PERFORM: the sound under your hands

PERFORM is for playing a sound. It shows the sound large, in a well, and gives you up to eight controls named for what you hear, chosen from a palette of eighteen, WANDER and four pads, and nothing in it stops to ask you a question.

PATCH shows what a sound is made of, knob by knob. PERFORM is for playing it: you reach for brighter, not for a filter’s cutoff, and the instrument works out which of this patch’s knobs make it brighter. It plays the sound already under your fingers, and the keybed below is the same one every level shares. It is the middle of the levels, where the app opens: zoom out (⌥↑) to TASTE, in (⌥↓) to PATCH, or step beside it (⌥←) to EVOLVE.

Play it

1. Play a key: A to L on your computer keyboard, or tap the keybed.
2. Turn a named control: drag it up or down. Double-click it to go back to the center.
3. Press OFFER (N), then hold PEEK (or hold B) to hear the variant it grew beside your sound, or press TAKE (⇧↵) to make it yours.
4. Once the sound has moved, moved · KEEP · BACK shows by its name. Press KEEP (↵) when you like where you are; BACK (⇧⌫) returns there.
5. Turn WANDER, at the start of the pads, up, and let the sound move on its own.

Until you have done five first steps once, a pill at the bottom left shows them one at a time, with a pip for each, and ticks each off as you do it: the first three above, then zoom out to TASTE (⌥↑, or a pinch on a touch screen), and hold ⌥ (MODEL on a touch screen) to see what the model believes. Its second step names a control that turns on this sound (Turn BRIGHT: drag up or down), never one it can’t reach. On a sound none of the controls reach (every one amber), the pill leaves that step out, pip and all, and asks for it again on a sound one of them turns. When the steps it shows are done, it says what the loop was (That is the loop. Every offer you hear, then take or pass, teaches it what you like.) and goes. It says that only once, so a turn it comes back for later just ticks off. Its × stops it showing. When PERFORM has no other room for a toast (on a small phone, or with the XY pad or HOW IT WORKS filling the well), the pill steps aside while the toast stands in its place, and comes back, × and all, when the toast goes.

What you see

On a phone PERFORM is one screen that stands still: the sound's name and its well on top, then two tabs, controls and under the hood, beside ARRANGE and HOW IT WORKS. Under controls are the controls and the pad row, Wander at its head (its dial and its name); under under the hood the hood's rows, a list that scrolls. A control that turns only one way says so as an arrow and its end's word (→ bright); the sentence is its name for a screen reader and in its tooltip.

On a phone held upright with the keys down, the line over the controls says how many reach the patch, what it is listening to, and to turn an amber one to ask for it. With the keys up, and on a phone on its side, that line goes: each control's own line says what it is listening to, and an amber control is still the one to turn to ask.

On a phone on its side the well is on the left and the controls one row of six on the right; with the keys up the well gives its room to them. Six across, a control's line shows only its one-way arrow; the knobs it turns are under under the hood and in its tooltip. The keys come up with KEYS at the end of the bar along the bottom; held upright, while they are up, a phone shorter than 800 px gives the name and the well's room to the controls (a taller one keeps them), and they come back when the keys go.

On the left, the sound:

• The head. Its family and in hand (BASS · IN HAND; the family only for a sound opened from the library and not edited since: a bred or edited sound has none, so it reads IN HAND), its name, large, with share beside it, and its blurb where it has one. Share opens Download a picture on the sound’s card: its face, its name and its patch in one picture. When the sound has moved from home, moved · KEEP · BACK shows at the end of the first line (see the pads).
• The well. The sound’s face, large, standing on a floor that reflects it, as stage mode draws it. The face is the sound as it was last rendered, so turning a control doesn’t change it; keeping or taking does. While you play, what you hear is drawn over it as stage mode draws it, and fades when the sound stops (while you play it). Click it to play the phrase, as Space does. While B holds an offer, B’s face stands beside it in amber, with BLEND under the two (see Blend, Peek, and B), and each face answers what you hear of its own sound; a click on B’s face plays nothing, since B is heard with PEEK or by holding B. In its corner: XY (see the XY pad) and ⇧F for stage mode; in the top left, a small trace of what is sounding now.

