Keyboard shortcuts
Every button on the device has a key in the simulator, and the mouse presses pads. Keys and clicks combine: hold a key while you click, just as you’d hold a button while pressing a pad.
Function keys → right-hand buttons
- F1↓R1Note
- F2↓R2Params
- F3↓R3Prob
- F4↓R4Pattern
- F5↓R5Preset
- F6↓R6Scale
- F7↓R7Clear
- F8↓R8Duplicate
Each key presses the button beside it through the same table the hardware reads, so a rearranged column moves the keys with it. The transport is not in this column — REC and PLAY are the page panel’s, drawn beside the grid in the window: click them there, or press Space for Play.
Number row → track buttons
- 1↓B1Track 1
- 2↓B2Track 2
- 3↓B3Track 3
- 4↓B4Track 4
- 5↓B5Track 5
- 6↓B6Track 6
- 7↓B7Track 7
- 8↓B8Track 8
Other keys
- Space↓PLAYThe panel’s Play
- Shift↓SHIFTLeft or right Shift
- Esc↓QUITSaves the project
The bar across the top of the window jumps to a mode — PROJECT, SETTINGS, SONG, SCENE, PATTERN, NOTE, SCALE, PARAM, PRESET, PROB — without holding Shift, and the mode you are in is lit. Clicking one presses the very controls a player would — the button, with Shift wrapped round it where the mode needs it — so a shortcut cannot behave differently from the hardware. The hardware has no room for these; only the simulator has them.
Track keys use the top number row, not the keypad. They select tracks on the current track page, so after Shift + 2 the 1 key picks track 9. In every mode whose pads work on the selected track they only move the selection — Note, Pattern, Scale, Step parameters, Probability, Global settings and Preset — so you can give one track after another a pattern, a setting or a voice without leaving; from Project, Scenes and Song they also go to Note mode. Shift + 1–8 changes the track page in every mode whose pads work on the selected track, Pattern mode included.
While Shift is held, the simulator relabels the buttons with their Shift functions — SCENE, SONG, PROJECT and GLOBAL down the first four, nothing on the last four, track pages below — and draws the labels brighter. It also names the four rows of steps for the pages Shift has turned them into: S1-32 through S993-1024, so a pad Shift has taken over says what it does rather than what is under it. In Pattern mode Shift takes no pad row, so nothing there is relabelled: every pad is still a pattern — or, with a library on the stick, a pack.
Where B1–B8 become page buttons they are relabelled too: PG1–PG8 while Shift is held in Project or Preset mode (or R2 in Preset mode), and the steps each page shows (S1-32, S129-160, …) while R1 is held in Note mode on a piano roll track — the one place that gesture still pages, a stride of four pages a button at 1024 steps.
To help you learn the settings modes, the simulator also prints on the pads what they do: note names, scale names and the keyboard pads in Scale mode, the settings, +1/−1, channel numbers and the device names in Global settings, the kit’s own two-letter names (BD, SD, CH, OH) on a drum track’s pads, and the pattern names of the built-in bank and of an open library pack. The hardware pads have no display, so they stay plain.
Shift layers
| Keys | Does |
|---|---|
| Shift + F1 | Opens Scenes — from any mode |
| Shift + F2 | Opens the Song. Clicking SONG on the drawn panel, or SONG in the mode bar, does the same |
| Shift + F3 | Opens Project mode |
| Shift + F4 | Opens Global settings |
| F5 · F6 | No Shift at all: Preset and Scale have bare buttons, and no layer hides them. Pressing Shift with either does nothing |
| Shift + F7 / F8 / Space | Nothing: Clear and Duplicate are modifiers and the transport is the transport, so none of the three carries a layer |
| Shift + 1–8 | Track page 1–8 (tracks 1–8 … 57–64); the selected track keeps its position. Eight pages of eight is all 64 tracks, so the whole row is live.Note, Pattern, Scale, Step parameters, Probability, Scenes and Global settings — every mode whose pads work on the selected track |
| Shift + click the roll’s arrow pads | Scrolls the view by 1: left (8,6), down (8,7), right (8,8), up (7,7). Up and down move through the notes, left and right through the steps; an arrow with nowhere to go is darkNote mode, on a piano roll track |
Hold a button, press a track key
| Keys | Does |
|---|---|
| Hold F1 + 1–8 | Jumps along the pattern, a stride of pages a button — four at 1024 steps, so the eight cover all 32 pages and the roll’s arrows cover what falls between. The playing page blinks while F1 is heldNote mode, on a piano roll track — the roll’s grid has no spare pads to put the gesture on |
| Hold F2 + 1–8 | Opens Step parametersIn Preset mode: preset page 1–8 instead |
| Shift + 1–8 | Project page 1–8Project mode. No function key opens it any more, so there is none to hold here |
Hold and click
| Keys | Does |
|---|---|
| Hold F7 + click | Clears the clicked step, pattern, project, scene or song step. There is no undo. Preset mode and the built-in bank have nothing to clear. |
| Hold F8 + click, click | Duplicates from the first click to each click after it; you can change page — or track — in between |
| Hold F1 + click a step | Makes it the pattern’s last step (it turns red). F1 rather than Shift, because Shift on those four rows picks the step pageNote mode |
| Hold F1 + click a pad | Makes its step the pattern’s last stepNote mode, on a piano roll track |
| Shift + click a pad on the four step rows | Goes straight to that page of 32 steps — any of 32 in one click; while Shift is held those pads show which page you are onNote, Step parameters and Probability |
| Click a pad on the drawn panel | Goes to that page of that kind, with nothing held: the step pages on its top four rows, then tracks, projects, the preset windows and the preset pagesAny mode |
| Shift + click the top-left or bottom-left key | Moves the track’s keyboard up or down an octave — vertical, because pitch runs up the keyboardNote mode |
| Shift + click any other key | Plays that key’s single note on a track whose keyboard is in chordsNote mode |
Mouse and faders
| Action | Does |
|---|---|
| Click | Presses a pad or button for as long as the mouse button is down |
| Right-click | Latches a pad or button down until you right-click it again. Use it for anything needing several pads at once: latch the keys of a chord, then click a step. |
| Drag a fader | Moves it; clicking anywhere along the slot jumps the cap there |
| Drag a mixer knob | Turns it: dragging up raises it, and about 160 pixels covers the whole range. The knob doesn’t jump when you grab it. |
| Mouse wheel over a fader or knob | Nudges it by a thirty-second of its travel |
| Ctrl + mouse wheel | Fine steps, a 256th of the travel: about 1 BPM when fader 1 sets the tempo in Global settings |
If keys do nothing, click the window once to give it focus. On many laptops F1–F8 change volume or brightness unless you hold Fn or turn on Fn-lock.