Patterns and the playlist

A song in Ferrous Lineup is built from patterns, short blocks of music a bar or a few bars long, laid out in time on the playlist. A pattern is “what every channel plays during these bars”: a drum beat, four bars of chords, a fill. The playlist says where each pattern plays, and how many times. The same pattern can play many times: change it once, and every place it plays changes with it.

The song the app opens with shows the idea. It has three patterns: Chords (two bars of C, Am, F and G), Beat (one bar of drums) and Fill (a drum fill). On the playlist, Chords plays four times on the first track, and Beat five times on the second from bar 3, with Fill at the end.

Patterns

The Patterns tab, next to the Library on the left of the window, lists the song’s patterns, each with its colour. Click one to select it. The selected pattern is the one the channel rack and the piano roll show, and the one a click on the playlist places.

The PATTERN controls in the toolbar work on the selected pattern:

• the list picks another pattern;
• ➕ adds a new, empty pattern;
• ⋯ has the pattern’s Name, Clone (a copy to change on its own) and Delete (which takes its clips off the playlist too);
• the last list sets its length: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12 or 16 bars.

A song with a band has a pattern for each player, written from the chord sheet: you don’t need to touch them to hear the band, and the band writes them again when the chords change (see Locking a track, and playing your part).

Pattern mode and song mode

PAT and SONG, at the left of the toolbar, choose what ▶ plays:

• Pattern mode plays the selected pattern over and over. Use it while you write a beat or a part.
• Song mode plays the playlist from the playhead to the end.

L switches between them.

Placing and moving clips

Each block on the playlist is a clip: one pattern, at one place on one track. The playlist’s toolbar line says it in short: “Click to place “Beat”. Double-click a clip to edit it, drag to move it, drag its right edge to repeat it, right-click to delete.“

• Click an empty place on a track to put a clip of the selected pattern there.
• Drag a clip to move it, to another bar or another track.
• Drag its right edge to repeat it: the clip grows by whole patterns, and plays the pattern that many times in a row.
• Double-click a clip to edit it: melodies and chords open in the piano roll, drums in the channel rack.
• Right-click a clip to delete it.

Snap, in the playlist’s toolbar, says where clips land: on a Bar, a Beat or a Step (a sixteenth note).

To work with several clips at once, Ctrl+click them one by one, or Ctrl+drag a box around them on an empty part of the playlist; drag one of them and they all move together. Ctrl+click a section on the Sections strip, or pick Select clips in this section in its menu, to select the clips under it. Then:

Ctrl+click an empty place to choose where Ctrl+V pastes, without placing a clip.

Tracks

Tracks are rows to arrange clips on; any pattern can go on any track. A song has as many tracks as it uses, and under the last one is a fainter row: place a clip on it, or click its ➕ New track, and it becomes a track. ➕ Track in the playlist’s toolbar adds one too.

• The light at the left of a track mutes it and unmutes it.
• Click its name to rename it.
• Drag its lower edge to make it taller or shorter; double-click the edge to give it back its usual height.
• Right-click its name for Track height, Reset track height, Insert track above, Insert track below, Move up, Move down and Delete track, which deletes its clips too.

The strips above the tracks

• Sections: drag along it to mark a part of the song, such as a verse or a chorus. See Song form and sections.
• Tempo: the tempo as a line, with each change marked. See Tempo, time signatures and key changes.
• Bars: the bar numbers, with the time signature and the key at bar 1 and wherever they change. Click a number to move the playhead there. Drag along them to loop that part of the song: song mode then plays it over and over, and the playlist’s toolbar shows 🔁 Looping bars 3–4 ✖; click it to play the whole song again. Right-click a number to insert or delete bars, or to change the time signature or the key from there.

Moving around

The two zooms are also at the right of the status bar: ↔ for the bars and ↕ for the tracks. Follow playhead, in the toolbar, keeps the bar that plays in sight; turn it off to scroll freely while the song plays.