Presets

Effect Presets capture a plugin’s full state — every parameter value, bypass status, and level — so you can recall it on any plugin slot and sync it across your Macs via iCloud. Instrument Presets do the same for an instrument track’s whole sound.

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Save an effect preset

The preset captures the plugin’s full state including all parameter values, bypass status, and levels.

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Load an effect preset

Open the Effects tab in the Inspector (⌘4). Presets are listed under their corresponding plugin. Select a preset to load it onto the currently selected plugin slot.

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Instrument presets

An instrument preset holds what makes an instrument track sound the way it does: the instrument with its current patch — any Audio Unit synth or the built-in sampler — the MIDI effects in front of it, and the effect chain behind it. Volume, pan, sends, routing, ducking and the track color are not part of it: they belong to the song, and loading a preset leaves them as they are.

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Save an instrument preset

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Load an instrument preset

Run Load Instrument or Sample… (⌥I) to load a preset onto the selected instrument track, or New Instrument Track… (⇧⌘T) to create a track that plays it. Press ⇥ until the Presets tab shows, then pick a preset. Loading is one step to undo — with ⇧⌘T, one ⌘Z removes the new track too. The track takes the preset’s name. If the preset’s instrument is not installed on this Mac, Gridshift says which one is missing and leaves the track as it was.

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Hear a preset before you load it

Every instrument preset has a short recorded preview. It plays the preset’s pattern when it has one, otherwise a chord and a line for a synth, a beat for a drum kit, the note on every beat for a one-shot. Highlight a preset in the Presets tab and its preview plays. Gridshift records the preview when you save the preset, or drop a Serum preset on the arrangement, so it is ready the first time you look. A preset imported into the library, or saved before previews existed, gets its preview the first time you rest on it while the song is stopped, or all at once with Render Missing Instrument Preset Previews from the Command Palette. Previews are recorded with the preset’s own instrument and effects. They sync with the presets, so your other Macs play them without recording them again.

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Play a pattern instead

A preview can play a pattern from your library instead. A bass sounds like a bass line, and a pad gets room to swell.

• Save Instrument Preset on a track with a MIDI clip keeps that clip as a pattern in your library, named after the preset, and the preview plays it. Gridshift takes the selected clip on the track, or the first one.
• In the Sample Library, right-click presets and choose Choose Preview Pattern…. The library switches to your patterns, with the full search, tags and collections. Select a pattern to hear it, then click Use, press Return or double-click it. Esc or Cancel goes back to where you were.
• Right-click a preset collection and choose Choose Preview Pattern… to give every preset in it the same pattern, or drag a pattern onto the collection in the sidebar. A preset with its own pattern keeps it.

Remove Preview Pattern in the same menu goes back to the standard preview, or to the collection’s pattern. A preview plays at most the first 8 beats of a pattern. The pattern stays in your library and syncs with it, so your other Macs record the same preview.

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Hear a pattern collection on a preset

It works the other way round too. A pattern collection can play its patterns through one of your instrument presets, so bass lines are heard on the bass you will use. Right-click the pattern collection and choose Choose Preview Sound…: the library switches to your presets, and you pick one the same way. Or drag a preset onto the pattern collection in the sidebar. The first pattern you play loads the preset, which takes a moment for a large synth. Every pattern after it plays at once. Clear Preview Sound goes back to the file’s own sound.

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Swap presets during playback

While the song plays, the Presets tab of Load Instrument or Sample… (⌥I) plays the presets themselves instead of their previews. Each preset you highlight takes over the selected track at once, in time with the song, with the notes that are sounding carried over. It works the same way as swapping samples during playback.

• Return keeps the highlighted preset, as one step to undo.
• Esc puts the track’s own sound back, exactly as it was.

Nothing is saved to the project until you press Return. A save or autosave during the swap keeps the sound the track had before.

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Sampler presets keep their sample

A preset saved from a track that plays the built-in sampler keeps its own copy of the sample. It keeps playing after you delete that sample from the Sample Library, after the library’s Trash is emptied, and on a Mac whose library never had it. The copy syncs with your presets through iCloud Drive and uses your iCloud storage, even when Sync samples is off. Two presets of the same sample share one copy. Loading a sampler preset gives the track its own copy of the sample, and the preset’s sampler settings — root note, envelope, loop, filter — win over the settings the library remembers for that sample.

