Scratch, Slip & Cues
These are the gestures the timeline does not have. On the recorder, moving the playhead stops playback and starts it again. On the deck, the tracks are already playing, and a gate on each one swaps in a slice or a scratched position without a gap. Letting go puts the original back. The song’s clock only moves when you ask it to.
Q, at the top right of the deck, decides when a change is allowed to land. On, which is the default, a cue, a change of slice, a scratch release, and a rewind all wait for the next sixteenth note of the grid. Off, they happen under your finger. A performance with no tempo yet is treated as 120 in 4/4 for this grid, until a real one is found or typed. See Tempo & the Grid.
Scratch
While the song is playing, put a hand on the platter and turn it. The audio follows the record, faster, slower, or backward, the way a hand on vinyl does.
SLIP is the other key in that corner, and it is on unless you turn it off.
- SLIP on. The song never stopped. It kept its place underneath the scratch. When you let go, the record eases back up to speed and the song comes back in where it would have been. With Q on, that return waits for the next sixteenth.
- SLIP off. Vinyl. When you let go, the song continues from the point the record is sitting on. You have moved the playhead by moving the disc.
Scratching needs the song to be playing. While it is stopped, the same gesture cues instead. See The Deck.
One layer at a time
The layers icon on the rack, between the plugin chain and the MIDI key, turns on layer scratch. It is off until you press it.
With it on, a hand on a layer’s ring scratches that layer alone. The rest of the song plays straight through, and the song’s clock does not move. A hand on the rim, outside the rings, still scratches the whole mix.
The ring you touched last is the one a new cue will aim at, until you stamp the cue. After that the cue keeps the layer it was given, even if your hand moves to another ring. The A and B keys tint to that layer’s color so you can see which one a pad belongs to.
Snapping or repeating a single layer leaves everyone else where they are. That is the point of it: stutter the vocal, leave the drums alone.
A and B
Two pads sit around the bottom of the platter. A is blue. B is pink. Each one remembers a point in the song.
Stamp. Tap an empty pad. It stores the playhead, snapped to the nearest sixteenth note, and a mark appears on the record at that point. The mark turns with the song, so you can see it coming up to the stylus.
Clear. A stamped pad grows a small X just past its end. Tap that to forget the point. It is its own target so a pad played like a drum key does not wipe itself.
Repeat. Hold a stamped pad. From that point, the song (or the one layer the pad belongs to) repeats a slice. Let go and it slips back to where the song would have been had you never pressed it. The clock catches up. Holding the other pad moves the repeat to that point instead.
The slice is a quarter note until you pick another. While a pad is held, a column of sizes appears:
| Size | What repeats |
|---|---|
| SNAP | Nothing. The song jumps to the point and plays on from there. |
| 2 BAR | Two bars |
| 1 BAR | One bar |
| 1/2 | A half note |
| 1/4 | A quarter note, the default |
| 1/8, 1/16, 1/32 | That note |
Bars follow the time signature. A 6/8 bar is six eighths, not four quarters. SNAP is a jump, not a stutter: the old position is gone, and there is nothing to slip back to. Pick a size after a snap and the pad starts repeating from the point you landed on.
Change size while you are still holding. The repeat keeps its place in the grid and takes the new length. With Q on, the new length starts on the next sixteenth rather than in the middle of one.
A slice is drawn as an arc on the rim while the pad is held, so you can see how much of the record is looping.
Locking a repeat
Holding a pad ties up a finger. Drag from the pad onto the lock that appears toward the middle of the deck and the repeat stays after you let go. The line from the pad to the lock goes solid.
Tap the lock, or tap the pad, to release it. The slip-back is the same as if you had been holding the pad the whole time: the song returns to where it would have been.
Recording cancels a locked repeat before the take starts. A take never begins inside a stutter. If you press record and a pad is locked, it lets go first.
Rewind is a cue
Rewind while playing is a snap to the top of the song, through the same gate, with the same Q. The players are rescheduled behind it, so the handoff does not click and does not drop out. Rewind while stopped just parks the playhead at zero. Neither one works in the middle of a take.