Automation

In the desktop app. Automation belongs to the desktop app and is arriving in its beta; the web studio does not have it. The examples on this page are rendered by the studio’s engine, with a control moving while it plays.

What it is for

Everything you set on a device (the cutoff of a filter, the mix of a delay, a gain) normally stays where you put it for the whole song. Automation lets it move: the song fades out, the filter opens into the chorus, the delay grows on the last word of a line. It is the difference between a mix that is a photograph and one that is a performance.

Reach for it when the right setting for the verse is not the right one for the chorus, or when a change over time is the idea itself.

The curve

Automation is drawn as a curve in a lane under the track’s clips: time runs left to right, as everywhere, and the height of the line is the value of the control at that moment. Each curve belongs to one control of one device. A track shows a lane only for controls that have a curve, so a track without automation looks as it always did.

Any knob of a device can have a curve, and so can a track’s own volume and pan. The master has a volume curve and no pan.

Recording a movement

A control records only once it has a curve. Give it one first: Alt-click the knob, fader or pan (see Points). From then on, turning it while the song plays writes the movement into the curve; let go, and the control follows the curve again: while the song plays, it shows the value the curve gives it.

A control without a curve is never recorded. Setting a level by ear while the song plays stays a plain setting, not an accidental curve. There are no modes to choose.

When the song stops, the knob returns to the value you set by hand, and the sound with it. The curve takes over again as soon as the song plays.

To change a movement, play that passage and turn the control again; what you do replaces what was there for as long as you hold it.

Points

A curve is made of points joined by straight lines, and you can draw one without playing anything:

• Alt-click a knob, a fader or a pan to give it a curve: a lane appears under the track with a first point at the control’s value.
• Double-click in the lane to put a point there.
• Drag a point to move it in time and in value.
• Double-click a point to take it away.

Points land on the grid of the arrangement; hold Ctrl while placing or dragging to put one freely. Two points give a straight ramp: a fade is two points on the track’s volume.

Removing automation

Take away the last point of a curve and its lane disappears: the control stays where you set it by hand, as it did before. Like every change, drawing, recording and deleting automation can be undone with Ctrl+Z.