clip player

How the pieces fit

A lane is one instrument or audio channel. Clip Player has 8 lanes, with 64 stored slots per lane. Only one clip plays in a lane at a time. Each clip keeps its notes, automation and optional recorded-audio layer together in the same slot.

Inspecting, launching and choosing a record target are separate actions. The editor can show a stopped clip while a different slot plays. Once audio is armed, its destination stays fixed even if you inspect something else.

TIMELORDE supplies the shared clock. With QNT on, queued launches wait for the next boundary of the longest currently playing clip. NOW bypasses that wait. If nothing is playing yet, the first launch starts immediately.

Your first note clip

1. Add Clip Player and enable audio. Use the rack’s TIMELORDE for tempo and transport.
2. Open Clip Player’s full view. In SESSION, double-click an empty pad in lane 1 to open EDITOR.
3. Click piano-roll cells to add notes. Time runs left to right; higher pitches are higher on the screen.
4. Patch pitch1 to a voice’s pitch input, gate1 to its envelope or gate input, and the voice’s audio to your mixer/output. Add vel1 where your voice accepts velocity.
5. Start transport and press NOW in the editor. Return to SESSION to launch other clips.

No controller is required. Drawing notes alone does not make sound: the NOTES source needs a connected voice. Record that voice to attach its sound to the same clip, then choose RECORDED to play the saved take.

Session, channels and playback

On screen, columns are lanes and rows are slots. Click a loaded pad to launch or queue it; click the currently playing pad to stop its lane. Double-click opens its note editor, with audio controls alongside when it has a take. Shift-click launches immediately. An empty pad can become a note placeholder, but opening an empty editor alone writes no notes.

MUTE silences a lane while retaining its running clip. STOP stops that lane. Stop-all is the immediate panic action. RST re-aligns active clips to their first step; it does not rewind the arrangement or launch stopped lanes.

The screen grid shows the first eight slots. The selected-clip LANE / SLOT selectors reach all 64 slots without launching. Hardware banking reaches the extended slot range. The selected-clip controls and recording status sit directly below the grid and wrap within its width; scene repeats for the first eight scenes follow beneath them in their own SCENES block, so the grid keeps its place at the top of the session page.

Right-click a pad for COPY, PASTE and CLEAR, plus note-specific probability controls. The screen, Push and Launchpad share a local clipboard. A whole-clip copy carries its notes, automation and attached audio; the audio keeps its media reference. A scene buffer pastes into a scene, and a clip buffer into a clip. A paste replaces the destination’s contents as one undoable edit. Menu CLEAR deletes all of that clip’s layers.

Write and shape note clips

The piano roll shows the selected clip’s editable pitch range and full length, up to 128 steps. Click an empty cell to add and select a note. Click an existing note to select it; click that selected note again to erase it. Shift-click a later cell on the same pitch row to hold the selected note through that step. The tied span appears as one solid bar. Alt-click, or turn on VEL and click, to cycle velocity. Right-click an existing note to open its menu.

Ordinary step notes use the global GATE setting; tied notes sustain across their span. Notes recorded from hardware KEYS can carry their own held duration, including a fraction of a step, so changing GATE does not shorten those captured gates. A recorded note ends no later than the clip’s end. Tying it in the editor replaces that captured duration with the span you choose.

Probability, pitch variation and loop skips

NOTE PROBABILITY controls whether a note fires. SKIP EVERY plays it only on every Nth loop, from 1 to 8. Both conditions must pass. PITCH PROBABILITY varies the played pitch around the written note using the clip’s scale; it is set from the screen menu.

Probability dims the note toward purple/orange; loop skips tint it red; combined settings blend those colors. Pitch variation adds a dashed border. The tooltip and menu show exact values. On a pad’s clip menu, probability becomes the clip default while skip and pitch variation apply to its notes. On a note cell, the change affects that note.

Loop skips and pitch variation follow shared deterministic timing. Firing-probability rolls are currently local to each peer, so collaborators can hear different dropouts.

