The Loop Deck

The header keys

• ▶ PLAY ALL — launch every channel's current loop together, on the grid; channels already sounding keep going.
• ■ STOP ALL — stop every channel.
• + SNAPSHOT — freeze which loop each channel is playing right now as a named, recallable key (right-click a snapshot to rename or delete it). Recalling a snapshot swaps every channel to its saved loop, quantised. With nothing playing the key refuses and the feed says so ("no loops are playing — launch some, then snapshot the combination").
• ⏺ CAPTURE — arm a jam; disarming prints everything you performed into the arrangement as real clips, one undo step.

The four keys hold one position at any panel width — they never move as you play. The readouts beside them are what give way on a narrow deck: the LOOP length grid always shows, its live-slot count ("N LIVE") needs a deck about 454 px wide or wider, and ⇤ ARRANGE appears only while a channel is overriding the arrangement.

Pads (channels)

A pad wears exactly the same body/title-band/ink look as an arrangement clip, with a loop-progress sweep while playing. The sweep runs across the loop region — between the loop-region flags, over the bright part of the waveform — and turns over exactly where the channel's loop does, so a channel playing one bar of a two-bar loop sweeps only that bar. Empty pads read "DROP A LOOP · TAP TO LOAD".

• Click a silent pad — launch its loop; click a sounding pad — stop that channel (a mute-toggle feel).
• Launching only queues: every launch and stop lands on the next launch-grid boundary. A queued pad blinks an amber frame with a beats-to-launch countdown.
• The launch grid is the global Loop Length control: Free / ½ / 1 / 2 / 4 / 8 bars — ⌘6 (8 bars), ⌘7 (4), ⌘8 (2), ⌘9 (1), ⌘0 (Free), or the header popup. Launch quantisation follows it.
• Hover a pad's title band for micro-keys: AUDITION (prehear through the browser's preview player without launching), ARRANGE (send to the arrangement at the playhead), ✕ CLEAR.
• Each channel also has TUNE and GAIN knobs that scrub live — the loop pitches and changes level while you drag, so you tune by ear; the whole turn commits as one undoable clip pitch/gain move when you let go. A live meter, draggable loop-region flags on its waveform, a loop-length chip (own bar count or "follow the grid"), a MATCH KEY chip (pitch the loop to the song key), and a ▸| badge on one-shot (non-looping) clips.
• ↑/↓ move the keyboard selection through slots; Return launches the selected slot.

The shelf (alternates)

Drop a second loop onto an occupied pad and the channel grows a shelf — chips under the pad, one per alternate. Click a chip to swap the channel to that loop (quantised). Drop a file on the empty ground below the stack to create a new channel.

New channels are named after the loop you dropped, not "Audio 1" — and that name is the one the agent knows the track by and the one an arrangement lane carries when ⏺ CAPTURE prints your jam. Dropping the first loop onto an untitled channel renames that channel to the loop too; a channel you have named yourself keeps its name.

The pad menu (right-click)

Stop · Audition loop · Load audio file… · Record N bars into this slot (N follows the loop-length grid; Free records until you stop) · Loop on/off · Duplicate · Tune ▸ (Match song key / ±semitone / ±octave / reset — titled with the current offset) · Gain ▸ (±1 / ±3 dB / reset) · Move to arrangement (at playhead) · Clear · Follow action ▸ (Next clip / Repeat / Stop / None; after 1/2/4/8 loops).

Moving loops around

Drag a pad's clip out onto the arrangement (⌥ = copy, keeping the pad); drag an arrangement clip onto the deck to fill a pad (⌥ = copy — jam with a copy, keep the timeline); drag between pads (cross-track allowed). The agent shares the whole surface — scenes, slots, launching, snapshots, capture, recording — through the scene.*, slot.*, and launcher.* commands.

Transport hand-off

While the deck owns playback, the arrangement's meters dim (the Master stays live) and any arrangement transport action — Space, Stop, RTZ, a timeline click — first stops the launched clips and hands playback back to the timeline. Back to arrangement does the same per-track or globally.