WHAT MODCHIP IS

A music machine built out of the sound chips of old consoles and home computers. Each chip is a real emulation with its own voice: MEGA 16 is four-operator FM, NE8 is squares and a triangle, HANDBOY is a pocket machine with a drawable wave, COMP 64 is three voices through a filter, ZX MICRO is three squares and noise, MOD 4 is four eight-bit loops driven by a tracker, DOS FM is the PC's two-operator card, WAVE 6 is six waves you draw. The BPC 60 is a sampler and the PCM 16 is the way in for a microphone or a line.

You make patterns on PADS and KEYS, lay them out on SONG, record audio on AUDIO, and mix on the MIXER. The CONSOLE is a typed language for the same things, for when words are faster than knobs.

Nothing is destroyed until you say so. Takes stay under the lane until you flatten, every edit is a step back with ⌘Z, and quitting keeps everything exactly as it is for the next launch.

THE VIEWS

Six views, along the top: SONG lays patterns and audio out in time · PADS plays and programs drums, sixteen pads and a step grid · KEYS is the piano roll · AUDIO records and comps takes with the studio beside them · MIXER is the desk · CONSOLE is the typed language.

Tab walks them in order and comes round again, Shift+Tab walks back. The header follows the track you are on: its chip, its type, its sound. The SHOW bar under it folds parts of a view away: PATTERNS, RACK, MASTER, CHANNEL, and on AUDIO, SHAPING.

PADS and KEYS open on the track's own pattern. An audio track opens on AUDIO. Double-click a block on SONG and you land in its pattern.

KEYS AND SHORTCUTS

Space play and pause · Esc stop · Enter record · Tab next view · ` the console.

⌘Z undo · ⇧⌘Z redo · ⌘S save · ⇧⌘S save as · ⌘O open · ⌘N new.

⌘C and ⌘V copy what you last clicked: a pattern card, notes on the roll, or blocks on the song. Delete removes what is selected. I and O set the punch in and out at the playhead on AUDIO and SONG.

On the pads, the four rows are Z X C V, A S D F, Q W E R and 1 2 3 4. On KEYS the bottom strip plays three octaves; - and = move the octave.

PADS

Sixteen pads play the kit on the track you are on. Click or drag them, or use the keys. On an instrument track they are sixteen notes from the OCT window.

The step grid. Click a cell to program a hit, Shift for an accent, ⌥ for a soft one, right-click clears. DRUMS GRID snaps what you play live to the grid; LIVE keeps your timing to the REC Q value and shows a drum roll instead.

Under the pads is the pad you hit last: its level, pan, tune and two effect slots. Step PAD to pick another. A pad's effects are its own; the channel's effects on the desk are the whole kit's.

KEYS

The tools, bottom right in every editor: DRAW is the pencil, click adds and drag moves; SELECT drags a box around notes, then move the lot or press Delete; CUT splits a note where you click.

The roll. Click adds a note, drag moves it, drag its right edge to lengthen, right-click removes. SNAP is the grid; OFF places anything anywhere. QUANTIZE pulls notes onto the grid at STR strength, and 50% keeps half the feel.

Transpose beside the zoom: -1 and +1 move by a semitone, OCT by an octave, the selection if there is one and the whole pattern if not. KEY is the key this riff sits in; the song's key is in the transport.

Every octave has its own colour, on the keys, the roll and its gutter, so a bass line and a lead read apart at a glance.

PATTERNS AND THE BIN

Every pattern in the song lives in the bin down the left of SONG, PADS and KEYS. A card shows its bars and notes and a thumbnail of what is in it. Click one to work on it. The filter shows ALL, PADS or KEYS patterns.

+ NEW makes an empty pattern in the first free slot. The two keys at a card's corner: duplicate copies it into the next free slot and selects the copy, so what you change next is the copy and the original is untouched; the disk saves it to your library, to bring into any project, or loads one from there. ⌘C and ⌘V on a card do the same as duplicate.

A named pattern's copy is numbered: DROP makes DROP 2, then DROP 3. Click the name in the transport to name one.

SONG

SONG plays the timeline. Click a lane to place the pattern you are on, drag a block to move it, to any track, and drag its right edge to stretch it: the pattern loops inside. SNAP sets where blocks land and end, down to 1/32 and triplets. With CUT, the dotted line is where the scissors will cut, and the second half keeps playing from where it was.

