Transport and Session

The transport answers where the music is playing. The session holds the rig that can play it. Keeping those lifetimes separate lets you stop a piece, preserve its sound design, and start again without loading everything anew.

One play head for the piece

Audio and MIDI tracks share the transport’s cycle position. Pause holds that position; stop returns it to the start; seek chooses another cycle. Patterns describe events at that musical position, so seeking does not require playing every earlier note first.

The audio device also has a frame counter used to date captured audio. Musical position can jump while that device clock advances. A recording and an arrangement need both coordinates to place a take correctly across seeks and restarts.

Stopping notes leaves tails

Pause and stop release sounding notes, but a delay or reverb can still contain sound. Letting that tail finish preserves the musical ending. A stopped play head therefore does not imply an empty effect or absolute silence.

Three stops in a row request panic: the sound is cut and instruments and effects are flushed, but the tracks and patterns remain loaded. Panic is recovery within the same rig.

Reset discards the rig

Reset removes variables, tracks, instruments and effects and starts an empty session. It is a rebuilding boundary rather than another way to move the play head. Saving source and plugin state makes the rig reproducible after that boundary.

Recording has its own ending too. RECORD; starts playback and armed recording; STOP; ends the take, while PAUSE; does not. Treat stopping a take and discarding a session as separate decisions.

Transport specifies each statement; Perform Live puts these choices into a set.