On the right, what you turn:

• CONTROLS, with ARRANGE (see the palette) and HOW IT WORKS (see How it works), then a status line saying what PERFORM is doing with the sound: 4 of 6 controls reach this patch once it is measured; listening… while a sound you haven't played is measured behind controls that already turn, naming the ones still waiting for it (listening to Motion, Body…), with the count once the measurement lands (see a sound you haven't played); listening to this sound… when there is nothing to start it on yet, re-checking while it measures again in the background, or listening to Bite… while it measures a control you just placed. If the engine fails partway, it says so instead: couldn’t measure this patch, or, after the count, couldn’t re-check this patch when the controls still play on their last measurement. After the engine has crashed, PERFORM asks it for nothing more: an offer it would have to grow says the engine crashed: reload to continue (one grown ahead before the crash still comes into B).
• Your controls, three to a row: to start, BRIGHT, SNAP, MOTION, BODY, GRIT, and SPACE (a longer panel takes four to a row). The line under each says what it turns, or what state it’s in; under the model view (hold ⌥), which way your taste leans along it (see which way your taste leans). A small vel on one says your velocity plays it (see what velocity plays).
• UNDER THE HOOD. The patch’s own knobs the controls and Wander are turning right now, each a bar with its value in its own units.
• The pads: WANDER, ringed in amber, then OFFER, PEEK, TAKE and PASS, each with its key. On a window under about 1360 pixels wide, WANDER takes a line of its own above the four.

Show measurements, in ⌘K, adds the numbers behind each control to its tooltip: purity, reach in σ, the measured halves, and the knob gains.

What velocity plays

ARRANGE has a row, Velocity plays: what your playing velocity drives, loudness only or one of the named controls that turns both ways on this sound (bright: soft dark, hard bright), with depth, a slider for how far it reaches, and a note naming the knobs velocity moves. The control it plays carries a small vel in its corner.

Each note sets those knobs at its own velocity when it starts, so a chord can hold a soft dark note beside a hard bright one. While notes are held, PATCH draws the knobs where the last note you struck plays them (see opening the circuit).

The named controls

The panel starts with six:

The name is fixed, and the knobs behind it are not. Each control is wired to at most four of this patch’s knobs: the ones that move the sound most purely in its direction. A full turn moves any one knob at most half its range. Hover a control to see which knobs it moves, how purely, and how far it measured. The knobs are named as PATCH’s rack names them, from the moment a sound opens, with the module beside a name two of them share.

A small amber dot on a control’s outer ring shows where the sound measures on that axis, compared with the sounds in your session. A sound that is already very bright has its BRIGHT dot near the right stop.

A named control is in one of five states, each with its own look:

A sound you haven't played

Measuring a sound takes a render for every knob and a few more for each control, seconds on a fast computer and a minute or more on a slow one, so a sound you haven't played starts on a wiring PERFORM has without rendering: a sound of the same shape that it has measured (the same modules, selectors included: the one a sound was bred from, a preset you changed only by turning its knobs), lending how its controls turn the knobs, or else what each kind of knob usually does to the sound, learned from measuring the presets and sounds like the ones in your pool. That second kind plays only the controls it gets right well more often than not, Bright, Snap and Space among the six today; the others say listening… until the sound is measured, as before. Some sounds still wait for their measurement with every control listening: one none of whose controls PERFORM can start this way; one changed in PATCH by a selector, or by an undo whose render is still on its way; and the sound a graft just changed, until its measurement says whether the graft reached the control (another sound you open meanwhile starts at once). The controls that play turn at once, their travel drawn thin and dim, and their tooltip says not measured yet, while the status line says listening… as the sound's own measurement runs. When it lands the controls settle on what the sound really does, without moving what you hear; a control left turned a way the measurement finds it can't go stops at the center on that side, as a drag into a stop does. A control that turned the wrong way before the measurement landed turns the right way once it settles.

The palette

The six are a start. ARRANGE opens the palette: all eighteen controls the instrument can measure, in six families, with the ones on your panel at the top.

