Sample screen

Build a pattern

Move, copy, mute, resize and overlap the blocks under the waveform.

Where: the strip of boxes under the waveform, on the Sample screen.

123456

1A block made longer: x1.50. 2A copy of slice 3 with its own pitch: +5. 3A block that overlaps its neighbour with a crossfade: slanted sides. 4A muted block: paler. 5A roll: ticks, and its rate. 6The variations and the word edited. The gaps are silence.

The idea: a pattern is a list of instructions

The strip under the waveform is the track's pattern (Chop's menus call it the sequence). It is as long as the track's Bars, and it repeats.

Each box in it is a block. A block is not audio: it is an instruction that says "play slice 5, starting here, for this long". The audio stays in the sample; the pattern only says which piece plays when. This is why:

• the same slice can play many times (several blocks point to it), and a slice can play never (no block points to it);
• moving a block changes when a sound plays, never the sound itself;
• a pattern costs nothing: copy, delete and try freely, the sample is untouched.

The waveform above the lane is redrawn from the pattern. It always shows what you will hear, in the order you will hear it.

You need slices before you can build a pattern: see Chop a sample into slices. The difference between a slice and a block is explained in Select slices and blocks.

How the pattern starts

After chopping, the lane has one block per slice, each at its original place: the sample sounds unchanged. This is the automatic sequence. Chop keeps it up to date by itself: add a cut, and a block appears for the new slice.

Your first change (moving, copying, resizing, muting or deleting a block) turns it into your own pattern, and the word edited appears at the right of the lane. From then on the pattern is yours: new cuts split the blocks that exist, but nothing is rearranged for you.

Move, copy, add and delete blocks

Copies are independent blocks of the same slice: each can be moved, resized, muted and given its own sound. A change to the slice still reaches them all.

Play the track (Return) while you work: every change is heard at once.

Mute a block

Right-click a block > Mute. It stays in its place, silent, and Unmute brings it back. Use it to try a pattern with and without a hit; use Delete when you are sure. The other ways to make something silent are compared in Mute, delete, silence, remove.

On the grid, or free

The second menu of the Playback group reads Place: grid or Place: free.

• Place: grid: blocks, their edges and new cuts snap to the Grid chosen in the toolbar (1/16, 1/8 ...). With the Grid on 1/16, a block can only land on a sixteenth. Choose a finer Grid for finer steps.
• Place: free: everything follows the mouse exactly, for hits that should sit a little before or after the beat.

The toolbar's Grid is not the menu beside Chop grid: that one sets where the sample is cut, not where blocks land. See Things with similar names.

Make a block longer or shorter

Drag the right edge of a block. You are changing how long the instruction lasts; what the slice does to fill that time depends on the track's Timing (first menu of the Playback group):

• The block shows its factor, for example x1.50 for one and a half times the slice's length.
• Right-click > Reset length gives it back the length of its slice.
• With Stretch, the new length is prepared in the background for a moment: the track keeps playing as before, then plays the new length.
• To make a block longer in any Timing, turn it into a roll.

This changes the block. To change where the sound of a slice starts or ends, drag its edge in the waveform instead: Move the start or the end of a slice.

When sounds meet: Overlap, Mono and Poly

Two blocks can claim the same moment in two ways, and each has its own control.

Blocks placed on top of each other

When you drag a block over another, they are stacked, and the one you dragged is on top. Only the top one is heard where they overlap. Right-click the top block to choose how it takes over:

• Overlap: Cut: it replaces what is under it. When it ends, the block below goes on from where it would have been, as if it had kept playing underneath.
• Overlap: Crossfade: it fades in over what is under it and fades out again, over a quarter of its length at each end. Use it for sustained sounds, where a hard cut clicks or sounds abrupt.
• Move up / Move down: change which block is on top.

To select a covered block, click the top one twice: see Select a block that is under another.

A slice still sounding when the next block starts

This is different: the blocks do not overlap in the lane, but the audio of one lasts longer than its block. It happens in Beats timing at a faster tempo, and in Varispeed, Beats and Original when a slice is pitched down. The track's Voices menu decides:

• Mono: the new block cuts the old sound.
• Poly: both sound together, up to 16.

A block set to Overlap: Crossfade is never cut by Mono: it blends in. With Stretch timing every block lasts exactly its length, so Mono and Poly rarely make a difference there.

Give one block its own sound

Select a block and use the Selected Slices group of the bottom panel: pitch one copy up, reverse a single hit. See Change one block only.

Change the length of the pattern

The pattern is as long as Bars in the Playback group. More bars give you empty room after the blocks, to fill with copies; fewer bars cut the end. See Change the length of the pattern.

Go back to the original order

Right-click the lane > Reset to automatic sequence. Every slice goes back to its place, once, and the word edited disappears. The slices and their sound do not change; the blocks' own settings, mutes, rolls and copies are gone.

What happens to blocks when you cut again

If you add a cut inside a slice that has blocks, each of its blocks becomes two, one for each half, so the pattern sounds the same as before the cut. A block you had stretched keeps its stretch on both halves, and its own sound settings.

Limits

A pattern can hold up to 1024 blocks.