Track plates down the left: the name, the sound, the fader and pan, and keys for M mute, S solo, R arm on an audio track, and A for automation. Click a plate to select the track. Right-click removes the track. Drag a plate up or down to reorder.

The ruler shows BARS or TIME. Click it to locate, shift-drag it to set a punch. The song's length is the last block's end.

THE CHIPS

Click the chip name in the header to see them all. Eight play sounds and go on the left of the deck: MEGA 16 (FM, the widest range, from bells to bass), NE8 (two squares, a triangle, noise: the eight-bit voice), HANDBOY (a pocket machine: a drawable wave and a noise you can pitch), COMP 64 (three voices through a resonant filter, the home computer sound), ZX MICRO (three squares and noise, with an envelope that gives it the buzz), MOD 4 (four eight-bit loops at a period, channels hard left and right, with the tracker's fifty-hertz arpeggio and the filter on the light), DOS FM (the PC's card: two operators with four waveforms each, nine voices), WAVE 6 (six waves you draw, each with its own left and right, and one wave can turn into another as the note sounds).

Two are audio chips. The BPC 60 is the sampler: load a file or drop one on the window, then send it to a pad, to the keys or onto the timeline. The PCM 16 is the way in on an audio track: the device, the input, gain, a low cut, a gate, and ARM.

Every instrument track also has a synth stage after its chip, on the SYNTH tab of the deck: a filter with cutoff and resonance, drive, an envelope and two LFOs. That is where a chip goes from a bleep to an instrument.

SOUNDS AND THE LIBRARY

The header shows the sound on the track you are on: its chip, its TYPE (drums, bass, keys, lead and so on) and its name. The arrows step through, a click opens the browser, and the star keeps a favourite.

Turn anything on the deck and the sound is yours: EDIT lights in the corner of its readout. The disk on the deck's plate saves it to your library by name, or loads one from there. RESET TO FACTORY on the console puts it back as it shipped.

An audio track has no sound to pick: it plays what you record on it. Its pickers go dark to say so.

EFFECTS

Press + fx on any slot and the picker opens: a card per box, with its own name on top and the plain word for what it is underneath, grouped by family. Type to narrow it; someone after a reverb can type reverb. Sound runs through the slots in order.

Click a box's plate to open it. Inside, every knob is in real units, the presets are along the top, and BYPASS takes it out of the path without losing its settings. × removes it.

The families: TONE is the colour of it (filter, EQ, drive, tape, crush, ring mod) · DYNAMICS is how loud and when (gate, compressor, limiter, sidechain) · MOTION is things that move (chorus, flanger, phaser, tremolo, gate, stutter) · VOICE is for a voice (pitch correction, harmony, doubling, de-esser) · SPACE is the room around it (delay, reverb, width).

THE DESK

Every track lands on a channel; channels go to a bus or the master; buses go on to later buses or the master. Each strip has a fader, a pan, a three-band EQ, sends to the buses post-fader, and insert slots. The plus tile adds a bus. The patch bay at the foot routes outs to channels.

The master is always on the right: its inserts, the meters, the volume, and the LUFS readout for how loud the song actually is. MASTERING holds a chain for the end of the road.

The channel strip beside PADS, KEYS and SONG is the desk's own strip for the track you are on, so you do not have to go to the mixer to ride a level. CHANNEL on the SHOW bar hides it.

MIDI LEARN AND WRITE

Any knob on the desk can be driven from a knob on your controller. Right-click a fader, a pan, a send or a knob inside a box and choose LEARN, then move the knob on your controller you want to use. It is bound from then on, and a small mark on the knob says which CC it is. UNLEARN lets it go. The same menu has AUTOMATE, which opens that knob's lane on the song.

Bindings live with the machine, not the song, so your controller does the same thing in every project.

WRITE sits by the transport, red like a track's ARM, because it records. With it on, any knob you move while the song plays goes into its automation lane as you move it, whether you drag it on screen or turn it on your controller, erasing what it passes over, so a pass is a performance rather than a drawing. Turn WRITE off and the lanes play back and your knobs are yours again.

SCOPES

An oscilloscope draws the wave itself as it happens: a square is a square, a saw is a saw, and a change of sound is a change of shape. The master has one above its meters, and the channel strip beside PADS, KEYS and SONG has one for the track you are on, in the track's colour. Each triggers on the wave's own crossing, so a held note stands still instead of smearing.

A click on any scope, the master's or the channel strip's, opens the wall: every track's wave at once, one scope each. Esc or BACK closes it. It is how the old machines' music looked on a screen, and it is worth recording.

