Music Composer

Patterns and replicas

A pattern is a motif you can reuse. Select some notes and press ⌘P to make one. ⌘D duplicates it as a replica, a linked copy: change the pattern, and its replicas change too.

A pattern can hold replicas and other patterns too, so a phrase built from a motif can itself be repeated. Each replica of it carries the replicas inside, and a replica inside one copy can be selected by its label and moved, by scale steps or semitones, without changing the others. A pattern can't hold a replica of itself, however deep.

A replica can still be changed on its own. Move it, transpose it, stretch it, or edit single notes in it. Whatever you change is kept as an override, and the rest stays tied to the pattern. Reset overrides takes a replica back to the pattern.

A replica moves by semitones unless you step it in the scale with the arrows, or switch on Snap to scale in Properties. It then keeps its height as a number of steps, and its notes fit the scale around them, across any key change it covers. A note you repitch inside it helps decide that scale. Moving it by semitones makes it an exact copy again.

The scale it snaps in is read from the notes around it, holding to the declared key unless they contradict it. Scale in Properties can take the declared key instead, or a key and mode you choose for that replica alone.

A replica holds the scale it was read in, so editing the music around it doesn't change its notes. It's read again when you step it, move it along the timeline, switch snapping on, or change its pattern, and where the music could be read more than one way, the scale it held stays. Held in Properties shows it, and Read again reads the music as it is now. A note you step in the scale likewise keeps the scale it was stepped in for its next step.

A replica's interpretation is its own. Lengthening, moving or muting a note in the pattern leaves its copies as they were, and a note in a replica takes its own rules. A rule on the pattern as a whole reaches every replica. To have the pattern's notes lead their copies, turn on Shared interpretation for the pattern in Properties: a rule on a pattern note then plays in every replica, unless the replica note has its own. The same goes for a replica the pattern holds: its rules reach its copies only with the switch on. A replica can leave with the same switch.

⌘⌥D detaches a replica into ordinary notes.

Drag the edges of a selected pattern's box to take in rests or leave room above and below its notes. Double-click an edge to bring it back to the notes. Once all four edges sit on the notes, the box follows the notes again.

A long pattern or replica can cover a lot of the canvas. Turn on Select by label only in Properties to click through it to the notes below: see Notes, parts and groups.