1. Press + on a control to place it on the panel, at the end. Up to eight sit there at once; with eight placed, + waits until you hide one.
2. Press × to hide one. One always stays.
3. Press ↑ or ↓ to move one earlier or later.

The panel is kept with your session, through a reload. Press Esc or × at the top to put the palette away. It is a panel, not a dialog: the keys play while it is open.

Each placed control has a mark to the left of its name: a green dot where it turns this sound, a dashed amber ring where this patch’s knobs can’t reach it (a search control), and a dotted amber ring with listening… while it is being measured. A control that isn’t placed isn’t measured, and has no mark.

A placed control is measured on the sound you’re playing, and only then. Each control on the panel costs about five renders a sound, so nothing off the panel is measured. While it is, the control reads listening… in amber where the line under it goes, and the status line names it (listening to Bite…). The controls beside it keep playing. A set of controls measured on a sound before is kept, so on that sound it plays at once, after a reload too.

Hiding a control you have turned leaves the sound where it is: what it was doing stays in the knobs, and the controls you keep turn on from there. BACK returns to the last sound you kept, from before it; ⌘Z doesn’t, because hiding a control is not an edit of the patch. A mod wheel or pressure held on the control you hide is let go. If velocity was playing it, velocity moves to the first control left that turns both ways, or to loudness only, and a note says which. Reordering costs nothing at all: the same controls are the same measurement.

Turning them

Turning a control changes knob values only. The voices take them without rebuilding the patch, so a held chord keeps sounding through the turn.

The controls re-center without moving the sound. After a KEEP, a TAKE, a fresh measurement, or a Wander glide, what the controls were doing is folded into the patch, and they return to 12 o’clock. The pointer glides home over a quarter of a second, and a faint tick marks where it was. A MIDI knob on a re-centered control keeps working from where it is (see soft takeover).

A measurement never moves a control you are holding. While your hand is on a control or the XY pad, or a control plays its sweep (below), and for a second and a half after you let go or the sweep ends, a measurement that lands waits: the control stays where you put it, and nothing you hear jumps. Then the measurement takes over. A control that was still listening keeps saying so until the measurement is in; then, while your hand is on a control or the XY pad, it says after you let go, and the status line heard: the controls turn after you let go, also on a sound that opened on a guess, whose guessed controls play on meanwhile. With nothing held (you have let go, or turned a control with the keys, or a control is playing its sweep), it says in a moment instead, and the status line heard: the controls turn in a moment. A listening control you held springs back when you let go, and starts turning a second and a half later. Pressing a pad is not a hand on the controls: a sound you open right after plays at once.

Long-press to hear it

A long-press with a mouse plays the control to you, and so does Enter on a control you reached with the keyboard. Over about two and a half seconds it sweeps to the low end, across to the high end, and back to where it was. If no note is held, it plays a C3 for the length of the sweep. On a touch screen a long press opens the control's figure instead (below), and its HEAR IT plays the same sweep. A measurement that lands meanwhile waits until the sweep has ended, as it does for your hand, so it never moves the control under the sweep. Pressing the control stops the sweep and puts the control back where it was, and turning it stops the sweep too. Enter while it plays starts it over. KEEP while it plays keeps the sound where the sweep has it at that moment, and the control re-centers from there, as after any KEEP.

This is the quickest way to learn what a control does on this sound, since the same name moves different knobs on different patches.

Ask what it does

Point at a control and a small ? appears beside it. Press it, or press ? while the pointer is over the control or it has focus, or hold it on a touch screen (a ring fills under your finger, then it opens). An answer opens beside the control: BRIGHT · WHAT IT DOES, a figure, and a sentence.

The figure is the sound in your hands rendered twice, once with the control at its center and once turned, and each render measured the way the model hears it. A turn means where you have the control; at the center, a full turn toward the end it opens to. The render with the control at its center is dashed, the turned one lit. What the figure draws is the measurement the control listens to:

The sentence says the measurement before and after, in its own unit, then what the control turns on this sound: Turned to bright, its center moves from 359 Hz to 2.5 kHz. Here it turns filter cutoff. A control nothing here turns says so, and gives the measurement as it stands. While the two renders are made (about half a second), the figure reads measuring…; one you have asked about before opens at once.