Hear the clip you are editing

NOW switches its lane to this clip immediately. QUEUE follows QNT and the shared reference boundary. Neither requires leaving the editor. If the clip has a take, choose NOTES to hear your note edits; editing notes does not rewrite saved audio. Live hardware KEYS and arpeggiator entry are described in the controller guides; recording those notes is additive and separate from audio capture.

Record audio, then choose what you hear

1. Route the sound to the matching MIXMSTRS channel input. Lane 1 captures channel 1, and so on. Add MIXMSTRS if the rack does not have it.
2. Select the existing clip whose sound you want to record using the LANE / SLOT selectors below the Session grid. This does not launch it. Recording temporarily uses NOTES so the clip drives its patched voice, even when replacing an existing take.
3. Choose 1 · ONE LOOP or ∞ · UNTIL FINISH using that lane’s AUDIO row. Press the red AUDIO arm or RECORD AUDIO. If the clip already has a take, use REPLACE TAKE… → REPLACE AND ARM. The take stays attached to this same lane and slot.
4. Launch that clip and start transport when ready. Arming alone does neither: it can wait while transport is stopped or a different clip is playing. Capture starts on the target clip’s loop boundary and measures that clip’s own loop, even when another lane has a longer clip. The visible status identifies the target and phase.
5. A one-loop take finishes automatically. For endless recording, press the arm again to finish at the end of the current loop. During a one-loop take, pressing it again cancels the unfinished take. The clip keeps rendering its notes through the stopping phase; wait for the take to finish saving.

Saving attaches the stereo take to the same clip and selects RECORDED. It keeps that clip’s lane and slot, preserves notes and automation, and does not queue an extra launch. NOTES plays its note sequence through the voice; RECORDED plays its saved audio instead of generating those notes. Switch between them on this clip. Automation continues in either source.

Double-click the clip to keep editing its notes, with waveform and source controls alongside. A purple audio indicator means the clip has a saved take. Note edits do not alter that take; choose NOTES to hear them and record again when you want an updated audio layer.

Stopping transport during an endless take keeps completed whole loops; an incomplete single-loop take is discarded. Audio plays at its recorded duration: it is not time-stretched when you change tempo, STEP or RATE. Keep the capture tempo when you need the take to stay aligned with note loops.

A long take does not lengthen the note clip. Record four passes of a 16-step clip and its notes and automation still loop every 16 steps; launches and stops still use that original clip length. The attached audio repeats its full four-pass captured duration.

REPLACE TAKE… asks for confirmation before replacing the clip’s audio layer. The original take stays until the new take commits; its notes and automation are preserved. Copy the whole clip to another slot first if you want to keep a version with the old take. An armed target cannot move; cancel the arm before choosing a different clip.

Leaving the editor, closing the full view or disconnecting a controller does not end a take. Recording belongs to the module. A collaborator’s armed lane cannot be taken over from your controls. Interrupted or refused takes report a reason rather than silently recording somewhere else.

Older racks can contain standalone audio clips. These remain readable and playable; their editor shows the saved waveform. New recording adds an audio layer to your existing clip.

Record control movements with AUTO

The teal AUTO button above each Session lane is the per-lane automation-record arm. CHANNELS exposes the same arm next to RATE. It is independent of the red AUDIO arm and of arrangement recording.

1. Open the menu of a module you want to automate and choose Assign to automation lane. Assign the whole module to one lane; its border shows that lane’s color.
2. Launch a note clip in that lane, then arm AUTO. The recorder waits for that playing clip’s own loop start, even when another lane has a different length.
3. Move the assigned module’s controls. Screen, MIDI and Electra gestures record. Supported CV bridge targets can also record effective values; a human touch takes precedence. Unassigned modules do not record into that lane.
4. Continue across loops to overdub. Only controls you are moving are rewritten; the other recorded tracks keep playing. Disarm AUTO to finish. Stopping mid-loop preserves the untouched tail.

A teal dot marks clips with automation. Copying the clip carries its automation; reverse paste reverses its notes and envelopes. Each clip holds up to 16 recorded controls. The MAX indicator reports the limit; ASSIGNED and REC report assignment and recording state, with details in their tooltips. Automation continues when the clip switches between NOTES and RECORDED, including mixer control movements.

