GrooveGrid Manual

What is GrooveGrid?

GrooveGrid is a software groovebox — a self-contained instrument for building complete tracks from scratch. It runs as a standalone app or as a VST3 plugin inside your DAW.

Sample machines with hardware depth

Per-step sample switching, slice sequencing, conditional steps, and retriggers — hardware sampler depth with a visual grid instead of a tiny screen. Oneshot, loop, and granular engines each handle samples differently. Retriggers work at the MIDI level, so they apply to synths and external gear too, not just samples.

Music theory that stays out of the way

Pick a key and scale. The pitch faders constrain to notes that fit. Set a chord degree and every track re-quantizes — same patterns, new harmony, no manual editing. Duplicate a scene, change the chord, and you have a progression. Lock a bass track to the scale while everything else follows the chord. You don’t need to know theory to use it, but the music you make will sound like you do.

One loop becomes a full arrangement

Start with a single scene. Add probability-based step triggers so the pattern evolves on every pass. Use euclidean generators and algorithmic pattern generation to fill out rhythms. Duplicate the scene, shift the chord degree, layer in per-step automation, and your one-bar sketch grows into a complete track without starting over.

Built-in sample editor

A waveform editor for slicing, bookmarking, and preparing samples without leaving the app. Select regions, detect onsets, create named bookmarks with per-machine settings, and export slices. Bookmarks are stored alongside your audio files so they travel with your samples, not your projects.

Six built-in sound engines, a searchable sample library, per-track effects chains, and VST3 plugin hosting — one window, one workflow, no context switching.

1. Scenes

A scene is a self-contained musical section — think of it as a verse, chorus, or bridge. Each scene carries its own tempo, key, scale, chord quality, time signature, and bar count. You build a song by arranging scenes in the playlist and setting how many times each one plays before advancing to the next.

Scene properties

• BPM — Tempo, 20–300.
• Key — Root note (C through B).
• Scale — Major, Minor, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Locrian, Pentatonic, Blues, or Chromatic.
• Chord quality — Triad, Maj7, Dom7, Min7, Dim7, Aug, Sixth, Sus2, Sus4, or Add9.
• Chord degree — The default chord degree (1–7). Can also be automated per-step from the emphasis track.
• Time signature — Numerator (2–16) over denominator (2, 4, 8, or 16).
• Bar count — How many bars the scene spans (1–64).
• Playthrough count — How many times the scene loops before advancing in Follow mode.
• Color — Visual label for quick identification.

Scene operations

Create, duplicate, delete, merge, or split scenes. Splitting divides a multi-bar scene at the current bar boundary. Merging combines selected scenes into one. All operations are undoable.

2. Tracks

Each track is an instrument lane. A track has a machine (sound source), an effects chain, volume and pan controls, and per-scene step data. You can mute, solo, reorder, group, and color-code tracks.

Track properties

• Machine — The sound engine: Oneshot, Loop, Particle, Plaits, Plugin Host, or MIDI.
• Volume & Pan — Per-track mix controls.
• Mute / Solo — Standard mix workflow. With more than one scene selected, a mute or solo click applies to every selected scene in a single undo step.
• Octave range — 1–4 octaves of pitch range for the pitch fader.
• Base octave — Starting octave (0–8).
• Pitch snap — Chromatic, Scale, or Degree quantization.
• Clock multiplier — ÷4, ÷3, ÷2, ×1, ×2, ×3, or ×4. Speeds up or slows down the track relative to the master clock without changing stored data.
• Clock reset — Scene (reset on scene change), Bar (reset every bar), or Free (polymetric drift).
• MIDI channel — For external gear or plugin routing.

Groups

Select multiple tracks and group them. Groups collapse in the UI, share volume and pan as a sub-mix, and can be edited as a batch. Ungroup to flatten them back to individual tracks. The group header carries its own Mute and Solo toggles, so you can drop or solo the whole sub-mix in one click.

Track panel tabs

A track’s editors are grouped into tabs — steps, automation, motion, effects, and machine controls. When a track carries more tabs than fit across the panel, the tab strip scrolls horizontally so every tab stays reachable, even on a narrow window.

