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MusicStation User Manual

MusicStation is a digital audio workstation for recording, arranging, launching clips and mixing. This manual documents every function, button, switch, menu item, shortcut and setting of the application in English and German. Press F1 over a control to open its description; the help opens the manual in the language the interface is currently running in.

Contents

The Contents button in the header of the help panel brings you back to this table of contents at any time, also after you followed links deep into the manual. The menu entry MusicStation Manual opens the same page. Pick a chapter:

  • Header bar - engine status and tempo display.
  • Transport - play, stop, tempo, playhead position, test tone and the transport shortcuts.
  • Session - the clip grid, launching clips and scenes, the launch quantisation, the loop switch, loading files by drag and drop and the grid's keyboard.
  • Settings - language, theme, accent colour, UI scale, the two preferences, the resets and the track and clip colours.
  • Keyboard shortcuts - every shipped shortcut with its default key, the shortcut editor with capture, conflicts, presets and the import and export of the map.
  • Workspace - what a panel is, docking and resizing panels, the four shipped workspaces and the workspace manager with save, rename, delete, reset and import/export.
  • Panels - the Browser and the Inspector, the selection of the session grid and the track colours.
  • Version history - the History panel with the stored versions, the snapshot and rename form, the comparison of two versions and the non-destructive restore.
  • Menus - every entry of the menu bar with its accelerator, the Project menu included.
  • About and What's New - version, build, release-note history and the notes shown after an update.
  • Help - the help panel and the context-help keys.
  • iPad remote - pairing with the bridge, the session grid and the transport of the remote.
  • Website and brand - the product site and what it offers, the online manual with its help anchors and its search, the brand mark with its word mark, the home page hero and the icon set.

First steps

  1. Start MusicStation. The window shows the header bar with the project name, the transport bar, the session grid in the centre, the settings docked on the right and a help button; the status line at the right end of the transport reads connected as soon as the audio engine is reachable.
  2. Press Space to start playback and Space again to stop it.
  3. Type a tempo into the Tempo field and press Enter, or step the value with the arrow keys.
  4. Drag a WAV, AIFF or FLAC file out of a Finder window onto a cell of the session grid, wait for the slot to show the clip, and press Enter on it: the clip is armed and starts at the launch quantisation boundary - right away, while the playhead still sits on bar 1. Launch a whole row with the Scene 1 button on its left.
  5. Pick your Language, Theme, Accent colour and UI scale in the settings panel; if you closed that panel, open it from the Panels menu of the header.
  6. Keep your work: Project ▸ Save writes the session into a project file (see Save) - the header then shows the project name instead of Untitled and stops marking the state as unsaved.
  7. Hover a control you do not know and press F1 to read what it does.