The figure draws itself in, band by band or along time, and holds; MOTION's keeps running while it is open. Click it to draw it again. Under reduced motion it is drawn whole at once.

Every control on the panel is a tap away under the figure, or an arrow key. Turn the control while its answer is open and the answer follows: a moment after your hand rests, it is measured again, and the last figure stays, dimmed, under measuring… until the new one is drawn. A control placed from the palette and asked about before it has been measured says so, and answers once it has. Esc, the ×, a click elsewhere, another level, or booth mode's attract puts it away. HEAR IT plays the long-press sweep. Space still plays the sound while it is open, after a click on one of its buttons too, and ? answers for the control under the pointer, or one you reached with the keyboard; a control you just turned with the mouse, once the pointer has left it, is not asked again, and ? opens ⌘K’s list instead. In ⌘K, What does BRIGHT do? opens BRIGHT’s answer while BRIGHT is on the panel, and Learn: what a filter does opens the lesson below from any level.

Learn: what a filter does

BRIGHT's answer has a LEARN: WHAT A FILTER DOES button, a lesson of about a minute that uses the sound in your hands as its example. It has three steps; Enter or NEXT moves on, and Space plays the step's sound wherever focus is in the lesson (NEXT and DONE take Enter).

1. A sound has a shape. The sound's face, low at the base: wide where it has more than most of your sounds, narrow where it has less (with under four faces in your bank, its spectrum stood up instead). Play it, and a bright line shows what you hear as it plays, against the same bank.

2. A filter lets some through. A lowpass filter from the instrument's own modules is put on the sound, and you drag its cutoff along the graph (or use the arrow keys, and Home and End for its ends). PLAY … THROUGH IT plays the sound, looping, through a lowpass in your browser as soon as you move the cutoff, so you hear it while you drag; its curve is drawn dashed amber and marked not measured yet, a guess at the instrument's filter. Where you leave the cutoff, the sound is rendered with the instrument's own filter, and the render takes over: it fades in over the browser's filter, its measured curve lights the graph in place of the guess, and the shape's top narrows above the cutoff while the unfiltered shape stays dashed behind it. The render is played as loud as the sound itself (every phrase the instrument plays is set to one loudness), so you hear it darken, not fade; through the browser's filter the level is an estimate from the sound's spectrum, about as loud, so it can step a little when the render comes in. The line across the shape marks the cutoff you hold, before its render too. The browser's filter goes after the whole sound, and the instrument's inside it, so the two can differ until the render lands. The cutoff is the knob's value in its own unit on the held note, as PATCH shows a filter's cutoff.

   A sound with no room for one more module (about one pool sound in ten; none of the presets) gets the filter after it instead, at one cutoff for every note, and the lesson says so. If the filtered sound doesn't render at a cutoff (it goes silent, or doesn't pass the vet), the lesson says that too, draws no curve for it, and plays nothing under THROUGH IT; another cutoff may. If the sound itself doesn't render, the lesson says why and has nothing to play.

3. What to remember. What a lowpass does, and what BRIGHT turns on this sound: a filter's cutoff on some sounds, other knobs on others.

The filter is only the lesson's. DONE (or Esc) leaves the sound as it was. The keyboard plays the sound without it.

Half-closed controls

Sometimes a control can only go one way. A sound with no movement at all can’t be made stiller, and the knobs that would try may do something else. On First Bass, turning MOTION down made the sound very slightly more restless: the opposite of its name.

So each half of each control is checked on real renders before it is offered, and a half that didn’t move the sound the way its word says is closed. The ring is solid on the side you can turn toward and dotted on the other, with a stop at the top. The control won’t go past the center on the closed side, and the line under it says which way it turns:

turns toward restless only

That is a statement about the control, not about where the sound sits. The amber dot can sit anywhere.

Amber, dashed: search controls

A control drawn in amber with a dashed ring is a search control: this patch’s knobs can’t make that change. A patch with no drive can’t get rougher by turning a filter, and one with no delay or reverb can’t get much farther away. Over the preset library, GRIT and SPACE are search controls on most sounds for that reason. A search control has no line under it at rest: the line over the controls says turn an amber one to ask for it, once, while one is on the panel.

