Tracks and clips

Tracks connect the arrangement to mixer channels. A track's clips supply media or MIDI events; its channel determines input, processing, routing, pan, and level.

Track types

Open the Mixer and use its add controls:

• Audio creates an audio track and channel for recordings or project audio.
• Instrument creates a MIDI track with a VST® 3 instrument input slot.
• Aux creates a return or submix channel without an arrangement lane.
• Output creates a hardware-output channel.

The project always has a master path. Deleting an audio or instrument channel also removes its clips from the timeline, but keeps the underlying media assets in the project.

Rename and organize tracks

Double-click a channel or track name to rename it. Use Alt + ↑/↓ while a track name is focused to reorder it.

Channel colors identify related material in both the mixer and arrangement. Open the channel menu to choose a color.

Audio clips

Recordings appear as audio clips when capture finishes. The waveform is a visual guide; changing the arrangement's Gain zoom changes only the drawing, not the clip level.

Audio files stored in the project appear under Library → Samples.

Drag a clip's left or right edge to trim it without changing the underlying audio. Trimmed material remains available, so dragging the edge back out restores it. Drag either handle along the top edge to set a fade-in or fade-out; Heron renders the fades with a smooth equal-power gain curve.

Right-click a clip for Split at playhead, Trim start to playhead, Trim end to playhead, Reset fades, and Delete. The playhead must be strictly inside the visible clip for split and trim-to-playhead commands. A split keeps the outside fades and starts both new cut edges with no fade.

MIDI clips

On an instrument lane, double-click empty space to create a clip at that position. You can also focus the lane and press Enter. Select a MIDI clip to make the Piano Roll available.

Drag a MIDI clip's left or right edge to trim it to the current arrangement snap. Hidden notes and events are preserved, so you can extend the clip again later. Right-click for split, trim-to-playhead, and delete commands. Splitting one or more selected MIDI clips at the playhead is one edit and one Undo step; the resulting clips can be extended and edited independently.

To bring in an existing Standard MIDI File, use the MIDI import command. For each sequence, choose a new instrument track or ignore it. You can keep the project Tempo Track or replace it with the imported tempo map.

Global lanes

The Tempo, Meter, and Key lanes describe the musical timeline. Use the Global Tracks control to show or hide all three lanes. Tempo and meter affect musical positioning and MIDI import; project key editing is still under development.

Supported meter denominators

Heron currently accepts meter numerators from 1 through 32 and the denominators 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32. The same choices appear in Project Settings, the top-bar musical display, and the Meter global lane. A missing value such as 11 is a current limitation, not an input or project error.

The project timeline uses 960 pulses per quarter note (PPQ), so a whole note is 3840 ticks. Every supported denominator divides that duration into exact integer tick positions. A meter such as 7/11 would instead make one notated beat 3840 / 11 ticks. That is not an integer, and allowing different parts of the application to round these fractional positions separately could make bar lines, snapping, count-in, the metronome, and plug-in timing disagree or drift over time. Heron rejects such a denominator rather than silently approximating it.

Standard MIDI Files have a separate compatibility limit: their Time Signature event stores the denominator as a power of two, so a signature such as 7/11 cannot be represented losslessly in a .mid file regardless of its PPQ value.

If you need to sketch music based on an unsupported denominator, turn piano-roll snap Off and place notes manually. The project must still use a supported displayed meter, and its bar grid, metronome accents, and count-in will follow that displayed meter. Supporting these meters correctly requires a shared rational-meter grid; that can be added without changing the project's 960 PPQ timebase, but is not implemented today.

Undo and redo

Clip creation, movement, trim, split, fades, deletion, piano-roll note edits, and Tempo, Meter, and Key lane edits use the same project history. Undo or Redo restores the whole operation, including a multi-clip split, in one step.