PLUGINS

The desk's channels can hold boxes from outside the machine: VST3 and AU effects on this Mac. Open a channel's fx socket and the picker's last family is PLUGIN. The first time it is empty but for SCAN FOR PLUGINS: press it and the machine looks through the usual folders while you keep working; a bar counts them in. After that the family is a shelf: the plugins you starred and the last few you used. ALL PLUGINS opens the rest, one row each, sorted by what they do (reverbs with reverbs, dynamics with dynamics) and coloured like the machine's own box for that job, with a search that reads names and makers. Star one there and it lives on the shelf. Instruments and the pads keep to the machine's own boxes.

A plugin sits in the socket like any box: its first knobs on the desk, in the automation lanes and under MIDI learn, its bypass and remove keys, and one more, OPEN WINDOW, for the plugin's own face with the rest of it. Clicking a plugin's plate goes straight to that window, since its presets and meters live there; right-click the plate for the desk's box with its knobs, bypass and remove. What a plugin keeps beyond its knobs is saved with the song.

A plugin that adds delay says so on the status line when it goes in. The machine does not yet move the other channels to match, so a heavy one belongs on the master or on a channel where a few milliseconds do not show. A plugin that takes the app down during a scan is set aside on the next start and not loaded again; the log names it.

AUTOMATION

A knob that moves by itself. Press A on a track's plate on SONG and its automation rows open underneath. With no line yet, one row offers to pick a knob: the fader, the pan, a send, or any knob on any box on that channel.

Picking one puts a line down with its first point at the playhead, at the value the knob already has, so nothing jumps. In a row: click to put a point down, drag it, right-click takes it away, double-click makes it hold its value to the next point and step. Points snap to the song's grid; ⌥ frees them. While you hold a point the value reads in the knob's own words.

ON on the plate turns a line off without losing it: the knob stays where you left it. Stopped, every knob is yours again; a line only drives its knob while the song plays.

THE TUNE BOX

TUNE listens for the note you are singing and moves it onto the nearest note of the key. It follows the voice a few tens of milliseconds behind, keeps the octave when the fundamental is weak, and moves the pitch without moving the vowel, so a corrected voice still sounds like the same person.

KEY at SONG follows the song's key as the machine hears it (the readout by the transport), so the box is right without a word from you; pick a note to fix it. SCALE is major, minor or any note. RETUNE is how fast it moves: SNAP is the hard sound, the note lands the instant it is heard; 20 to 60 ms is a light hand; 200 ms and up only leans. AMOUNT is how far it goes: all the way, or half, which tidies a note and leaves the singer in it.

FORMANT at KEEP holds the vowel where it was, which is what you want for a voice. FOLLOW moves the vowel with the pitch, the small-and-fast sound of a shifted tape, which is a sound of its own. NOTES are the twelve landing places: the key's own until you click one, and then your own set, for a hook that lives on three notes.

AUDIO TRACKS AND THE PCM 16

+ AUDIO TRACK on the SHOW bar makes one; it opens on AUDIO. The PCM 16 on the deck is the way in: ARM first, then DEVICE and INPUT, GAIN, a LOW CUT for a mic, and MONITOR (OFF, ON, or AUTO for only while recording). The ladder shows the level; the lamp holds a clip until you click it.

ARM TO RECORD reads in red until the track is armed. Press RECORD with nothing armed on an audio track and it arms that one for you. With a count-in set, the click runs alone first and the take starts when the music does.

Beside MONITOR the round trip reads in milliseconds. Over about 15 a singer hears themselves late. Click it for the shortest buffer this machine can do. The bigger cause is an input and an output on different boxes, which is two clocks and a bridge between them; one box for both is always shorter.

While a take runs, the wave draws itself on the lane under the playhead, so you can see it is happening.

TAKES AND COMPING

Every pass is a take. Record round the song twice and you have two takes under the lane, each a row of its own, the newest on the lane. Nothing is thrown away.

Comping. Drag across a stretch of a take and that stretch goes onto the lane, over whatever was there, with a ten-millisecond crossfade at each seam. Build the lane out of the best bits of each pass. USE puts a whole take on the lane, SOLO hears one alone against the song, ★ marks a keeper, × takes one off.

FLATTEN turns the lane into one clip of one sample and takes the rows away (their audio stays in the bank). BOUNCE → BPC renders the lane, or the block you are on, into the sampler's bank to chop and play.

