Step parameters R2

How hard each step hits, how long its notes last, and how many times it fires. The steps stay on top; velocity and gate each get two rows of 16 pads below them.

• Tap a step to select it (green); tapping another moves the selection. Hold several steps to edit them together. Tapping here never switches a step on or off — that stays in Note mode.
• Rows 5–6 — velocity: 16 levels, left to right along row 5 and then row 6, from 8 up to 127. The lane shows the value as a bar, and the steps above show their velocity as brightness, so the accents of a whole page show at a glance.
• Rows 7–8 — gate: how long the step’s notes sound, as one ramp of 16 lengths from shortest to longest, a pad each. One tap is that length, like every other lane — nothing is hidden behind a second tap, and the bar shows how long the note is without your having to count.

  Pads	Gate
  1–5	a sixth of a step … five sixths	stabs and staccato; a sixth is about 21 ms at 120 BPM
  6	one step	what a new step has
  7–11	2, 3, 4, 5, 6 steps	the note rings on over the steps after it
  12–15	8, 10, 12, 16 steps	pads and drones; 16 steps is a full bar
  16	INF	not a length at all — see below

  The resolution sits where the ear is: sixths inside the step, where the difference between a stab and a blip is obvious, and every other step at the top, where 13 and 14 sound the same.
• The last pad is INF, and it is not a length: the note sounds until the track plays its next step. Stopping the transport ends it, and so does muting the track or moving it to another channel, port or instrument — nothing else does, so a step with no step after it holds for as long as it plays. It is for an instrument with a long envelope, and for anything gated by how long a key is held, which wants a note that does not end on a count at all. A ratchet or an arp takes the longest ordinary gate instead: both are a run of separate short notes by definition, and a run whose notes never end is not one.
• If a long note is still sounding when the same pitch plays again, it stops first.
• A gate is sixths of the track's step. On a track set to /2 a one-step gate rings for two of the project's steps, because the whole lane follows how fast that track runs.
• CLEAR + step resets its velocity, gate and ratchet; DUPLICATE + step + step copies all three to another step.
• Hold SHIFT and rows 7–8 become the ratchets, the same rows the gate uses: pad n makes the step fire n + 1 times, spread evenly across its own length. Two is 32nd notes, four is 64ths and eight is a roll — the pads past eight stay dark. Each hit lasts its own gate or the space to the next one, whichever is shorter, so a long gate rolls instead of blurring, and a short one gives a stutter of stabs. The probability is rolled once, so a ratcheted step plays whole or not at all, and the whole thing moves with the step's micro-timing. CLEAR + step puts velocity, gate and the ratchet back.
• SHIFT + B1–B8 changes the track page, so a track past the eighth can be edited without leaving this mode.
• SHIFT + the four rows of steps goes straight to any of the 32 pages, as in Note mode, and while SHIFT is held those pads show which page you are on — green there, dim blue for a page holding steps, grey for empty. The lanes on rows 5–8 keep their own SHIFT face, so the map and the ratchets never meet. Tapping R2 on its own stays here — this is its mode. SHIFT + R2 opens the Song; R1 returns to Note mode and R5 goes to Preset.
• Probability has its own mode, R3 — the same layout with the other two lanes, so moving between them changes what the lower rows do and nothing else.