The one screen
Transport
The bar at the bottom: PLAY/STOP/ENDING, PAUSE and bar stepping, FILL, METRO, TUNER, CHORD DETECT, BOOST and MUTE — and what SPACE and RETURN do exactly.
The transport sits along the bottom of the window and controls the band as a whole (drums and JAM), plus a few controls you reach for with the guitar in your hands. The metronome is not part of it: it has its own clock and its own switch, and the transport never starts or stops it.
Controls, in order
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| PLAY / STOP / ENDING [RETURN] | Starts the band (drums and JAM) from the top, or stops it. The label follows the band's state — see below. |
| ◀ / PAUSE / ▶ [←, SPACE, →] | PAUSE holds the band where it is and becomes RESUME; the arrows step one bar back or on, playing or held. The clock and the click keep counting. See below. |
| FILL [F] | Fires a one-bar drum fill immediately. |
| METRO [M] | The click on or off. Neither RETURN nor SPACE ever starts or stops it. |
| TUNER [T] | The tuner on or off, in the left panel. |
| CHORD DETECT [C] | The chord detector on or off, in the left panel. TUNER and CHORD DETECT are dimmed while a window is over the rack — the stage or a practice — since both show something in the rack; on the stage C is the stage's own detector. |
| BOOST [X] | Extra drive for a solo: +0.18 gain on the FX chain, clamped at 1.0. Press again to drop back. See FX. |
| MUTE [BACKSPACE] | Mutes the whole audio output. Note this lives in the transport bar, not the VOLUME module. |
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| ⏎ | Play from the top / graceful stop the band (2nd press: hard stop) |
| SPACE | Hold the band here / carry on (the clock and the click keep counting) |
| ← | One bar back (playing or held) |
| → | One bar on (playing or held) |
| ↑ | Next section. Songs only |
| ↓ | Previous section (first press: the top of this one). Songs only |
| + | BPM up |
| - | BPM down |
| ⌫ | Mute output |
The PLAY/STOP/ENDING label
The label follows the band:
- PLAY — nothing is playing.
- STOP — drums or JAM are playing, or held.
- ENDING — the band is playing out (finishing a fill/tail before actually halting).
RETURN and the PLAY button
The RETURN key and the PLAY button do exactly the same thing: both call the same transport function.
- First press: the band starts from the top, with a count-in if COUNT-IN is on in GRID; the clock is reset first. If the click is already running, the band joins it instead — no count-in, and the clock stays where it is.
- Press again while the band plays: the band plays out (ENDING).
- Press again during ENDING: hard stop, immediately.
- From a hold: RETURN hard-stops and resets the clock (with METRO on, the click and its clock carry on). Carrying on is SPACE's job.
Note
Since 0.71 the two keys are the other way round from before: SPACE holds and carries on, RETURN plays from the top. Every other program pauses on SPACE, and a player who pressed it to breathe lost their place.
SPACE, pause and bar stepping
SPACE (the PAUSE key) holds the band where it is. The clock and the click keep counting, so nobody loses the count, and the song stays loaded. Press again (RESUME) and the band comes back in on the next downbeat, in the bar it held. When nothing is playing and nothing is held, SPACE starts the band: a song you have just stepped to a bar plays from there, any other from the top.
← and → step one bar back or on — playing, held, or stopped with a song loaded; ↑ and ↓ jump a whole section of a song. With drums alone there is nothing to step: every bar of the pattern is the same bar, so the arrows are disabled. The arrows also stand down while a list or a form is open on top of the window.
With the SONG EDITOR open the window's hotkeys are off: the editor answers to RETURN (play the song from the top / stop), SPACE (hold; held or stopped, the selected section from its top), the arrows, I, ⌘S and ESC — nothing else on the page works while it is open. The editor never counts in, and its transport is immediate: a start is now, a hold stops the clock with it. See the editor's overview.
The looper
A loop follows the same two keys. SPACE holds it with the band and carries it on in place; RETURN stops the band and the loop and resets the clock. A loop playing on its own counts as the band for both. A stopped loop comes back on the next downbeat, from its top. See Looper.
A held key
On the Mac a held key is one press, not a repeat — L held down records once, not forty times. The arrows are the exception: held, they keep stepping.