Lesson 13

Edit steps: velocity, length, nudge

Fine-tune single notes in your pattern by making them louder or softer, longer or shorter, a little early or late, and higher or lower.

You’ll need:

A Move that is switched on
The beat from Lesson 9, with a hi-hat on a few steps

The idea

When you put a note on a step, Move gives it standard settings. It plays at one strength, lasts a set time and starts exactly on the step. That is a fine start, but it can sound a bit stiff. Real players never hit every note the same way. Each note has four things you can change:

How hard it plays. This is its velocity, which you met in Lesson 6. A hit that is louder than the ones around it is called an accent. Accents give a beat its bounce. A classic trick is to make every other hi-hat a little louder.
How long it lasts. Short, clipped notes sound bouncy and tight. Long notes that run into each other sound smooth and full. This matters most for melodic sounds such as a bass.
Exactly when it starts. Moving a note a tiny bit early or late is called nudging. A hi-hat that is slightly late sounds lazy and relaxed; a slightly early one sounds pushy and excited.
Its pitch. You can move a note up or down without deleting it and placing it again.

Here is the hi-hat pattern from the end of Lesson 9. The two hits you could make louder are marked. If you added the extra hi-hats on the even steps in Lesson 10, they are still there too; that is fine.

1234

Beat 1

5678

Beat 2

9101112

Beat 3

13141516

Beat 4

The hi-hats from Lesson 9, between the beats. Making steps 3 and 11 louder gives the pattern a lilt.

The trick for all four edits is the same: keep a step button held down, then use another control. Holding the step tells Move which note you mean.

Press Play so you can hear every change as you make it.
Didn’t work?
No beat yet? Go back to Lesson 9 and put a kick, a snare and a hi-hat on a few steps first. If the drum track now shows a newer clip, such as your capture from Lesson 12, press Note/Session, press the pad of your Lesson 9 clip in the drum row, then press that row’s track button to come back to Note Mode.
You should hear: Your beat from Lesson 9 plays round and round.
Make sure you’re on your drum track, then tap the hi-hat pad in the left block. On a drum track, the step buttons light up only for the pad you picked last.
Didn’t work?
Can’t remember which pad is the hi-hat? Tap the pads one by one and listen for a short, bright tick. If you are on the wrong track, press the track button for your drums first.
You should see: The step buttons now show only this drum sound's hits.
Hold down Step 3. If your hi-hats sit on other steps, hold any lit one instead. Keep holding it and turn the Volume knob a little. Try one direction, listen, then the other, and stop when that hit stands out.
Didn’t work?
Keep the step held the whole time. A quick tap on a lit step removes its note instead. If a hit disappears, press Undo to bring it back.
You should hear: The hi-hat on step 3 changes in loudness while the others stay the same.
Hold Step 7 (or another lit hi-hat step) and press the Right arrow twice. Each press moves the note a tenth of a step later.
Didn’t work?
The change is small on purpose, so listen closely. Press a few more times to hear it clearly, or press the Left arrow (still holding the step) to move it back. Holding the arrow down longer moves the note by a whole step.
You should hear: The hi-hat on step 7 now lands a hair later than before.
Press the second track button from the top to switch to a melodic sound. In a brand-new Set, this track always holds a bass.
Didn’t work?
If this track sounds like drums, you may be in a demo Set or have swapped the sound. Try the other track buttons until neighbouring pads play the same instrument at different pitches.
You should see: The second track is selected. In a new Set it holds a bass.
Hold Shift and press Step 14. This gets a new, empty clip ready on the bass track, so any bass clip already there, like your bassline from Lesson 11, stays safe.
You should see: The step buttons show an empty bar: this track now has a fresh clip to fill.
Press one pad, then Step 1. This puts that note on Step 1, just like the drum hits you placed in Lesson 9.
Didn’t work?
If you don’t hear it, check that the music is still playing, and press Play if it stopped.
You should hear: A bass note now plays at the start of every loop, along with your beat.
Press the same pad again, then Step 9.
You should hear: The same bass note now also plays halfway through the loop.
Hold Step 1 and turn the wheel to the right. Each click adds a tenth of a step, so turn it well over ten clicks to make the note last several steps.
Didn’t work?
The note can’t grow past the next step that holds the same note, here Step 9. To make a note shorter and snappier, hold its step and turn the wheel to the left.
You should see: As the note grows, the step lights after Step 1 get brighter: the note now covers them too.
Hold Step 9 and press Plus once. The note moves up by one semitone, the smallest step between two notes. Press Plus a couple more times and listen to how the bassline changes.
Didn’t work?
Keep the step held. Without it, Plus moves the whole set of pads up an octave instead. If a pitch sounds odd, hold the step and press Minus to bring it back down. To jump a whole octave at once, hold the step and keep Plus or Minus down for a moment instead of tapping it.
You should hear: The second bass note is now slightly higher than the first.

Try it yourself

Go back to your drums, tap the hi-hat pad, and give Step 11 the same accent as Step 3. Then make the other hi-hats a little softer. Can you make the pattern sound like a real drummer?
Nudge a different hi-hat a little early instead of late. Which one feels better with your beat?
On the bass, hold a step and look at the pads: the notes on that step light up. While holding the step, press another pad to add a second note, then press the lit pad to take it away.

When you’re done, press Play to stop.

Good to know

You can hold several steps at once for any of these edits, and all their notes change together. Press them down and keep them all held; a quick tap on a second step does something else (see the next note).
To nudge in really tiny amounts, hold Shift as well as the step while you press an arrow.
Since software 1.5 there’s a quicker way to change a note’s length: hold its step and briefly press a later step. The note then stretches towards the step you tapped.