User guide

Chop user guide

How to chop, arrange and mix samples with Chop, one task at a time.

Chop is a small music program for the Mac. It has eight tracks, and each track holds one sample: a drum loop, a chord, a voice, a single hit. You cut the sample into pieces, put the pieces in a new order, place the result on a timeline with the other tracks and mix everything through your own effects.

This guide explains how to do each of those things. It follows the app: one group of pages for each of its three screens, then MIDI, projects and reference.

If you are new

1. Install and set up: get Chop running and hear sound.
2. How Chop works: the idea behind the app, in ten minutes. Everything else is easier after it.
3. Find your way around: what is in the window and how the controls work.
4. Play and listen: what Return and Space do. Read this one: it is used on every other page.
5. Your first chop: a tutorial from an empty project to an exported beat.

If you are looking for one thing

Find a function lists everything Chop does from A to Z, with the page that explains it. Keyboard, mouse and menus lists every key and gesture. The glossary explains the words.

Sample screen: make one track

• The Sample screenWhat each area of the screen is for, and the order to work in.
• Load, import and record samplesFrom a file, from a piece of a long file or from the audio input.
• Use the sample browserYour folders, favourites and recent samples, with preview and search.
• Chop a sample into slicesOn the grid, at the transients or by hand; trim, silence and remove.
• Select slices and blocksWhat a click selects, and what the keys and knobs then act on.
• Build a patternMove, copy, mute, resize and overlap the blocks.
• Rolls and swingStutters, risers and shuffle.
• Shape the soundPitch, gain, reverse, envelope and filter for a track, a slice or one block.
• Tempo, bars and timingMake a sample follow the project tempo.
• Variations A to DFour patterns on one track.
• Resample a trackPrint a track through its effects into a new sample.

Multitrack screen: build the song

• Arrange the songParts on the timeline, part markers, track names and colours.
• Automate a parameterDraw changes on a part, or record them from a controller.

Mixer screen: mix it

• Mix the tracksLevels, pan, mute and solo, EQ, sends and returns, meters.
• Use VST3 effectsFind, load and manage your plugins.

MIDI, projects and files

• Control Chop from a MIDI controllerMIDI Learn, the selected track or slice, encoders.
• Save, open and move projectsProject files, samples, autosave and recovery.
• Export the mix, stems or slicesWAV files for release or for another program.
• Settings and the windowAudio and MIDI devices, interface size, what Chop remembers.

Reference

• Keyboard, mouse and menusEvery key, gesture and menu item.
• Limits and rangesThe numbers: how many, how long, how far.
• GlossaryThe words Chop and this guide use.
• Find a functionEverything Chop does, A to Z.
• TroubleshootingWhat to check when something does not work.

What Chop does not do

Knowing this saves you looking for it. Chop has no piano roll, no MIDI tracks, no step sequencer and no pads: MIDI moves knobs, it never plays notes. It does not record onto the timeline: recording only makes a new sample. It has eight tracks, one sample on each, and no built-in effects apart from a simple EQ on each mixer strip. It is not a plugin: it runs on its own, and you export WAV files for the program you already use.