> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.gridshift.studio/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Patterns

> Search your MIDI files, hear them in your project's key and tempo, and insert one on a track.

**Patterns** are the `.mid` files in your library, searchable from a picker that auditions them through the selected track's instrument before you commit one to the timeline.

Press `⌥P` to open it. It is the sibling of the sample picker on `⌥S`: same idea, notes instead of audio.

## How it works

Gridshift indexes `.mid` and `.midi` files from the same folders it scans for audio — the browser favorites in the sidebar. They are kept out of the sample picker on purpose: an audio file cannot be inserted as notes, and a pattern cannot be loaded as a track's sample, so neither picker serves the other's files.

A pattern arrives in your project rather than bringing its own context with it. Its notes are placed in beats, so it occupies the same number of bars at your tempo as it did at the one it was written at, and it is transposed into your project's key. What you hear while browsing is what lands on the track.

## Audition a pattern

Select an instrument track first — a pattern is played through that track's instrument, so the picker needs one to sound. Then press `⌥P` and move through the results; each highlighted row plays as you land on it, looping up to eight bars.

Each row shows the pattern's length in bars, its key (or `drums` when the file is percussive), and its note count — `8 bars · C major · 64 notes`.

Search matches each word you type anywhere in the file name or in the two folders above it, ranked by where the match landed: the start of the name beats the middle of it, which beats the folder. Every word has to match somewhere, so a second word narrows rather than widens.

<Note>
  Percussion is never transposed, and neither is a pattern whose key Gridshift could not detect — those play at their original pitch. Everything else follows your project's key, including on a project whose key you have never touched.
</Note>

## Change the feel

A segmented control at the top switches the pattern between three readings, and the setting sticks between sessions:

| Feel            | Effect                     |
| --------------- | -------------------------- |
| **Original**    | The pattern as written     |
| **Half-time**   | Spread over twice the bars |
| **Double-time** | Packed into half           |

This moves the notes, not the tempo — your project's BPM does not change. Note lengths scale with their positions, so half-time turns sixteenths into eighths rather than leaving sixteenths with gaps between them. The row's bar count updates to match, and the audition plays what the insert will write.

## Insert a pattern

Press Return on a row. The pattern lands on the selected instrument track at the play-start position, carrying the transposition and feel you were hearing, and the new clip takes the file's name and is selected for you.

<Note>
  An inserted pattern overwrites what it lands on: a clip already occupying that span is trimmed, split, or removed to make room, the same as dropping a clip there. Undo restores it.
</Note>

Notes that would fall outside the MIDI range after transposition are dropped rather than folded into the wrong octave.

## Shortcuts

| Action                  | Shortcut |
| ----------------------- | -------- |
| Insert MIDI Pattern...  | `⌥P`     |
| Add or Change Sample... | `⌥S`     |

## When the picker has nothing to show

| It says                          | Because                                                                                   |
| -------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Select an Instrument Track**   | Nothing is selected, or the selection is not an instrument track                          |
| **Reading Your MIDI Library…**   | The scan is still running; patterns appear as it finishes                                 |
| **No MIDI Patterns Indexed Yet** | No indexed folder contains `.mid` files — add one to the browser favorites in the sidebar |

See [Sample Library](/features/sample-library) for how folders are added and indexed.