Playback engine 4 of 15

Cutups

Cutups launches discrete source regions on a free or tempo clock. Lane selects the physical starting source, Advance sets how many cuts play before moving to the next lane, and the cut clock sets the rhythm. Region order and polyphonic lane divergence are separate decisions, so several held voices can share a rhythm while following different material.

Controls edit the focused instrument. Instrument mode sets its lane and voice budget: eight voices in Single, four per part in either dual mode, or two per part in Quad. Quad omits stack controls because each part has one lane.

Good for: chopped loops, tempo-locked rearrangement, transient resequencing, repeated fragments, controlled random walks, and polyphonic lane counterpoint.

Pages and navigation

Set Algorithm to Cutups. Up opens the shared Pads & Scale and Amp Envelope pages, then Cutups Clock and Cutups Path.

Cutups waveform with full-height playheads, hollow actual-lane markers, and a dashed outgoing cut — In Single, full-height solid lines show the current cut readers within the zoomed source window. Split restricts each cursor to its own lane pair. Hollow stack markers identify their actual lanes. Dashed lines show outgoing cuts during joins. Playheads remain visible through note release and disappear in silent gate gaps.

Clock determines when cuts happen and how each event enters and leaves.

Cutups Path parameter page with one reserved position — Path determines repetition, variation, region count, lane order, and voice divergence.

The controls common to every playback engine are documented in the shared Engine page table. The sections below cover Cutups-specific controls.

Lane and Advance

Knob Waveform / Engine	Display	Range	What it controls
4 / 5	LANE	1–4	Lane selects the physical starting source. Turning it while a note plays changes the source at the next cut and restarts lane advancement from there. Empty lanes use the nearest loaded lane, preferring the lower lane on a tie. LORD begins its route from that source; POLY may offset individual voices.
5 / 6	ADV	Hold / 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 8 / 16 cuts	Advance sets the number of cuts on a lane before following LORD to the next lane. Hold disables automatic advancement; Lane and pressure remain usable. The default is one cut per lane. Changing Advance starts a fresh count on the current lane. Repeat continues to control region repetition independently.

With four loaded lanes, LANE 1, LORD Down, POLY Together, and ADV 2, the lane sequence is 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4. Increasing the cut tempo speeds up that sequence without skipping lanes. Cutups does not use the shared Scan Rate setting.

Pressure: when Pressure Mode is Offset, pad pressure adds zero to three lane positions to LANE, wrapping after lane 4. The dial remains live while a note is held. Each voice owns its pressure offset.

Loop Hold: press Loop to pause automatic advancement while cuts continue on their current lanes. Pressure changes leave the held selection intact; explicit Lane edits still take effect at the next cut. Releasing and replaying a pad recalls its held lane. Press Loop again to resume advancement. Hold changes and the actual selected lanes are captured in performance recording.

Cutups Clock — every parameter

Knob	Display	Range	Detail
1	MODE	Forward / Reverse / Palindrome / Random / Walk / Random Cycle	Chooses the region-number sequence. Forward and Reverse wrap; Palindrome turns at the ends; Random chooses any region; Walk takes a random ±1 step; Random Cycle shuffles all regions and plays each exactly once before making a new shuffle.
2	CLCK	Free / Tempo	Free uses Free Rate in hertz. Tempo derives intervals from BPM, Swing, and Division.
3	DIV	1/4, 1/8, 1/8T, 1/16, 1/16T, 1/32	Musical cut interval in Tempo mode. Free mode ignores it.
4	RATE	0.25–64 Hz	Events per second in Free mode. Tempo mode ignores it.
5	TVAR	0.00–1.00	Randomizes every interval around its clock value. At 1.00 the variation reaches approximately ±90%.
6	GATE	5–100%	Audible duration as a percentage of the current interval.
7	JOIN	0–100 ms	Fade-in/out and overlap between consecutive cuts, automatically limited to half of the audible GATE duration. At 100% Gate, outgoing cuts overlap the next cut during Join; shorter gates fade to silence before ending. Zero retains a short internal safety transition.
8	RSRC	Equal / Transients	Equal divides Field by Regions. Transients uses the selected lane's detected boundaries and falls back to equal regions if no map is available.

Cutups Path — every parameter

Knob	Display	Range	Detail
1	REPT	1–16	Repeats the chosen region before the region-sequence step advances.
2	REV%	0–100%	Independent probability that a new cut reads backward.
3	PVAR	0–24 st	Random pitch offset inside ± the selected semitone range for every cut.
4	LVAR	0.00–1.00	Random attenuation per cut. It never boosts above nominal level.
5	LORD	7 choices	Selects Down, Up, Palindrome, Random, Pairs, Outside In, or Center Out across the currently loaded lanes.
6	POLY	Together / Stagger / Rotate / Random	Offsets the lane path per voice. Together follows the same route; Stagger adds a starting voice offset; Rotate adds that offset and an extra order position at each advance; Random gives each voice and advance a repeatable variation. Pressure offsets individual voices when Pressure Mode is enabled.
7	REGN	1–64	Equal-region count and fallback count when Transients has no detected map.
8	Reserved	—	Inactive and available for a future Cutups Path control. Field remains on Engine.

Reading the waveforms: hollow markers stay on the lanes actually being read, even when several voices follow different routes. During a join, a dashed line shows the outgoing reader. The small lane bars combine the current and outgoing cut envelope gains of all sounding voices, including note releases.

Lane Order choices

These canonical routes use four loaded lanes. LANE rotates an ordered route to begin on the selected physical lane. For example, Up starting on lane 1 plays 1, 4, 3, 2.

Order	Four loaded lanes
Down	1, 2, 3, 4, then wrap.
Up	4, 3, 2, 1, then wrap.
Palindrome	1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, then repeat.
Random	Starts on LANE, then chooses a loaded lane at each advance. Choices can repeat. ADV Hold or Loop Hold keeps the selection fixed.
Pairs	Traverses 1, 2 as the first pair, then 3, 4 as the second pair.
Outside In	1, 4, 2, 3.
Center Out	2, 3, 1, 4.

Tempo source: Tempo mode uses BPM and Swing from Performance Loop. Pad pitch changes the cut reader, not Division, Free Rate, or the interval clock.