Two kinds of cable run across the canvas. Thick, light cables carry notes and sound. Thin cables carry modulation: blue from the modulators, amber from the macros. Modulation cables make no sound; they move knobs.
Connecting
- Drag from a node’s out dot onto another node. For a modulation cable, a list of that node’s controls opens: pick the one to move. Controls the cable cannot reach are greyed out.
- A new cable starts at 100 %.
- Tap a cable to set its amount, flip its polarity or invert it, mute it, or remove it. The amount shows on the cable, except at +100 %.
- When the same send goes to several controls on one node, tapping the cable lists them all under Also on this pipe, each with its own amount.
One way or both ways
A cable from an Envelope, a macro or another one-way source takes a knob up from where you set it, by as much as the amount says, and never below it. A cable from an Oscillator swings the knob both ways around its setting; its amount reads with a ± sign. A negative amount turns either one upside down.
Modulate almost anything
Almost every control can take a cable, stepped ones included: a Filter’s type, a switch, an octave. A cable on a stepped control lands on its steps. One knob can take several cables, each with its own amount, and you see the movement on the knobs, on the bars as a thin white strip, and in the pictures.
Helin refuses a cable only when it would break the patch, for example a loop where a sound would feed itself.
Per note and for the whole sound
Sources, Filters, Amps, Pans and the Note node run once for every note you play, so an envelope on a filter opens it separately for each key. Effects such as Chorus, Delay and Reverb run once on the whole sound.
- Cable an effect into a Filter and the Filter moves out of the voices by itself, to work on the whole sound, for example to darken a reverb tail.
- An Envelope on an effect’s knob, such as the Delay’s mix, follows the highest note playing and rests at the knob’s own setting when nothing plays.
- Each Amp is its own sound. Two sources with their own Amps can go to different effects.
Note cables
Notes travel by cable too. Notes In feeds the sources, either straight or through an Arp or an Octave node. One source can take the keys straight while another plays the Arp, and a source with no notes cable stays silent. Along the bottom edge of Notes In, Note and the Arp, a row of dots sends what each note carries (pitch, gate, velocity, pressure, and from Notes In the mod wheel, aftertouch and pitch bend) as modulation.
Next: Sound sources