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Audition a pattern

Select an instrument track and press ⌥P to open Stamp MIDI Shapes and Patterns…. Type part of a name, then move through the results with the arrow keys. Each highlighted row plays as you land on it.

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Place a pattern

Press Return on a row to arm it. An outline follows your pointer over the timeline: click a track to place it there, or below the last track for a new one. Esc puts it down without placing.

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Change the feel

Click Original, Half-time or Double-time at the top of the picker, or press ⇥ to step through them. The audition plays what the click will write.

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Save a clip as a pattern

Select one or more MIDI clips and run Command Palette → Save Clip as Pattern. A name is filled in, and Return keeps it.

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Import MIDI files

Open Settings → Library and run Import Samples and MIDI Files…, then pick a folder. For a single .mid file, drag it onto the library window (⌘Y) or onto a collection in its sidebar.

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Good to know

  • One list holds shapes and files. Above are the shapes Gridshift ships, chords, intervals, arps, bass figures and whole progressions, in their five groups. Below, under MIDI Library, are the .mid files you imported.
  • A pattern takes your project’s tempo and key. Its notes are placed in beats, so it fills the same number of bars at your tempo as at its own. What you hear while browsing is what lands on the track.
  • Key, not scale. A pattern is shifted onto your project’s root and no further. A minor riff stays minor in a major project, and a note outside your scale stays where the file put it. To have the project follow the pattern, change the project key.
  • Percussion is never transposed, and neither is a pattern whose key Gridshift could not detect. Everything else follows your project’s key, even one you never touched.
  • A placed pattern overwrites what it lands on. A clip in that span is trimmed, split or removed, the same as dropping a clip there. Undo restores it.
  • Every row is a name and a drawing of the notes. The rows you used last lead the list under Recently Used.
  • ⌥P is the sibling of ⌥S. Same idea as the sample picker, notes instead of audio.
  • Auditioning needs an instrument track. The picker opens whatever is selected, but a pattern plays through the selected track’s instrument, looping up to eight bars.
  • Search matches each word anywhere in the name. A match at the start of the name ranks above one in the middle. Every word has to match, so a second word narrows. The picker searches names only, not tags.
  • A placed pattern arrives with Pitch Snap off, a stamped shape follows the session: Pitch Snap.
  • A shape in the key counts its notes in steps of your scale. A Triad comes out major on one degree and minor on another and never leaves the key.
  • A fixed shape is written in semitones and keeps the sound it is named after, in the key or not: Major, Dominant 7th, Fifth. Type in key or fixed in the picker to narrow to those shapes.
  • A library file is shifted onto your project’s root once and otherwise left alone. In the piano roll the row you click does not move it, only the bar.
  • Feel 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.
  • Feel applies to shapes too. An arp spreads over twice the bars, and a chord, which has no rhythm of its own, comes out longer. The setting sticks between sessions.
  • Picking arms, the click inserts. The row’s icon turns to the accent color and the picker closes. The click carries the transposition and feel you were hearing. One arming is one placement.
  • The new clip takes the file’s name and is selected for you. A new track below the last row is named after the file.
  • No outline over a track that cannot hold notes. Clicking there does nothing.
  • Place Armed Stamp works without the pointer. Bind it to a key and it writes the armed pattern at the play-start position on the selected track.
  • Notes pushed outside the MIDI range by transposition are dropped, not folded into the wrong octave.
  • In an open MIDI clip, ⌥P stamps into the clip instead of placing a whole clip: Piano Roll.
  • What a saved pattern holds is what the clip plays. Notes hidden by a trimmed edge stay out, a note held past the clip’s end is cut there, and the clip’s level is baked into the velocities.
  • Each clip becomes its own pattern, ready in the picker and synced like any other pattern.
  • The suggested name is the clip’s, if you named it. Otherwise it is the track, the instrument and the length, such as Bass Serum 4 bars. A name you type goes on every selected clip, numbered from the second one on.
  • A saved pattern is tagged with the track name, the instrument and the project key, the same as a sample saved with Save Selection as Sample.
  • The import panel selects folders only. Their .mid and .midi files are copied in alongside the audio. Only folders inside an imported folder become tags; dropped files bring no tags.
  • Nothing on disk is watched. A file reaches the picker by being imported or saved from a clip, and no other way.
  • Patterns stay out of the sample picker. An audio file cannot be inserted as notes, and a pattern cannot be a track’s sample.
  • The shapes always list. An empty MIDI library never takes the picker down; one row says why instead: Reading Your MIDI Library… while Gridshift is still reading it, No MIDI Patterns Indexed Yet when the library holds no .mid files.
  • Progressions write chords for the Chord Track. Type progressions to list them.
Last modified on October 22, 2026