How it works
Gridshift reads the chords out of the notes in the chord track’s clips — block chords, broken chords and arpeggios alike — and writes each chord’s name across the clip in the timeline. What you see on the clip is exactly what everything that follows the track reads. A chord here is a statement, not a guess from whatever the timeline happens to sound:- It covers the whole song. Each chord clip governs from its start until the next chord clip begins. The first one also reaches back to the start of the song, and the last one runs on to the end. Inside that stretch, the clip repeats: a four-bar chord clip followed by twelve empty bars plays its four bars three more times.
- It holds through silence. A chord lasts until the next one starts, including over a bar with nothing played.
- Muting doesn’t change it. The chord track normally sounds like any other instrument track, but muting it leaves the harmony in place.
- Other tracks can’t color it. A busy lead line elsewhere never changes what the chord track says.
Mark a track as the chord track
1
Select an instrument track
Play or record the chords into its clips, or draw them in the piano roll.
2
Turn on Chord Track
In the Inspector, switch on the Chord Track toggle in the Grid section. The chord names appear on the track’s clips.
A track whose Keys Layout is Drums can’t be the chord track — its notes are pads, not pitches, so kick and snare would read as a chord. Switch the layout away from Drums first. A chord track that is later switched to Drums can still be turned off.
What follows the chord track
Any instrument track can use the Follow layouts, including the chord track itself. The pickers offer Follow, and the Pitch Snap chip enables Chord, only while the chord track has chords in it. Take the chords away and a track already set to Follow keeps the setting, but its keys fall back to the Scale layout until there is something to follow again.