempo, so a song can speed up and slow down.

Meter

The chip beside the tempo shows the time signature. Click it for the common meters, from 2/4 to 12/8, or Custom for anything else, 13/16 included. Automate the meter lets it change along the song; the ruler, the grid, the metronome and every bar-synced organism follow.

Recording

Performance capture fills the timeline in one pass. For a single take on an audio track, arm its record button and play. A MIDI Track records when its record button is lit, several at once if you arm several, and an armed track monitors your keyboard even while stopped; with none armed, Capture gives every node your MidiIn reaches a MIDI Track of its own. To record what a sequencer such as DNA or Riff plays, put a MIDI Track between it and the instrument and arm that track.