> ## 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, then click where the pattern goes. **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 **Stamp MIDI Shapes and Patterns…**. It is the sibling of the sample picker on `⌥S`: same idea, notes instead of audio. One list holds two things. Above, the shapes Gridshift ships — chords, intervals, arps, bass figures, whole progressions — in their five groups. Below, under **MIDI Library**, the `.mid` files you have imported. Every row is a name and a drawing of the notes; the rows you used last lead the list under **Recently Used**. Picking a row **arms** it rather than inserting it. It then follows your pointer as an outline, and the click decides where it lands — which track, which bar, or a new track if you click below the last row. ## How it works Patterns come from the library, and the library only holds what you imported into it. **Import Samples and MIDI Files…** on the `Settings → Library` tab asks for a **folder**: its `.mid` and `.midi` files are copied in alongside the audio, and the folder names inside the one you picked become tags. The open panel selects folders only, so a single downloaded `.mid` goes in a different way — drag it onto the library window (`⇧⌘2`), or onto a collection in that window's sidebar, which imports the loose files you drop and files them there. Dropped files bring no tags with them: only the folders *inside* an imported folder become tags. Nothing on disk is watched either way, so a file reaches this picker by being imported and no other way. Patterns 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 The picker opens whatever is selected, but auditioning needs an instrument track: a pattern is played through that track's instrument. With one selected, press `⌥P` and move through the results; each highlighted row plays as you land on it, looping up to eight bars. Search matches each word you type anywhere in the pattern's name, ranked by where the match landed: the start of the name beats the middle of it. Every word has to match somewhere, so a second word narrows rather than widens. The folder names an import recorded are tags on the file, and this picker searches names only — not tags. 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. ## 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. It applies to the shapes as much as to the files: an arp is spread over twice the bars, and a chord, which has no rhythm of its own, comes out longer. No row restates it — the audition is what plays what the click will write. ## Place a pattern Press Return on a row to arm it — the row's icon turns to the accent colour, the picker closes, and an outline of the clip follows your pointer over the timeline. Click to place it, carrying the transposition and feel you were hearing. The new clip takes the file's name and is selected for you. | Where you click | Result | | - | - | | An instrument track | The clip lands on that track, snapped to the grid | | Below the last track | A new instrument track is created, named after the file | | Anywhere else | Nothing — no outline is offered over a track that cannot hold notes | Press `Esc` to put an armed pattern down without placing it. One arming is one placement: after the click the pattern is no longer armed. No pointer involved: bind **Place Armed Stamp** to a key and it writes the armed pattern at the play-start position on the selected track — the picker's old Return behaviour, on a key of your choosing. A placed 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. Notes that would fall outside the MIDI range after transposition are dropped rather than folded into the wrong octave. ## Key, not scale A pattern is shifted onto your project's **root** and no further. Its mode is left alone, so a minor riff stays minor in a major project, and a note that sits outside your scale stays where the file put it — usually the reason the file was worth reaching for. If you want the project to follow the pattern instead, change the project key. Because of that, a placed pattern arrives with **Pitch Snap off** — otherwise the first time you dragged one of those notes it would be pulled into the key. The setting belongs to that pattern, survives saving, and travels with it through copies and splits. The Pitch Snap chip in the focus bar edits it while the pattern is open, and its **Follow Session** entry hands the pattern back to your session-wide setting. A stamped shape is different: it is built from your scale in the first place, so it has nothing to protect and follows the session like anything you draw by hand. ## Shortcuts | Action | Shortcut | | - | - | | Stamp MIDI Shapes and Patterns… | `⌥P` | | Add or Change Sample… | `⌥S` | ## When the MIDI Library section is empty The shapes always list, so an empty library never takes the picker down with it. In place of the files you get one row saying why: | It says | Because | | - | - | | **Reading Your MIDI Library…** | Gridshift is still reading the library; patterns appear as it finishes | | **No MIDI Patterns Indexed Yet** | The library holds no `.mid` files — import some under `Settings → Library` | See [Sample Library](/features/sample-library) for how files get into the library. This documentation is built and hosted on [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com), a developer documentation platform.