Overview
Perform is the live deck in Homecrate. The recorder is where a song gets arranged: clips on a timeline, a strip per track, a piano roll, a mixdown when you are done. Perform is where you play one. The audio engine underneath is the recorder’s. The screen in front of it is a platter, one Live channel for your own sound, and a set of controls that assume the song is already moving.
You open it two ways.
Library, then Perform. A performance is its own project. It starts empty. Load audio onto its layers, or record the first loop and let that become the song. It opens on the last one you used. The folder button in the header lists the others and starts a new one. See Performances & Stem Play.
A song in your library, then Stem Play. Homecrate separates that song on the device and puts each stem on the platter as a fixed layer. Mute the guitar and play yours. Stem Play is Pro, the same feature as stem separation in the recorder. See Stem Separation.
Both open this screen. A performance lets you add, replace, and record layers. A stem set does not: the layers are the song, and what you record comes back as a take on Live.
What you are looking at
Four regions.
Header. Close on the left. The title and artist in the middle. In a performance, tap the title to rename it or set the artist. On the right, depending on what is loaded: the list of performances (or Rerun, on a stem set), the looper, and the on-screen keyboard once a plugin on Live can take MIDI.
The deck. The song, drawn as a record. Each layer is a ring of its waveform. A stylus at the top is the playhead. The middle is a clock and a play key. Turning the record moves through the song. While it plays, the same gesture scratches it. See The Deck.
The rack. One row under the platter. Where Live is listening, the plugins on it, MIDI, and your takes. See The Live Channel.
The console. Live first, then a strip per layer. Fader, pan, mute, solo. In a performance, strips marked LOAD are waiting for a file. See The Console.
Rewind, play, and record sit with the console. The video icon sits beside them.
On a folded iPhone Duo, the deck’s corner keys and the transport move into the side band so the platter can use the screen. They do the same things.
The recorder’s engine, on a deck
Perform does not have a second playback engine. Opening the screen starts the recorder’s: the monitoring graph, the AUv3 host, the metronome, the looper, the camera. Closing it stops them. A few of those machines are used differently here, because a performance cannot stop to make an edit.
Layers are bounces. Up to ten of them play finished audio. They never run through your amp. If a layer was printed through homecrate amp, that sound is in the file. Loading a different plugin on Live does not change the layer.
Live is the only input. One channel, four plugin slots, one source. The recorder can arm several inputs at once and put a different chain on each. Perform will not. There is one performer.
A microphone take on a stem set is recorded dry and played back through whatever is loaded on Live, so the amp can change after the take. An instrument plugin is captured after the plugin, and played back on its own, so it is not heard twice. A loop recorded into a performance is different again: it is printed, chain and all, and becomes a layer. See Recording.
The song does not restart to be performed. Scratch, a cue, and rewind-to-the-top are gates on the tracks that are already playing. The audio keeps running. The gate swaps in a scratched or repeated slice and swaps it back out. On the timeline, moving the playhead stops playback and starts it again from the new point. That gap is the whole problem on a deck, so the engine does not take it. See Scratch, Slip & Cues.
A loop joins the song it was recorded over. In a performance, record does not leave a clip sitting at the playhead for you to drag into place. Live is captured while the song loops. Pressing record again closes the take on a bar line, and the new layer is already in the mix, repeating. The first loop, with nothing under it, is played back out of the capture itself so the handoff has no hole in it. The recorder’s timeline has nothing that works this way. Its looper is a pedal beside the arrangement. Here the loop is the arrangement.
The grid is read off the audio. Perform listens to the most rhythmic layer, drums first, and finds a tempo and a downbeat. Bar marks on the platter, the count-in, and record quantize all use that grid. You can type over it. Half and double keep the same downbeat, which is the mistake a tempo detector usually makes. See Tempo & the Grid.
A mic lines up with what you heard. You hear the song late, by the output path, and a microphone is captured late, by the input path. The take is trimmed by both. Those are the same numbers the recorder uses when you record over a backing track.
What you give up is the timeline. No clip editor, no piano roll, no automation lanes, no per-track arming, no spatial mixer, no mixdown of the whole deck. A take can be shared as a file. A song you want to cut up belongs in the recorder. Export its stems if you want them back on the platter. See Exporting Stems.
Next
- The record itself: The Deck.
- Your sound: The Live Channel.
- Putting a part down: Recording.