Emphasis track

Every scene has a special emphasis track (the “master track”). It controls groove influence across all tracks and owns the chord degree automation lane.

3. Step Sequencing

The note grid is the primary editing surface. Each track shows a continuous grid spanning 1–4 bars. Click an empty cell to create a note. Drag a note’s edge to extend it across multiple steps. Notes that span more than one step are called spans in the UI — they represent a single sustained trigger.

Creating and editing notes

• Click empty cell — Create a one-step note.
• Drag note edge — Extend or shrink. Overlapping notes are absorbed.
• Single-click a note — Delete (with a 250ms safety delay so you can cancel with a double-click).
• Double-click a note — Toggle strum on/off for polyphonic chord articulation.

Polyphonic voices

Any step can have multiple pitch voices. Alt+click on the pitch fader to add a voice; Alt+click an existing voice hash mark to remove it. Voices are independent of strum — a step can be polyphonic without strumming, or strummed without extra voices.

Strum

When strum is enabled on a span, the chord voices play in sequence rather than simultaneously. The span length determines how long the strum articulation lasts.

Strum patterns

• Up — Low to high.
• Down — High to low.
• UpDown — Alternates direction each chord.
• Converge — Outside voices inward.
• Diverge — Inside voices outward.
• Random — Seeded per scene for reproducibility.
• Interleave — Odd-indexed notes, then even-indexed.

Strum curves

The timing distribution between strummed voices can be Linear, Exponential, or Logarithmic.

Pitch spans and legato

When a note covers more than one step, the pitch row shows a single wide pitch fader stretched across the span — one sustained pitch, dragged in one place, instead of a fader on every cell. The legato toggle on the pitch row switches to per-step faders inside the span: each step gets its own pitch and the notes overlap at the MIDI level so they tie smoothly. Polyphonic voices and strum still work in both modes.

Drag readouts

Dragging any fader shows a context-aware value while you hold the mouse: velocity reads as 0–127, pitch as note name or chord-tone label, pan as L / C / R, volume as a percentage, MIDI CC rows as 0–127, probability as a percentage, and retrigger rows as count and division. Release to dismiss. Useful for dialing in exact values without checking a separate inspector.

Multi-bar grids

The grid shows up to 4 bars side by side when the screen is wide enough. Bars beyond the scene’s bar count are dimmed. Step layout supports configurable grouping patterns: {4} (default 4/4), {3,3,2} for Latin, {3} for 3/4, and so on.

Nudge

Shift all steps left or right by one position, with wrapping. Ctrl+←/→ nudges all tracks; Shift+←/→ nudges only the active track.

4. Music Theory Engine

Most sequencers show you a piano roll with 128 notes and leave you to figure out which ones sound good together. GrooveGrid takes a different approach: you pick a key and scale in the scene settings, and the pitch faders on each track constrain to match. In Scale snap mode, faders only land on notes within the current scale — you absolutely cannot place a wrong note. In Degree snap mode, faders constrain further to only the chord tones of the active chord degree. This means you can build a pattern on one chord, duplicate the scene or bar, change the chord degree, and every track set to Degree mode re-quantizes to the new chord automatically — same rhythm, new harmony, zero manual editing. Because snap mode is per-track, you can mix approaches: set a bass line to Scale mode so it holds steady on the root while pads and melodies in Degree mode shift around it with each chord change. You don’t need to know theory to use any of this. If you do, every concept maps to what you’d expect.

Key

The key is the root note — the “home base” that everything else is relative to. Set it per scene. C, D, F#, whatever you want. Changing the key transposes everything in the scene without altering any patterns.

Scale

A scale is a set of notes that sound good together. Major sounds happy. Minor sounds sad. Pentatonic sounds like a guitar solo. The scale determines which notes are available when a track’s pitch snap is set to Scale mode.

Chord degrees

A chord is a group of notes played together. In any scale, you can build a chord starting on each degree (1 through 7). Degree 1 is the root chord, degree 5 is the dominant, and so on. You don’t need to memorize this — GrooveGrid builds the chords for you based on the key and scale you’ve chosen.

