VOLTAreference

Reference / Work in Studio

See what is playing now

Work in Studio

Open in the workbench →
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Watch only the sounding parts scroll past a fixed play-head.

What it is#

A Timeline mode for listening. The play-head stays a third of the way across; what just played is to its left and what comes next to its right, so you can read where you are and what is about to happen at a glance. Every track keeps its row in source order: a track that is sounding opens to a small roll, and the rest stay a thin dimmed line, so nothing jumps when a part drops out.

Where to find it#

  • Timeline ▸ now. The chip beside cycles and map/arrange. The choice is remembered with the session.
  • Stage. The STAGE chip in the Now header fills the workbench body with the same view, larger, for playing to a room. The header and transport stay. EXIT STAGE or Esc returns to the workbench.

Reading it#

  • A row opens when its track was heard in the last bar, is holding a note, or has a note due within the next bar. It closes a bar after the part goes quiet.
  • The left column names the track and the voice it plays through (via bassV), then where it is in its pattern: loop 7 · bar 2/4 for a looping pattern, or riverIdea · 3/20 (pass 3 of 20) inside a region of a written timeline. The thin bar under it fills across the current cycle or pass.
  • Notes. Played notes are solid and light up while they sound; notes still to come are fainter. A chooseBy track's upcoming notes are outlines, because the branch can change before they play. Pitched parts fit their own range; a sample part gets one row per sample, so a kit reads as kick, snare and hat lines.
  • Waveforms. Behind each open row is that track's level, and along the bottom the master's, with short-term loudness. They grow only to the left of the head: what has not played has no signal yet.
  • − n bars + sets how many bars fit across (1 to 16; 4 by default).

What it does not do#

  • It is read-only: no seeking, editing, solo or mute. Use Cycles for those.
  • A track the transport has not started and that has no written region coming up shows nothing ahead of the head.
  • The waveforms are level envelopes (−48 to 0 dB), not the sample-accurate traces of the Scopes panel.