3. Rhythm Editor Help

The rhythm editor is a powerful tool for building your own rhythms. Edit a rhythm by clicking the edit button on the player toolbar, or by right-clicking a rhythm in the saved rhythms list.

The following examples will take us through the features of the rhythm editor and what you can achieve with it. Note the top bar (a), it shows that a new rhythm has been created (on the top left), and includes OK (tick/check mark) and Cancel (cross) buttons. OK saves your changes and Cancel restores your rhythm to how it was before you started editing it.

The example is showing that the rhythm is 9 beats long and that beats 3, 6 and 9 have been set to type 'Accent beat' which uses the custom sound 'my own sound' (see Beats & Sounds Help for more info on creating your own sounds). There's also a sub beat on beat number 4 (showing in yellow in the bottom right quarter of the beat). And at this moment beat number 2 is being dragged (b) from its normal position. There are a number of places it can be dragged to:

• Over another beat (to replace that beat)
• To another position in the rhythm - moving it there
• To a sub beat position (see next example)
• Above the rhythm, which would delete it (a swipe up gesture will also delete it)

Rhythm editor has its own undo button (c) for undoing changes made during the editing session (it starts fresh if you restart the app though). This is independent of the main undo button on the normal top bar (see General Help). Once you OK to save you will leave the editor, after that you can only undo the whole edit, not each individual change you made while editing.

The next example shows the beat numbered 2 being moved to a sub beat position. There is a hot spot in the lower half of each beat, whenever you move the mouse or drag over it, the beat opens out and you can access the sub beats. Here, there's already a sub beat (it's yellow - an 'Accent beat'), and it's playing at the 1/2 beat position. The dragged beat is over the 1/3 beat position, dropping beat 2 here would result in the rhythm shortening to 8 full beats long instead of 9 (a sub beat doesn't affect the playing length of the rhythm).

The explanation is perhaps a bit confusing. The easiest way to learn how to use the tool is to create a new rhythm and start playing with it. You can't do any damage and it's fun to play the rhythm and edit it while it's playing!

The next example shows use of the magic wand button (a). This is a way to quickly add or remove a whole bunch of beats. The panel shows the resulting length of the rhythm and the type of beats to add. Click on the type to change it (currently set to 'my beat type'). Click on the number or +/- to change it, or drag left/right over it.

The next example shows the popup menu options (right-click) for a beat:

• Change type - you can also do this by pressing the add/change beat type button (b)
• Count 1 from this beat - affects the numbers displayed only, for some rhythms it helps to count them differently
• Make beat irregular length - usually a beat has a whole value, but for experimental rhythms you can have a beat that is shorter. It makes for very unusual rhythms.
• Delete beat
• Duplicate beat