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Manage presets in the Sample Library

The Sample Library window (⇧⌘2) has an Instrument Presets section in its sidebar: All Presets, Unsorted, Favorites and your preset collections. Deleted presets wait in the library’s one Trash, with the deleted samples and patterns.

• Select a preset to hear its preview. Space plays or stops it.
• ⌘D marks it as a favorite.
• Drag presets onto a collection in the sidebar to file them there, or onto Unsorted to take them out of every collection.
• Add tags in the inspector on the right. Selecting several presets adds a tag to all of them.
• Drag a preset onto an instrument track in the arrangement to load it there. Drop it between tracks, or drag several, and each gets a new instrument track at the drop point.
• Right-click for Load on Selected Track, New Instrument Track, Move to Collection, Choose Preview Pattern… and Show in Finder.

One action makes at most 16 instrument tracks, because each one runs its own copy of its instrument. With more presets selected, New Instrument Tracks is greyed out and dragging them onto the arrangement is refused with a message. A preset collection is a folder inside your Presets folder, so the Finder and your other Macs show it too. Right-click a collection to rename or delete it. Deleting a collection moves its presets to Unsorted. ⌫ moves presets to the Trash without asking. They wait there for 30 days, with their tags, favorite and collection. In the Trash they are listed under the deleted samples and patterns, and the inspector’s buttons become Put Back and Delete Immediately…. Empty Trash empties samples, patterns and presets together. It and Delete Immediately… remove the preset files and their previews from every Mac that syncs them, and ask first.

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Import Serum 2 presets

Serum 2 must be installed on this Mac. Gridshift turns each .SerumPreset into an instrument preset that plays in Serum 2. The preset keeps its name, and Serum’s own tags plus the names of the folders it came from become its tags in the library. Serum 1 presets (.fxp) import the same way: Serum 2 converts them on the way in. Serum FX presets are effects, not instruments, and are not imported.

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Drop presets on the arrangement

Drag one or a few .SerumPreset files onto the arrangement. One file dropped on an instrument track loads there. Anywhere else, or several files, and each gets a new instrument track at the drop point, in the order you dragged them. While they convert, the main window shows how many are done. The first import starts Serum and can take a few seconds; later ones are quick.

• Dropping a file you imported before reuses that preset instead of making a second one, and brings it back out of the Trash if it was there.
• Files that could not be imported are listed in one message at the end.
• A drop of more than 16 files makes no tracks. The presets go into the library instead, as below, and the main window says so — and says it again if none of them made it in.

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Import a Serum 2 bank into the library

To bring in a whole bank without making tracks, use the Sample Library window:

• Drop .SerumPreset files, or folders of them, from the Finder onto the preset list, or onto All Presets, Unsorted or a collection in the sidebar. A drop on a collection, or on the list while it shows one, files the presets there; anywhere else they go to Unsorted. Favorites and the Trash take no files.
• Or click Import Serum Presets in the toolbar of an Instrument Presets scope, or run Import Serum Presets… from the library’s Command Palette, and choose files or folders.

Before anything starts, a dialog shows what it found: how many presets will be imported, how many are already in your library, and which files stay out and why. Click Import to start or Cancel to leave it. While it runs, the dialog shows its progress, with Stop: the preset being converted finishes, and the ones already imported stay. The import pauses while the song plays, keeps running when you close the window, and an import started while another runs joins it. At the end, a report lists how many presets came in and every one that could not be imported, with the reason. Presets already imported are not imported twice. Ones you imported before and moved to the Trash stay there, and the report offers Put Them Back. Imported presets get their preview the first time you select them while the song is stopped, or all at once with Render Missing Instrument Preset Previews from the main window’s Command Palette. If a preset crashed Serum 2 during an import, Gridshift skips it in later imports until Serum 2 is updated, and the dialog counts it among the files left out.

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iCloud sync

Presets sync automatically across your Macs via iCloud Drive. See iCloud Integration for details on the folder structure and sync behavior.