PUNCH IN AND OUT

Record only between two points of the song and leave the rest of the lane exactly as it was. Shift-drag the ruler to set the range and it turns itself on; the ruler shows it as a red band with IN and OUT. Or press I and O at the playhead. PUNCH on the AUDIO bar turns it on and off and reads where it is.

Then arm and RECORD as normal. The song starts a bar before the in so you have a run-up, the take goes down only inside the range, and each pass through it is a take of its own, with the newest on the lane.

THE STUDIO

On AUDIO, the studio sits beside the lane and shapes what you recorded after the fact. Pick a subject (a voice, drums, a guitar, an amp, a horn, an upright), a mic from the closet (each with its own colour and pattern), and a room. Then walk the mic in the picture: close is bass and breath, far is room, turned is soft.

FULL ROOM opens the room on the whole page with the close-up, a plan, and racks for the room's tone, reverb and slapback. SWEET SPOT puts the mic where an engineer would. Shift-click another mic to blend two. The mic unit under the closet has the mic's own knobs and flips over on the slide at its rack ear.

Each audio track keeps its own studio, and it saves with the song. SHAPING on the SHOW bar takes the whole chain off to hear the take as it came in.

The disk on the mic unit's left rack ear is the studio library: save this whole setup by name, or load one onto the track you are on. A loaded setup applies at once, so you hear it, not just see it.

THE GATE AND THE ROOM

GATE on the PCM 16 is a noise gate on the way in: the floor under which the room is held back. OFF at the left. It opens fast, closes in about ninety milliseconds, and will not chatter on a held note. The lamp beside it lights when the input is through.

SLICE AND SLIDE

Audio can be quantised. QUANT on the AUDIO bar cuts the block you are on where it actually hits and slides every slice onto the SNAP grid, at the strength beside it. A slice runs to the next one, so sliding never opens a gap, and every seam gets a crossfade.

LINE UP moves the whole take instead and cuts nothing, so its first hit lands on the beat. That is the one most takes need.

This is honest slicing, not warping: it is clean on drums and a rapped verse, and a held note can flutter at a seam, so back the strength off rather than snapping to 100%. It works against a swung grid, since SWING just moves where the lines are.

EXPORT

FILE holds EXPORT: the song or the pattern as WAV, AIFF or FLAC, the song as stems (one file per track), the song or the pattern as MIDI, and the pattern as a loop file to bring into another project. Stems are how you take a song somewhere else to mix.

FILES, VERSIONS, AUTOSAVE

FILE: NEW, OPEN, SAVE ⌘S, SAVE AS, CLOSE, and DEMOS to learn from. A song saves in a folder of its own under its ALBUM in your projects folder.

FREEZE A VERSION keeps the song exactly as it is now under a label you can always go back to. A plain save remembers where the audio is; SAVE AS BUNDLE carries the audio inside the file so it opens on any machine.

Autosave runs on its own (the gear sets how often). Quitting keeps everything exactly as it is for the next launch, so you can close the lid and pick up where you were.

THE CONSOLE

Press ` or CONSOLE. It is a typed language for the same things the knobs do, for when words are faster. ⌘Enter runs and saves what you typed as a custom version of the sound; Esc goes back.

A sound is a head line and its parts. Read this one:

patch "my bass" alg=4 fb=5
  op1 tl=22 ar=31 dr=12 sr=3 sl=4 rr=8 mul=1
  op2 tl=0  ar=31 dr=6  sr=2 sl=2 rr=10 mul=1

Why it reads that way. patch starts an instrument sound and names it. alg is which of the FM algorithms wires the operators up, fb how hard the first one feeds back on itself (more is grittier). Each op line is one operator: tl is its level (lower is louder, the chip's own way round), ar dr sr sl rr are its envelope (attack, decay, sustain rate, sustain level, release), mul its pitch multiple. A kit is the same idea with kit and a pad line each.

Type /help in the console for every word with its range, and /help pad, /help synth and so on for one part. Every chip has its own words; the console tells you when a word is not one of that chip's.

AUDIO AND MIDI SETUP

The gear opens SETUP: the audio output and input (SYSTEM follows what the Mac uses; a box by name pins it), the sample rate and buffer, your MIDI controllers (RESCAN after plugging one in), the projects folder, autosave, undo depth, whether the views follow the playhead, and the look.

A smaller buffer is a shorter round trip and more work for the machine. If the sound crackles, go up one. The PCM 16's readout tells you the round trip you have.