The Deck

The deck is the song, drawn as a record. Time runs counterclockwise from the stylus at 12 o’clock, and the platter turns clockwise, so whatever comes next is carried up to the needle the way a record does it. One turn of the platter is one pass of the song.

The rings

Each layer is a ring of its own waveform, in the color of its console strip. A whole song rides the rim. A short repeating loop sits further in, just outside the Live take, because a fast turn covers less ground there. Two layers of the same length keep their order, the earlier one inside the later. When a Live take is selected, it is the innermost ring.

A recorded loop that is shorter than the song and set to repeat is drawn as one turn of its loop. It spins faster than the song around it. A one-bar loop inside a four-bar song comes around four times per pass. You can see the repeat before you hear a seam. See The Console for the repeat key, and Recording for how a loop gets its length.

A ring of light sits just inside the rim. At rest it drifts. While the song plays it moves with the tempo. Bar lines of the grid are dots on the rim. See Tempo & the Grid.

The middle

The center is the clock and the play key.

What the clock shows	When
Time, over the song length	Playing, paused, or stopped
A count, labeled COUNT IN	The bar of clicks before a take
A countdown in tenths, labeled REC IN	A loop is waiting for its start bar
A countdown in tenths, labeled ENDS IN	You closed the loop, and it is playing out to the end bar

Under the clock, one lamp per beat of the bar. The downbeat’s lamp is the tall one. They light with the playhead while the song is rolling, and they sit dark while it is stopped.

The round key is play and pause. The same key sits in the transport, under the console or in a column beside the platter. While a take is recording, that key becomes stop.

Moving through the song

Turn the platter while it is stopped. The playhead follows your hand, and you hear the audio under it. Play starts from wherever you leave it. This is cueing: finding the point, hearing it, then going.

Drag the stylus. A band around the needle at 12 o’clock is for placing the playhead rather than playing the record. The platter turns under the needle so the stylus sits on the point it will play from. Stopped, you hear it as you drag. Playing, the song jumps there when you let go, and the record holds still until the playhead has caught up, so it does not swing back and forth under your hand.

Rewind. Stopped, the playhead goes to the top. Playing, rewind is the same kind of jump as a cue set to the top of the song: the tracks keep running and land on the start, on the next sixteenth note when Q is on. There is no stop and no gap. Rewind does nothing while a take is recording.

Loop. The repeat key at the top left of the deck, next to the tempo. On, the whole song repeats, from the top to the end of the longest layer, and every layer restarts together. Off, playback reaches the end, stops, and parks at the top. You cannot toggle it while recording. Recording a loop of your own turns it on, because a loop that does not come back around is not a loop yet. See Recording.

The corner keys

Two clusters sit over the top of the platter. The left cluster is the song. The right cluster is how your gestures land.

Key	What it does
BPM	Opens the tempo sheet. The number is the tempo in use. Under it, the time signature, or CHECK in amber when the detected tempo is a guess. A tempo you typed is green. A spinner means it is still listening.
Metronome	Count-in. One bar of clicks before a take, left out of the recording. Lit when it is on. The tempo sheet has the same switch.
Repeat	Loop the whole song.
SLIP	On, a scratch lets the song keep running underneath, and letting go drops you back in where it got to. Off, the song continues from where the record is. On by default. See Scratch, Slip & Cues.
Q	On, cue changes, scratch releases, and rewind land on the next sixteenth note. Off, they happen under your finger. On by default.
REC-Q	Performances only. On, a recorded loop starts and ends on a bar, or on the length of the first loop. Off, the loop is as long as you hold it. On by default. Hidden on a stem set, where record makes a take rather than a layer.

REC-Q and the loop key are disabled while a take is already recording. Change them before you press record.

Transport

Key	What it does
Rewind	Top of the song. Quantized while playing, immediate while stopped.
Play	Play or pause. Stop, while recording.
Record	Starts a take, or closes the one in progress. See Recording.
Video	Opens the camera. Sits off the glass keys, on purpose, so a stray tap does not start filming. Pro. See Looper & Video.

The play key in the middle of the platter and the play key in the transport are the same control.