Tracks and mixing

In Drambo a track isn’t a fixed channel — it’s a module, the most important one. A Track module has a rack inside it for your instrument or effect, and it is what lets that rack receive notes from the sequencer and launcher. Every track is equal: any of them can hold a synth, a sampler, an effect chain or just an Audio Unit plugin with no patching at all.

The tracks all live inside one more track, the Main track, which you reach from the Main pad. Its rack works as the project’s mixer and a general performance controller, where you can route MIDI and audio between tracks. Every Track module in the Main rack appears as a track below it, with its own pad.

Start a project from the default template and the Main rack holds eight ordinary tracks, two send tracks and a Master track. Their pads read Main, 1–8, A, B and Master. Each ordinary track’s three output knobs send it to the Master and to sends A and B, so an effect you put on a send track can be fed from every track.

Because the sends and the Master are ordinary tracks too, they hold racks you can fill with effects, and you can add more tracks whenever you need them. Templates covers starting from other templates, such as MIDI Sequencer, and saving your own.

The row of track pads is the fastest way around a project. The current track has a highlighted outline, and its rack and clip are the ones on screen.

Swiping a pad mutes or solos its track — see Mute and solo.

Muting and soloing work from the track pads, and two track settings decide exactly what they do.

To clear every mute and solo at once, hold UNDO and tap MUTE (see UNDO, and clearing things with it).

Tap MULTI-RACK on the top bar to see every track’s rack side by side. Each column shows the track’s three output knobs (Master, A and B to begin with), its pan and its mute and solo buttons, which makes this the closest thing Drambo has to a mixing desk.

The meters at the right end of the top bar show the output level and how hard your device is working. If the CPU meter is running high, Polyphony, stereo and CPU explains the usual fix.

Each track has a settings menu. Open it by tapping the header of its Track module (in the Main rack, or the column at the left of the track’s own rack), or by double-tapping its pad. Scroll to see everything.

Below these come the AUDIO and MIDI sections, covered in Route a track’s audio and A track’s MIDI settings.

Every track has one audio source and three destinations, set in the AUDIO part of its menu. The three destinations are the three knobs at the right of the track’s rack — Master, A and B in a new project — so each knob is a send level to whatever you’ve chosen.

The MIDI part of the track menu decides which incoming MIDI reaches the track from outside Drambo — a keyboard, a controller or another app — and how it treats overlapping notes.

For glide, turning Retrigger off is the first of two steps — see Glide and portamento.

Stems recording captures the audio of the tracks you choose, ready to take into another app. Each Track module has a tape symbol that marks it for recording; to begin with, only the Master track is marked, so a plain recording captures the whole mix.