Each scene has a default chord degree. You can also automate chord degree changes per step using the emphasis track’s chord degree lane — draw spans on degrees 1–7 to change the active chord as the sequence plays. When the chord degree changes, every track whose pitch snap is set to Degree mode re-quantizes its notes to fit the new chord automatically. This is the core of GrooveGrid’s theory-awareness: set up a pattern once, change chords with a single click, and everything stays in key.

Pitch snap modes

Each track has a pitch snap setting that controls how the pitch fader quantizes:

• Chromatic — All 12 semitones. No filtering. Full control, but you can hit “wrong” notes.
• Scale — Only notes in the current scale. You can’t play outside the key. Good for melodies and bass lines that should stay consonant regardless of chord changes.
• Degree — Only the chord tones of the current chord degree. The tightest constraint — every note is part of the active chord. When the chord degree changes, the available notes change with it. This is the mode that makes GrooveGrid “understand music theory.”

Chord quality

Chord quality adds color and complexity on top of the degree system. A Triad (3 notes: root, 3rd, 5th) is the simplest chord and works for most music. Seventh chords (Maj7, Min7, Dom7) add a fourth note for a jazzier or more complex sound. Suspended chords (Sus2, Sus4) replace the 3rd for an ambiguous, open feel. You can change chord quality per scene to shape the harmonic character.

Putting it together

Set your scene to a key, scale, and chord degree. Set tracks to Degree snap mode. Every note you place is guaranteed to be a chord tone. Change the scene’s degree from 1 to 5 — or automate it per step on the emphasis track — and all your patterns shift to fit the new chord. Same rhythm, new harmony. That’s the whole idea.

5. Machines

Each track has a machine — its sound source. The machine type selector lives in the left-side config panel of the track inspector, with the MIDI channel control directly below it.

Oneshot

One-shot sample playback. Load a sample, trigger it from the grid. Two play modes: Gate (sustains while note is held) and Trigger (plays to end regardless of note length). Includes a drawable volume envelope per slot.

Loop

Continuous sample playback with real-time time-stretching and pitch-shifting via Rubber Band. Three play modes: Gate, Trigger, and Toggle. Supports streaming from disk or loading to RAM. Configurable crossfade length and loop beat count.

Particle

Granular synthesis engine running up to 64 simultaneous grains. Controls: Scan (playback position), Spray (position randomization), Intensity (bipolar grain-engine drive — centre = max output, both extremes = silent), Density (grains per second), Size (grain duration), Pitch, Pitch Spread, Shape (grain window), Direction, Width (stereo spread), Feedback, and Choke (Ring overlaps grains across triggers; Cut hard-stops on the next trigger).

Particle has two play modes, selectable from the bottom bar of the machine panel: Gate sustains and retriggers grains while a note is held, Trigger fires once per step. Incoming MIDI pitch transposes the grain stream, so Particle plays melodically from the pitch row and from external MIDI. The Retrigger Count and Retrigger Time automation parameters work here too — the bottom bar exposes the per-sequence pitch alongside the mode switch for quick access.

Plaits

A port of Mutable Instruments’ Plaits macro-oscillator with 24 synthesis models — virtual analog, FM, wavetable, granular, physical modeling (strings, modal resonator), drum synthesis (kick, snare, hi-hat), speech synthesis, and more. Controls: Engine (model select), Harmonics, Timbre, Morph, Decay, LPG Colour, and Aux Mix.

Plugin Host

Host any VST3 or AU instrument plugin inside GrooveGrid. The plugin’s native editor opens in its own window. Plugin state is saved with your project, and the plugin selector restores the loaded plugin name when you reopen a project. Removing the plugin — or deleting the track — closes its editor window with it.

On Windows, plugin editor windows now size correctly on high-DPI displays (150%, 200%, and so on). The behaviour is controlled by Settings → General → Scale plugin editors to display DPI and requires an app restart after toggling.

