Lesson 17

Shape the sound: knobs & automation

Change a sound with the knobs while your loop plays, record those knob moves, and remove them again.

You’ll need:

A Move that is switched on
The Set from Lesson 15, or any Set with a melodic clip that has notes in it

The idea

The eight knobs above the pads change how the current sound behaves. Move calls them encoders. Each knob is linked to one setting of the instrument or effect you have selected, and which settings you get depends on the sound. The knobs are touch-sensitive: rest a finger on one, without turning, and the display tells you what it controls.

One of the most useful settings on many sounds is the filter. A filter removes part of the sound. The point where it starts cutting is called the cutoff. With the most common kind of filter, turn the cutoff down and the sound gets dull and muffled, as if it were behind a wall. Turn it up and it gets bright and crisp again. Slowly opening a filter over a few bars is a classic way to build excitement before a big moment in a song.

You only have two hands, so Move can remember your knob moves for you. This is called automation: you press Record, turn a knob while the loop plays, and from then on the knob’s setting changes by itself at the same moments, every time the loop comes round.

Knobs work on one part of the sound at a time. As you saw in Lesson 8, each track’s sound is an instrument plus two effects, shown as icons on the display. You choose which part the knobs control by turning the wheel.

Press the third track button from the top: the track with your chords from Lesson 15.
Didn’t work?
Any melodic track with notes in its clip will do. The last step of this lesson needs a step that has a note on it.
You should see: The display shows the track's sound as a row of icons.
Press Play to start the loop.
You should hear: Your loop plays: drums, bass and chords.
Turn the wheel one click at a time until just one icon is highlighted. That icon is one part of the sound: the instrument or one of its effects.
Didn’t work?
If all the icons light up together, the whole preset is selected. Turn the wheel one more click.
You should see: A single icon is highlighted instead of all of them.
Rest a finger on each knob in turn, without turning it, and read what it controls. Look for one whose name mentions the filter.
Didn’t work?
Not every part has a filter setting. If you don’t find one, turn the wheel to the next icon and try again, or simply pick any knob whose name you’re curious about.
You should see: The display shows the name and value of the setting under your finger.
Turn that knob slowly left, then back to the right, while the loop plays. Stop where it sounds normal again.
Didn’t work?
If you can’t hear a change, turn further: some settings only sound different over a large part of their range.
You should hear: The chords change as you turn. If it's a filter cutoff, they get duller one way and brighter the other.
Press Record.
Didn’t work?
If you hear a bar of clicks first, that’s the count-in from Lesson 11. Wait for it to end before you turn the knob.
You should see: The Record button turns red. The loop keeps playing.
While the loop plays once through, turn the knob slowly from one end of its sweep to the other, for example from dull to bright.
Didn’t work?
Only the part you selected with the wheel records. To record a different part, turn the wheel to it while you’re still recording.
You should see: A filled circle appears next to the value, and the knob's light turns red.
Press Record again to stop recording. Take your hands off and listen.
Didn’t work?
Want to try a move without losing the recording? Turn the knob while the loop plays: it follows your hand, then goes back to the recorded moves when you let go.
You should hear: The loop keeps playing, and the sound changes by itself, just as you turned the knob.
Hold Delete and touch the same knob. Don’t turn it, and don’t touch anything else.
Didn’t work?
Delete also removes clips and notes, so touch only the knob while you hold it. If something else vanished, press Undo straight away.
You should see: The automation for that knob is gone: the sound no longer changes by itself.
Hold Step 1 (it has a chord on it) and turn the same knob. The new setting now applies from that chord until the next one.
Didn’t work?
Keep Step 1 held down the whole time: a quick tap removes its notes. If that happens, press Undo. Per-step automation only works on a step that has a note, so if Step 1 is empty on this track, hold a step that is lit white.
You should see: The step lights after Step 1 turn red, up to the next step with a note.

Try it yourself

Record a slow filter sweep on your chords that goes from very dull to fully bright over one loop. Then do the same on your bass track.
Turn the wheel to one of the effect icons, touch the knobs to see what they do, and record a move on one of them.
Use per-step automation to give each chord step a different brightness, so the pattern changes colour as it plays.

Good to know

To see which knobs have automation, hold Mute and look at the lights under the knobs. Red means the knob has recorded moves that are active, white means they are switched off, and no light means there are none.
Hold Mute and touch a knob to switch its automation off without deleting it. Do the same again to switch it back on.
Stopping playback with Play, or switching to another track, also ends a recording.
On sampler sounds, some knobs make finer changes if you hold Shift while you turn them. Holding Shift and tapping certain sampler knobs switches them to a second setting instead, so turn rather than tap.