Live control gestures temporarily override playback. Release the control to return to automation; the override indicator can re-enable all controls. At a lane stop or switch, controls hold their last automated value instead of resetting. Multiple lanes can record at once, with one recording client per lane.

CLR AUTO in the editor clears that clip’s envelopes while keeping its notes and audio. A control’s menu can clear its recorded automation. Remove automation assignment only stops future recording for that module; existing envelopes still play. These are deliberately different operations.

Scenes, repeats and longer sets

A scene launches the same slot across all lanes; empty members stop their lanes. On the screen and a single controller, that is a row. The paired Launchpad’s left matrix and monome rotate the view: lanes are rows and slots are columns.

Scene repeat defaults to ∞. Click its on-screen repeat control to cycle ∞ → 2 → 3 → 4 → 8 → ∞. Hardware offers counts 1–63. After that many passes of the scene’s longest clip, playback advances to the next scene with content, skipping empty scenes. At the last populated scene, it keeps looping.

The duration is captured when the scene launches, so edits do not move an active countdown’s boundaries. Launching a scene resets its count; launching an individual clip outside it or stopping all scene lanes cancels the countdown. Muting does not. A whole-scene copy includes its repeat count.

Slots 9–64 can play in Session and are reachable from the inspector and controller banks. The screen matrix itself does not scroll. The experimental arrangement recorder currently captures only slots 1–8.

Capture a performance: SONG or ARR

Printed SONG captures the notes that survived probability and loop skips, with pitch variation, rate, division and swing already applied. It plays those events directly instead of re-running the original clip decisions. OCT remains a live output transpose. SONG is a note performance, not an audio mixdown, and currently does not print automation or recorded audio. A clip using RECORDED does not generate notes to print.

ARR follows the clip-launch log, so its clips still supply their contents. Its editor lets you select a block, drag it horizontally with BAR / BEAT snapping, cycle its slot, delete it, or adjust the arrangement loop length by bars. The expanded ARR editor is the same launch-log view. There is no printed-song piano-roll editor.

Use Session for hands-on launches. Song playback takes over the lanes; changing the playback mode is separate from arming a recorder. Neither SONG nor ARR replaces the lane’s AUDIO or AUTO workflow.

Routing and timing reference

Capture uses the corresponding pre-fader input of the first available MIXMSTRS. Leave the instrument cables connected. With RECORDED selected, the attached take replaces the channel’s live input monitoring; with NOTES selected, the note sequence drives the voice again. No cable moves are needed. The lane’s audioN L/R outputs also expose recorded playback for custom routing; patching them replaces the automatic return. Mixer automation still applies because the take is captured before those mixer controls.

If you patch this Clip Player’s audioN L/R outputs anywhere, that cable route replaces the internal stereo return (and its live-input replacement) so the take is not doubled. Connecting either leg disables that internal pair; connect both legs for stereo. Ordinary instrument-input cables into MIXMSTRS never disable the return.

The transport controls operate TIMELORDE; local Play / Stop hide when it follows an upstream external clock. Detailed port types and parameter ranges are in the generated reference below.

Choose your control surface

Push 2 and Launchpad expose audio recording at CONTROL → AUDIO. The hardware guides explain how to pick a clip, arm, finish, switch NOTES / RECORDED, and confirm replacement without disturbing their permanent controls. They use the same clip layers and routing as the screen. The shared Push/Launchpad layer has one active controller surface at a time; a Launchpad pair is one surface.

Recovery, saving and troubleshooting

Clip metadata and playback state are shared, but recorded audio bytes live in the browser’s local media storage; they are not streamed automatically to collaborators. A performance ZIP (.ptperf.zip) includes available referenced takes and restores them into the receiving browser. A plain .imp.json does not carry audio. Export reports missing media; keep the recording browser’s data until you have a complete media-bearing backup.

Editor selection and hardware connection are personal. Saving or duplicating content does not preserve an active record arm. A duplicate starts stopped, disarmed and without claiming the original’s automation assignments. Undo/redo applies to content edits, not every transport action.

For exact physical gestures and connection troubleshooting, use the linked hardware guides. The reference below is generated from the current module definition; this illustrated guide describes the workflow around those controls.