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Connected by Creativity

Chapter 09 of 13

Groove and movement

Music that never changes sounds mechanical. The Movement tool has two ways to fix that: groove, which loosens the timing, and automation, which lets any setting rise and fall as the song plays.

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With sound.

Swing

SWING, in the feel row of Movement and Drums, delays every second sixteenth note. The on-beat notes stay put and the ones between lean late, which turns a stiff beat into a shuffle. It runs from 0 to 75%. A little, 10 to 25%, just loosens things; 50% and above is an obvious swing, as in jazz, house and hip hop.

Swing changes playback only. Your notes stay where you drew them, so you can turn it up or down at any time.

TipSwing only moves notes that fall between the eighth notes. On a beat of plain eighth-note hats you will hardly hear it; add some sixteenths and it comes alive.

Tap tempo

TAP, next to SWING, sets the tempo from your clicks. Click it in time with a song in your head, at least twice, and the BPM follows.

Groove Transplant

GROOVE (or Open groove tools) opens GROOVE TRANSPLANT, which copies the timing of a real recording: how far each hit leans ahead of or behind the beat.

  1. Drop an audio file on DROP AUDIO FILE HERE, or click it to browse.
  2. Choose the SOURCE to listen to: DRUMS, MELODY or FULL MIX. Leave AUTO-DETECT on to find its tempo, or turn it off and set BPM yourself.
  3. Press EXTRACT GROOVE. The GROOVE MAP shows each hit early or late.
  4. Set INTENSITY for how much of the feel to apply, then APPLY.

More groove options

IMPORT TO DRUMS
After extracting from drums, ADD or REPLACE your drum hits with the ones it found.
SAVE GROOVE and LOAD .GROOVE
Keep a groove as a file and reuse it in other projects.
Groove amount
Back in Drums, how strongly the groove applies; each voice can be switched on or off.

Automation

Automation is a line drawn over time that a setting follows: a filter that opens through a build, a part that pans across the stereo field, a lead that fades in. In Movement, the AUTOMATION panel shows one lane per setting.

  1. Choose a CHANNEL: P1 (Lead), P2 (Harmony), TRI (Bass) or NOI (the chip-noise drums). The expanded studio adds more.
  2. Choose a SCOPE (see below).
  3. Click a lane to add a point; drag a point up or down to change its value. The line between points is what the setting follows.
  4. Right-click a lane for DELETE POINT, CLEAR LANE and COPY LANE to the other scope.

What can be automated

VOL and PAN
Level, and position from left to right.
DUTY
Pulse width, on the pulse parts.
VIB.D and VIB.S
Vibrato depth and speed.
TREM.R and TREM.D
Tremolo rate and depth.
PWM.R and PWM.D
Pulse-width movement rate and depth, on the pulse parts.
HAAS and CHR.D
Stereo delay and chorus depth.
HPF and LPF
The high-pass and low-pass filters: the classic sweeps.

In the expanded studio, the FM, 303 and other synth types add lanes for their own controls, and the insert effects add FX lanes.

Pattern lanes and song lanes

PAT
Pattern lanes travel with the pattern: they replay every time it plays, in every clip and every loop.
SONG
Song lanes sit at fixed places in the arrangement and play once, start to finish. Use them for long builds and fades.

Recording automation

Instead of drawing, you can perform it. Arm REC, press Play, and move a knob under LIVE KNOBS: your moves are written into the lane as you go. The playback monitor shows ● REC while it is armed.

Swing in exported audio

As the Finish tool notes, WAV and mastering renders use straight timing: live swing and transplanted groove are not included in them. Automation is included. In the demo above, the swing was written into the notes so you can hear it.

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