1. Turn it past the amber notch, three tenths of the way to either end. The line under it reads turn further to ask short of the notch, then let go to ask for rough, or let go to add a tone EQ.
2. Let go. It always springs back to the center.

Let go short of the notch, and it asks nothing. Past it, one of two things happens.

Where one change would give it something to turn, that change is made.

The toast says Bright: giving it a tone EQ to turn…. The change goes onto the sound as one undo step, and the patch is measured again. The control is set to where your hand left it, and the toast then names the knobs it turns. Each control gets this once per sound, never twice.

Otherwise (SNAP, MOTION, GRIT, SPACE turned down, or a change that still didn’t reach it), no knob moves. An offer is grown from the sound, aimed the way you turned, and arrives in B. The toast says so (Grit: no knobs here make it rough, so it’s growing a grittier offer instead.), and B counts the seconds while it grows.

When it arrives, B says how far it went, in amber: grittier by 1.8σ. σ is the spread of the sounds in your session, so by 1σ is about as far as a working control moves the sound at a full turn. When the walk didn’t get there, B says so: not grittier: this walk found no way there. Turn it again to try another.

Which way your taste leans

Hold ⌥ (Alt off Apple platforms), or press and hold MODEL in the menu bar, and each control shows which way your taste leans along it, from the sound in your hands. An amber arc runs from 12 o’clock toward the end it leans to, just outside the ring, and the line under the control says it in the model’s words:

it leans brighter
it leans softer?

The longer the arc, the more the model’s rating of a sound changes as it moves that way: the whole panel is drawn on one scale. Behind it, a thin arc shows how far that could be off. When that thin arc crosses 12 o’clock, the model can’t yet tell which way you lean, so the lean is drawn as a guess: dashed and faint, its words ending in ?, as LEARNING marks one. Before the model has fitted anything there is no lean, and nothing is drawn.

A lean is about your taste, not the knobs. An amber, dashed search control has one too: its knobs can’t move the sound that way, but your taste may still lean there. Let go of ⌥ and the lines under the controls are back. The lean is asked for as the view comes up, and again when the sound in your hands changes (for a sound with AUDIO IN, a new clip of an input it reads too) or the model learns from a pick or fits again. Open a taste file and the leans go until the model has fitted again (at once from a file with picks in it; from one with none, once you have taught it).

How it works

To see what one control does to this sound, ask it. HOW IT WORKS, in CONTROLS’ head, opens in the well over the dimmed face, on the control you last touched, with every control on the panel a tap away; the controls stay in reach beside it. ×, Esc or HOW IT WORKS again puts the face back. For each, it says what you hear it do (A soft attack and few harmonics.), what it listens to, and what it does on this sound, from its measurement: the knobs it turns (On this sound it turns amp attack and filter cutoff.), that nothing here turns it, or that it hasn’t been measured yet. Under that, the rest of this page in short: the amber dot, half-closed controls, search controls, and WANDER.

Opening the circuit

Everything PERFORM does lands on real knobs, and PATCH shows it while it happens. A knob PERFORM is playing away from its kept value carries a second, amber pointer at the value sounding, and its readout shows that value in amber. The green pointer is the kept value. Hover the amber pointer to see what is moving it: a control, a glide, Wander, or velocity for the knobs your last struck note plays, which fold back when the note ends (the sustain pedal or HOLD keeps it).

KEEP writes the amber into the patch, and the two pointers become one. Velocity's part belongs to the note, so KEEP leaves it out. It works the other way too: a knob you turn in PATCH is the kept value from that moment, PERFORM plays from it, and BACK glides home to it.

Click a knob under UNDER THE HOOD to open its module in PATCH, pulsing where it is.

The XY pad

XY, in the well’s corner, puts two named controls under one finger: the well becomes the pad, with the face dimmed behind it, the axis drop-downs along its top and each control’s end words at its edges. XY again, or Esc, puts the face back. It starts as BRIGHT across and MOTION up, and either axis can be any control on the panel.