Macro knobs and panels

The Controls strip on a Plugin Host track shows labeled panels of macro knobs that drive the hosted plugin’s parameters. Each panel is a fixed-height box (always two knob-rows tall) containing one or two labeled rows of knobs, with 1 to 6 knobs per row. Multiple panels lay out left-to-right; the strip scrolls horizontally when the panel set is wider than the editor — so a rich plugin like Diva can expose every important section (VCO, Mixer, Filter, Envelopes, LFOs, FX, Master) without compressing the knobs.

GrooveGrid ships with bundled default mappings for over a hundred popular VST3 plugins out of the box, including the full Arturia V Collection, the u-he line (Diva, Hive, Zebra2, Satin, ColourCopy, Presswerk, Twangstrom), Native Instruments’ Komplete classics (Battery, Kontakt, Maschine, Massive, FM8, Reaktor, Driver, Replika), and the SoftTube Solid Mix / VC / RC / Pultec series. When you load one of these plugins, its panels appear pre-populated with the controls the maker considers front-panel essentials, organised into musically-sensible groups (Oscillators, Filter, Envelopes, Modulation, Master, FX, and so on).

Customising the mapping

• Add a slot — the + button in the Controls module header adds an empty macro slot to the panel.
• Learn — right-click any slot and choose Learn, then touch a control in the plugin’s native editor. The slot binds to that parameter and reads its display name from the plugin.
• Rename — right-click a slot and choose Rename Control to set a custom label. Once renamed, the label sticks even if the plugin’s preset changes the underlying parameter’s reported name.
• Re-Learn — rebinds an existing slot to a different parameter without losing the slot’s position in the panel.
• Delete Control — removes a slot from the panel.
• Save as Default Mapping — from the editor’s header context menu, persist the current panel layout for this plugin to %APPDATA%/GrooveGrid/plugin-mappings/<Plugin Name>.xml (or the macOS equivalent). The next instance of that plugin anywhere in any project picks up your saved mapping in place of the bundled default.

Macro slots as automation lanes

Every mapped macro slot is also an automation target. Pin a plugin macro lane from the track’s automation row picker and draw step values like any other parameter — the macro drives the plugin parameter in real time on the audio thread, so step-snap automation tracks reliably even on dense sequences.

MIDI

Sends MIDI only — no internal audio. Route to external hardware or other software via MIDI channel assignment. Declares the full set of MIDI CC automation parameters.

Group & Master

These are auto-assigned. Group machines act as sub-mix buses for grouped tracks. The Master machine lives on the emphasis track and controls chord degree automation and groove.

6. Modifiers

Modifiers generate step patterns algorithmically. They appear in the modifiers panel on each track. Generated steps are marked with an asterisk in the grid. You can “stamp” generated patterns to convert them into regular user-owned steps.

Euclidean

The Bjorklund algorithm distributes N triggers as evenly as possible across the bar.

• Notes — Number of triggers (1–16).
• Offset — Rotate the pattern (0–15 steps).
• Length — Gate duration per trigger (1–8 steps).
• Apply to all bars — Same pattern across the entire scene, or unique per bar.

Grids

A port of Mutable Instruments’ Grids pattern generator. It interpolates across a 5×5 map of drum patterns to generate kick, snare, and hi-hat rhythms.

• Channel — 1 (kick), 2 (snare), or 3 (hi-hat).
• Map X / Map Y — Position in pattern space (0–255).
• Level (Fill) — Density threshold (0–255). Higher values add more triggers.
• Chaos — Random perturbation (0–255). Adds or removes fills on each playthrough.
• Length — Gate duration per trigger (1–8 steps).

Euclidean and Grids are mutually exclusive on the same track/scene.

Clock multiplier

Not a pattern generator, but a per-track time scaler. ÷2 halves the playback speed (8th notes become quarter notes); ×2 doubles it (16th notes become 32nd notes). Combined with the reset mode (Scene, Bar, or Free), this creates polymetric and polyrhythmic textures.

7. Automation

Each track can pin automation parameters as additional rows beneath the note grid. Each row shows a vertical fader per step. The available parameters depend on the track’s machine.

