Sections are a powerful new tool that allow you to group and arrange loops into rows (or “tracks”), set their starting beat, and play the loops all together as a unit. These can be used like “sections” of a song, with each one possibly representing a verse, chorus, or bridge.
Within a section, you can specify how many times a loop can repeat – including an “infinite” repeat. These repetitions are visualized in the section with light gray bars, and a row-level playhead helps you see the section’s current playback position.
A new “Sections” menu allows you to control the volume of the selected sections, deselect them, delete them, and create new empty sections.
This was a commonly requested feature, so please let me know how this new tool works out for you. As always, your feedback and ideas are very appreciated!
DevUp VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZKSEIjj_HQ
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZKSEIjj_HQ)
SECTIONS
- Added the “Section” interface, which can contain many loops. To add a loop to a section, grab the loop (with either the grab tool or the “grip” gesture) and move it near to the section’s main panel. Once it gets near enough, the loop will snap into the nearest row (“track”) and column (“beat”). Release the grab to finish this process.
- When a section contains one or more loops, a green “Play” ringer appears at the left. Hit this ringer to start (and then stop) the section’s playback. You can think of section playback like starting several loops simultaneously, with any of those loops possibly having several beats of wait time before they actually begin. Once an in-section loop begins playing, it can repeat for a configurable number of times.
- Once a loop is snapped into a section, it can be grabbed independently from the overall section – it just requires that the attempted grab is within the loop’s bounds. When the loop is grabbed, you can slide it up/down/left/right to change its position within the section. Moving the grabbed loop several centimeters away from the section (in any direction) will cause it to detach from the section and become a standalone loop again.
- A new “Loops > Within Section” menu controls the number of times a loop will play/repeat within the section. You may select “Infinite” to make it repeat without end, or else, select the number of times the loop will play before stopping.
- Within a section’s track, the loop’s note-chart appears, but not its other interface elements. To the right of the loop, light gray bars indicate the loop’s repeats, including a larger gray bar at the stopping point (if any). A loop with a non-infinite play count will force the section’s width to grow until the stopping point is visible.
- The section panel always keeps the loop’s playhead aligned, even after certain events, such that the loop plays like it was in that position since the start of section playback. This occurs when moving a loop into a section, or to a new position within a section, or upon changing a loop’s duration or play/repeat count. For example, sliding a loop forward three beats will jump its playhead back three beats so that it stays in sync (given its new position) with the playing section.
- Minor things: The section panel shows tick marks for each beat, including stronger ones for the first beat of the measure. Moving loops around within a section panel has a subtle “tick” sound. You can move two loops around simultaneously by grabbing one with each hand. After an in-section loop’s first repetition, a smaller playhead continues sliding to the right and is visible until the loop reaches its stopping point.
- Added the “Sections” menu, which controls one or more selected sections. It currently contains a volume slider, deselect action, delete action, and the ability to create a new section.
- Creating a new section requires that there are no blank sections in the scene. The button will be disabled until all available sections in the scene contain at least one loop. A new section is placed immediately below the “Sections” menu. If a section already exists nearby, the new section will be pushed forward several centimeters to (attempt) avoiding overlap.
- All section interfaces (including their position, their loop references, and the row/column of each loop) are saved and loaded within a layout.
OTHER
- Posted user guide for using EXA’s in-app mixed reality, which can work with a simple webcam and green-screen setup. Read the guide to learn more.
- Added a volume slider to the "Loops > Levels" menu. This controls the playback volume, for fading the loop in and out. It differs from the velocity slider, which controls the strength of the hit (and only affects the note at its “hit” time). Within a section, the loop’s volume is also multiplied by the section’s volume.
- Updated the triangle-shaped notes/events in the loop chart to fade to gray based on the loop’s volume setting.
FIXES
- Fixed issue with the two "Application” top-level menu buttons, which were not generating a highlight sound, nor creating a haptic tap upon selection.
- Fixed issue with loops where the final playback (either with a standalone loop’s “once” playback or a section’s last loop repetition) would wrap-around to play the first loop note.
PATCH 1
- Fixed issue causing the "save layout" action to fail if a section containing loops had been deleted. The "delete section" action was not fully deleting the loops, leaving behind old/stale references (which the "save" action would try to access).
PATCH 2
- Added "failsafe" code in an attempt to prevent the freeze/hang issue reported here. By modifying a timing value in the code, I was able to replicate the issue on my machine, and the new "failsafe" code prevented the freeze/hang in my scenario. The root cause of this issue is still unknown, but so far, there is no indication that the issue occurs outside of a particular machine.