1. Choose an axis from its drop-down. The note keys play straight away after, so a note letter can’t change the axis.
2. Drag to play both controls at once. Double-click to go back to the center.
3. With the pad focused, use the arrow keys. Hold Shift for fine steps.

The pad follows the controls, so turning BRIGHT on its dial moves the dot too. Only an axis whose control reaches the sound moves. A search control’s end words are struck through, and an axis not measured yet is dimmed, with listening to this sound…. The pad has no “turn to ask” gesture; use the dial for that.

Blend, Peek, and B

An offer is a second sound in a second set of voices that follows the same hands: every note you play is played on both. You hear B by crossfading to it, never by a jump.

B stands in the well beside your sound: its label (B, or B · GRITTIER for an aimed offer), its face in amber, and under its floor what changed, then where it grew from and how to hear it (grown toward your taste · offered · hold B to peek). While an offer grows, B says so where its face will be (growing an offer…). With nothing in B, your sound stands alone.

• BLEND, the slider under the two faces while B holds an offer, sets the mix, from home at the left to B at the right.
• PEEK plays B alone for as long as you hold it, or hold B. Let go, and the mix returns to wherever BLEND is.
• TAKE (⇧↵) makes the offer your sound.

The named controls turn the sound you’re on, not the offer.

What you see is what happened. An offer is grown from the sound you’re playing, so B grows out of the sound’s face into its place. TAKE fills B with green from the bottom, and B goes into the face: it is the sound you play now, heard or not. NEXT folds B back into the face it grew from: it is dropped, nothing joins the pool, and you keep playing what you had. With reduced motion on, nothing moves: B fills for a moment when taken, and empties when passed.

Wander

WANDER sets how alive the sound is on its own. It is one dial with four zones, left to right:

Three short ticks outside the ring mark where ideas, drift, and roam begin. Let go of WANDER in a new zone, and it answers in a second and a half; the zone’s pace sets the moves after that.

The line under WANDER says what it is doing:

• drift · next in 9 s while it waits, with a thin amber arc inside the ring filling toward that move;
• drift · walking… while the walk looks for the next setting;
• drift · gliding while the knobs glide;
• ideas · one in B while B holds an offer;
• paused 3 s while your hands are on other controls;
• frozen while it is frozen;
• nothing better nearby when the walk finds nothing it prefers, and stays.

Wander runs only while PERFORM is on screen. While the sound is running short on a slower computer (Blend, Peek, and B), a walk waits while notes sound, so the line reads walking… longer: it starts a second after your last note, and after eight seconds of playing it goes on a step at a time.

Structure never changes on its own. Drift and roam move knob values only, and they respect the locks you set in PATCH. A new module only ever arrives as an offer in B, and becomes your sound only if you take it.

Hands on, it waits. Touching any other control or pad, or moving one from MIDI, pauses Wander for three and a half seconds, and the line counts them down. A touch mid-glide stops the glide where it is, and the sound stays there. Turning WANDER itself is not a touch: it waits while you turn it, and answers once you let go.

Tap to freeze. A short tap on WANDER stops it where it is: its ring lights, and the line reads frozen. Tap again to release it. With WANDER focused, Enter does the same. Freeze has no key of its own.

The pads

PEEK, TAKE and PASS wait, dashed, until B holds one, and OFFER says so once, then peek, take or pass under its name. Their keys pressed while an offer grows say it is still growing, until it lands, and B held until then plays it as it lands.

Moved · KEEP · BACK. When the sound has left home (a control turned, a drift not kept, a glide under way), moved · KEEP · BACK shows at the end of the head’s first line, in a place it always keeps, so nothing moves when it comes or goes.

With a control you reached with Tab focused, ↵ is that control’s (a button presses, a named control plays its sweep), not KEEP. A turn with the mouse or a finger leaves nothing focused, so ↵ keeps straight after it. With the sound at home, either key says there is nothing to keep or go back to. None of the pad keys act while you type in a field or a dialog is open (the key map).

KEEP changes the sound you’re playing, not the bank. To keep the result as a sound of its own, press KEEP AS NEW in PATCH. Until a sound you opened has arrived, KEEP and TAKE change nothing and say why: Take waits for Acid Line to finish opening. Try again in a moment.