Parameters

8. Motion

Motion is GrooveGrid’s modulation system. Every track — including the master track — can hold Motion sources: LFOs and envelopes that move a parameter continuously instead of stepping it. Motion runs while the transport plays. You’ll find it in the track panel’s Motion tab. Double-click a source’s title to give it a name; that name is what you pick from in the routing matrix.

LFOs

An LFO cycles through a shape and pushes the result into whatever it’s routed to.

• Shape — Sine, Triangle, Saw Up, Saw Down, Square, or Random. Random holds a fresh value each cycle and is deterministic per project, scene, and bar: a looping scene replays the exact same random movement every pass, and an export matches what you heard.
• Rate — A Sync button flips a single Rate knob between two clocks. Lit (synced), the knob steps through tempo divisions from four bars down to sixteenth notes; off (free), the same knob sets a fixed rate in Hz, independent of the tempo.
• Phase — Offset where in the cycle the LFO starts, useful for setting two LFOs against each other.

Envelopes

An envelope is a one-shot ADSR contour. It retriggers every time the track that owns it fires a step — so an envelope on a kick track rises and falls with every kick hit, whatever it’s routed to.

Routing

Routing lives on the destination track as a mod matrix — a table of routes, one per row. Press + to add a row, then choose its Source and Destination from the dropdowns right in the row; there are no menus to dig through. A new row does nothing until both are set. Read left to right (signal flow), a row is: a grip handle, a source LED, the Source picker, the Amount attenuverter, an applied LED, and the Destination picker on the far right. Each route has:

• Source — Any source on any track, picked by name. The picker lists this track’s own sources first, then the master track’s, then the other tracks’.
• Destination — This track’s Volume, Pan, or a hosted plugin’s Macro 1–16.
• Amount — A signed attenuverter: above center it pushes the parameter up, below center it inverts the source and pulls down. Double-click to zero it.
• Meters — The source LED on the left shows the source’s raw movement; the applied LED on the right shows the amount actually applied after the attenuverter, so you can see each route working live.

Manage routes with the grip handle at the left of each row: click it to select the route, ctrl/shift-click to multi-select, then copy, paste, or delete the selection (there is no per-row X). Paste re-adds the routes on the same track; a route that would duplicate one already there is skipped. The LED meters animate to reflect live modulation while the transport is playing.

Deleting a source leaves its routes in place but inactive — re-add a source and they come back to life.

While Motion is running, a marker on the track’s volume meter also shows the modulated level, so you can see what the modulation is doing to the mix at a glance.

Ideas to steal

• Sidechain-style ducking — Put an envelope on your kick track and route it to the bass track’s volume with negative depth. The bass ducks every time the kick fires.
• Global sweeps — Put LFOs on the master track and route them into several tracks at once for build-ups and motion across the whole mix.
• Stereo movement — A slow sine LFO routed to Pan turns a static loop into something that breathes.

9. Effects

Every track has an effects chain — and so does every group and the master. Effects process audio in series, and the chain is fully editable: add, remove, and reorder effects per track. Every new track starts with the core set (EQ → Compressor → Saturation) from the built-in Default template, so a fresh track always has a sensible channel strip ready to go.

The + menu on the chain lists the built-in effects plus a Plugins submenu of your scanned VST3 effects. Each built-in effect’s name carries its type, so the menu reads Ricochet Delay, Aperture Filter, Spring Reverb, Snarl Distortion, and so on.

Working the panels

Every effect lays its controls out on a panel, and nothing is hidden — every control is always on show. The essential controls sit on the lighter background; more advanced extended controls sit on a slightly darker shade, so the two tiers read apart at a glance. A few conventions hold across all of them:

• Sync — Time- and rate-based controls carry a Sync button. Lit, the knob snaps to tempo divisions; off, the same knob sets a free value in Hz or milliseconds.
• Lamp toggles — On/off switches (like Continuum’s Freeze) render as an illuminated button: lit when on, dimmed when off — no dropdown to open.
• Double-click to reset — Double-click any knob or slider to snap it back to its default.

