Clips

Turn a passage into a named block you can repeat, move and copy in the arranger, without copying and pasting notes.

Available on iPad, iPhone and Mac.

Included with the unlock · What the unlock adds

A clip is a passage of one track made into a block with a name: a riff, a drum groove, a chorus. Write it once, then repeat it, move it along the song or copy it to another place, in the arranger. The score plays, prints and exports a clip’s notes as any others: a clip is a way to arrange the music, not a different kind of track.

Making a clip

1. Choose the passage: select its beats with Select, or its bars with Measure. With neither, the clip takes the bar the cursor is in.
2. Open the arranger and tapClick Clip from Selection, at the arranger’s top left, or choose Score › Create Clip from Selection (J).

The clip is made on the track and the voice the cursor is on, and named Clip 1, then Clip 2 and so on. Reflow switches to Select with the new clip selected. Without the unlock, Clip from Selection shows a lock, and shows what the unlock adds.

A clip's name, track and repeats

TapClick a clip in the arranger to select it; double-tapdouble-click it, or tapclick the selection’s capsule, to open its popup:

• Clip Name: what the block says in the arranger.
• Color: Auto, the track’s colour, or one of its own.
• Track and Voice: move the clip to another track, or to another of the four voices.
• Repeat: how many times it plays in a row, with − and +. A four-bar groove at 8x fills 32 bars, and the arranger draws a line where each repeat starts.

Moving and copying clips

Drag a selected clip along its row to move it in time: it snaps to the beat. Drag it to another row to move it to that track, or to that voice when the track is open into its voices. Hold ⌥Option on a hardware keyboard as you let go to leave the clip where it was and drop a copy. Shift-clickWith a hardware keyboard, hold Shift and tap clips to select several.

Flatten, split and join

With the unlock, the Beat tools, in Edit,the Beat tools and the Score menu have three more buttons, for the selected clip:

• Flatten Clip (⇧J): the clip goes, and its music stays in the score as plain notes, each repeat written out, to change one of them alone.
• Split Clip (Split Clip at Cursor): cuts the clip in two where the cursor is.
• Join Clips: makes one clip of two or more selected clips on the same track and voice; a gap between them becomes rests.