Stage mode

In PERFORM, ⇧F, or ⇧F in the well’s corner, puts the sound you’re playing on the whole screen, for a gig or a stream: the wordmark and the model’s lamp at the top left, × at the top right, its name and family · in hand at the bottom left (the family only where it has one), the keys along the foot, and its face, large, standing on a floor that reflects it, and over the face what you hear, drawn in the face’s own bands against the same bank, with 100 Hz, 1 kHz and 10 kHz marked beside it. The face stands whether or not anything sounds; what you play lights the face’s outline and draws its own outline over it, and fades like phosphor, so nothing moves while nothing sounds.

Everything still plays: the keys, a MIDI keyboard, and Space for the phrase (a tap does the same on a touch screen). ⇧F again, or Esc, or × in the corner leaves, and the keyboard is back where it was. Tab stays on the stage: nothing behind it can be reached until you leave. A refusal said while it is on (Nothing to undo here) shows over the stage, and in its line at the bottom for a few seconds.

In PERFORM, ⇧F takes the place of F’s accent (Shift with a note key plays it harder). F on its own is still a note, and at every other level ⇧F is the accented F it always was.

Nothing opens a dialog

Nothing PERFORM does on its own opens a dialog. A player in the middle of a phrase can’t answer a question, so everything PERFORM needs to tell you arrives as a line: the status line, B’s words in the well, or a toast. Everything it offers you is a pad you can ignore. The dialogs you can open from it are your own choice: ⌘K’s list, stage mode (⇧F) and the lesson on filters, and Esc closes each.

In ⌘K

At PERFORM, ⌘K’s list starts with THIS LEVEL: the pads and the buttons, each with its key. Offer: grow a variant into B (N), Take the offer in B (⇧↵), Pass on the offer in B, and once the sound has moved Keep: make the sound home (↵) and Back: glide back to the last sound you kept (⇧⌫); Freeze Wander, Arrange your controls, How it works, XY pad: two controls under one finger, Stage mode (⇧F), Share this sound as a picture, and What does BRIGHT do? while BRIGHT is on the panel.

Before you have taught it anything

Offers and drift walk toward your taste. Before there is a fitted model there is no taste to walk toward, so they are drawn from the grammar instead. They still only land on sounds that pass the vetting gate. PERFORM says which you’re hearing:

drift · gliding · no taste yet
grown before it has learned your taste

The first is the line under WANDER, the second B’s words in the well. Once the model has been fitted, the first loses · no taste yet, and the second reads grown toward your taste.

What PERFORM teaches the model

An offer you heard and answered is a pick. An offer is the model’s proposal, played against the sound in your hands: the question an EVOLVE pair asks, without stopping the music. Once you have heard B, your answer counts:

Heard means PEEK held, or BLEND past half, for at least a second while notes were sounding. An offer you answer without hearing it teaches nothing, and the toast says so: a take reads Took B. Not counted, because you hadn’t heard it., a pass Skipped B. Not counted, because you hadn’t heard it.

Each answer can be taken back while its toast is up. A take carries DON’T COUNT IT for eight seconds, since taking a sound to hear it in place isn’t always a verdict. A pass carries UNDO for seven, which brings B back and records nothing.

KEEP, BACK, control turns, and Wander are logged with your session, and they don’t teach the model. A KEEP might mean this is the one or hold on a moment, and a turn is a gesture, not a verdict.

MIDI

Plug in a controller and turn its first eight knobs: they take the first eight of PERFORM’s slots, in the order you turn them: the panel’s controls in its order, then BLEND and WANDER. A slot is a place in that order, so after you rearrange the panel the same knob turns whatever is in its place now. Channel pressure brightens, and the mod wheel drives MOTION, wherever they sit on the panel; while one is off it, its source adds nothing. MIDI has the whole map, including learn, endless encoders, and soft takeover.

What to try next

• Turn WANDER into ideas, and let the offers come to you.
• Turn an amber control past its notch, and hear what B grows.
• Hold ⌥, and see which way your taste leans along each control.
• Open the sound in PATCH, and watch the amber pointers move as you play.
• Performance: named controls and the drift walk has the measurements and the math.