Performances & Stem Play
The deck is one screen with two front doors. A performance is a project you build. Stem Play is a library song, already separated, that you play over. They look the same once they are open. They do not remember the same things, and record does not do the same job. See Overview for the screen, and Recording for the take.
A performance
Open the library and tap Perform.
The first time, you get an empty one titled New Performance, with four LOAD strips and a Live channel. After that, Perform opens on whichever you used last. Closing it and coming back does not lose the mix, the plugins on Live, the tempo, the cues, or the takes. Those live with the performance.
The list
The folder button in the header leaves the deck and shows every performance on the device: title, artist, how many layers, and the date. Tap one to open it. Tap New Performance for an empty deck.
Hold a row for Rename and Delete. Delete removes that performance’s layers and takes from the device. If you delete the one that was open, you come back to the list rather than to an empty shell of it.
Title and artist
On the deck, tap the title in the header. Rename changes the title. Add Artist, or Change Artist, sets the line under it. The list uses both.
Loading audio
Tap LOAD on an empty strip, or load several files at once. Playback pauses while you pick. Each file becomes a layer: a ring on the deck, a strip on the console, named from the file.
This is the path for stems you exported from a recorder project, a bounce of a mix, a drum loop, anything already audio. See Exporting Stems. Ten layers is the ceiling. See The Console.
Tap a layer’s name to rename it, replace the file, or remove it. Replacing a file drops any loop length that layer had and treats the new audio as a whole file from the top.
What is saved
Layers and their files. The fader, pan, mute, solo, repeat, and crossfade of each. Live’s input, its four plugins, and its takes. MIDI routing. The tempo, including a tempo you typed over the detected one. Whether the song loops. The A and B points, Q, SLIP, REC-Q, and layer scratch.
Monitoring starts off when you reopen a performance. A microphone is not live just because you came back. Press MONITOR again. An instrument will arm itself when you play it. See The Live Channel.
None of that is a recorder project. There is no timeline to reopen. If a performance grew out of a song you still want to edit, the song is in the recorder, and the performance is a copy of the audio.
Stem Play
On Now Playing, run Analyze Key & Mood on the current song. The Music Theory result has Stem Separate. Once a separation exists, that button reads Stem Play and opens the deck with those stems as the rings.
Pro. Stem separation is a Pro feature, in the recorder and here. There is no per-song charge. See Stem Separation.
The setup, the first time, asks how you want the song split: five stems with a guitar, or four with cleaner vocals, and which engine. It runs on the device. You can leave and come back. When it finishes, the deck is the song. Drums, bass, vocals, and the rest, each a ring, each a strip, aligned from the top.
The title and artist are the song’s. Its artwork is the background, until you send the camera there. See Looper & Video.
Rerun, in the header, goes back to that setup. Separating again replaces the stems when the new ones finish. Your takes and your mix are kept. A cancelled or failed run leaves the previous stems where they were. If you are mid-take or mid-video, the button waits.
What you cannot do on a stem set: load a file onto a new layer, rename a stem, replace one, record a loop into the song. The rings are the separation. Mute the one you want to play, monitor Live, and record a take. The take sits on the inner ring and plays through Live, so a guitar stem you muted and a guitar you just played can occupy the same seat in the song.
Opening Stem Play pauses the library player. The deck and the player share an engine, and they do not play over each other.
A song that is not stored on the device cannot be separated. Streamed and remote library items need a local file first.
Which door
Use a performance when the song is yours to build: loops stacked on an empty deck, or stems you exported and want to rearrange, rename, and record over until the recording itself is another layer.
Use Stem Play when the song already exists in the library and you want to sit in for one part of it. The separation is the arrangement. You are the take.