Core Concepts

Gridshift is a keyboard-driven, in-the-box music studio (DAW) for macOS. This page covers the ideas that work differently from other DAWs first, then the objects you work with.

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What’s different

A few things in Gridshift work differently than they might in other DAWs.

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Keyboard and Command Palette

Gridshift is driven primarily from the keyboard. The Command Palette reaches any of 200+ actions by name, and almost every action has a keyboard shortcut.

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One window, inline editing

There is no separate piano-roll or audio-editor window. A clip is edited where it sits on the timeline: entering Focus Mode expands the clip in place for note, slice, and automation editing, then collapses it back into the arrangement.

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One source per track

Each track has a single sound source — one audio sample, or one Audio Unit instrument — followed by one effects chain. One source, one chain, one output. On a sample track, every clip is a region of that track’s one audio file.

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Recording is a mode

Record is a global mode toggled with Caps Lock, and the selected track is the record target — there is no separate per-track record-arm step. The mode works two ways:

• With playback (Space) — live recording. A ghost clip grows under the playhead.
• Without playback (transport stopped) — step recording. Each key places a note or slice at the cursor and advances one grid step, the way a step sequencer or tracker works.

What gets captured depends on the selected track: MIDI on instrument tracks, slice triggers on sample tracks with transients, audio input on empty sample tracks. See Recording.

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The grid and groove

Position is musical — bars and beats — with snapping on by default. A groove template shifts the timing grid itself, so the same swing applies to snapping and editing as well as playback.

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Automation

Automation lives in independent lanes, each a 0–1 curve edited like a clip. One lane can drive several parameters and several lanes can drive one parameter: in Absolute mode a lane sets the value, in Relative mode it adds a signed offset that stacks on top, which also covers modulation. See Automation.

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Sidechain modes

Sidechain has three modes: Audio routes a source track’s signal into the plugin’s sidechain bus, while MIDI and Trigger Impulse derive the trigger from positions — clip starts and note-ons, including the clip starts of an audio track — rather than from the waveform. Because those positions are known in advance there is no detection delay, and a lookahead can fire the trigger early. See Sidechain.

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Ducking

Ducking is native, plugin-free sidechaining: a track’s output is lowered by a hand-drawn gain shape whenever another track’s clips or notes fire, applied after the clipper and always downward. A ducking is named and project-wide — authored once on its trigger track, then applied to any number of targets, each with its own amount. Like the trigger-based sidechain modes it is a pure timeline function, so it adds no latency and renders identically live and in a bounce. See Ducking.

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Listen Bus

A Listen Bus holds monitoring effects that play during playback but are excluded from a bounce — for reference or monitoring chains that should not be part of the final output.

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No bundled plugins

Gridshift includes no stock instruments or effects. It hosts the Audio Units installed on your system, which provide the instruments and effects.

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What’s familiar

Most other concepts map onto ones you already know:

• A timeline / arrangement with a bar/beat ruler, tracks stacked vertically, clips arranged horizontally.
• Tracks, clips, groups, buses, and a master output.
• Audio Units — the standard macOS plugin format.
• MIDI, sends, and quantize.
• Non-destructive editing with full undo, and standard drag / trim / split / copy / paste.

These work as in most DAWs; the section above covers what differs.

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Core objects

A project is a tree of tracks; each track holds clips along the timeline.

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Track model

Each track has a single sound source — an audio sample or an Audio Unit instrument — followed by an effects chain. Groups act as summing buses for their child tracks: they appear in the sidebar track list, but only tracks that contain clips show as rows in the timeline.

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Clip model

A clip is a region on a track’s timeline with its own position and length. Editing a clip never alters the underlying source, so trimming, splitting, and moving are non-destructive. What a clip holds follows its track. Editing happens in place: Focus Mode expands a clip for note, slice, and automation editing, then collapses it back. Duplicating a clip keeps the copies linked by default, so an edit to one updates them all. See Timeline Editing for clip creation, gain, and looping.

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Next steps