3-Band EQ

The channel-strip equalizer — broad, musical tone-shaping rather than surgical notching. Three overlapping bands (a low shelf, a mid bell, and a high shelf) let you warm a thin sample, tame harsh top end, or carve room so a bass and a kick stop treading on each other. It sits first in the Default chain, so every fresh track opens with tone control ready to hand.

• Low / Mid / High — Cut or boost each band, ±12 dB. Low and High are shelves (everything below or above the crossover lifts or drops together); Mid is a gentle bell sitting between the two crossovers.
• Low Freq — Where the low shelf hands off to the mids, 20–500 Hz. Lower it to lift only the deep bass; raise it to warm the low mids.
• High Freq — Where the high shelf takes over, 2–16 kHz. Lower it to brighten more of the upper midrange; raise it for air-only lift.
• Input Gain — Level into the EQ, ±24 dB. Make up gain after big cuts, or push the following Compressor and Saturation harder without touching the track fader.

Compressor

A two-knob dynamics processor that evens out level and adds glue. Rather than exposing threshold, ratio, attack, and release separately, it folds them into Amount (how much you squash) and Speed (how the envelope reacts), so you can dial a usable compression sound in seconds. Two voicings share those controls:

• Mu-law — A smooth, program-dependent compressor with a soft knee. Transparent at low Amount, thick and cohesive pushed harder. The everyday choice for buses, drums, and full mixes.
• Opto — An optical-style compressor whose release is slower and level-dependent, the way a light-cell circuit behaves. Gentler, rounder, and more “vintage” on vocals, bass, and sustained material.

Amount runs from bypass (0%) to heavy compression (100%); it sets both how early the compressor grabs and how much make-up gain comes back. Speed goes from slow (0% — gluey, lets transients through, good for bus “glue”) to fast (100% — grabs peaks hard, pumps and thickens). In Opto mode Speed scales the cell’s time constants rather than a fixed attack/release.

Try this: for drum-bus glue, Mu-law with Amount around 30–40% and Speed low; for an obvious pumping pop vocal, Opto with Speed toward the top.

Saturation

Harmonic warmth and drive — from a barely-there thickening to open overdrive. Saturation adds harmonics the original signal never had, which reads as loudness, density, and “analog” character without raising the peak level much. Amount sets how hard you drive in; Character shapes the harmonic balance for the active mode. Three modes change the curve:

• Tape — Soft, symmetric compression-into-clipping. Rounds transients and adds a smooth, mostly odd-harmonic warmth — the gentlest of the three, flattering on drums and full mixes.
• Tube — Asymmetric, even-harmonic saturation. Fatter and more musical as you push it; adds bloom and body to bass, keys, and vocals.
• Solid State — Harder, tighter clipping with a sharper knee. The most aggressive mode — edge and bite for leads and aggressive drums.

Saturation is oversampled so the added harmonics stay clean, and renders at higher quality on export. Try this: keep Amount modest (20–40%) on a mix bus for warmth; push it into the top half on a single sound when you want the drive to be part of the sound.

Ricochet Delay

A delay/echo that runs from crystal-clean digital repeats to warped, self-oscillating tape. One engine, three voices, and a feedback-loop pitch shifter that can turn plain echoes into climbing arpeggios. Everything past the mode selector is shared, so switching voices re-colors the same delay rather than resetting your settings.

Modes

• Digital — Clean, pristine repeats that keep their full brightness pass after pass. Time changes crossfade smoothly with no pitch shift. Reach for it when you want the delay to sit back and stay defined.
• BBD — Analog bucket-brigade character: each repeat darkens and softens a little more as it decays, and moving Time glides with a tape-like re-pitch. Warmer and grittier than Digital without going fully lo-fi.
• Tape — Tape echo with wow, flutter, saturation, and age. The most characterful voice, and the only one that will run away: push Feedback past unity and it self-oscillates into a sustained, saturating howl.

Shared controls

• Time — Delay time, 20 ms–2 s free-running. Turn Sync on and it locks to the project tempo, with Division choosing the note value: 1/1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/8T (triplet), or 1/16.
• Feedback — How many repeats, 0 up to 1.1. Below unity the echoes decay; from about 1.0 up the Tape voice tips into runaway self-oscillation (a performable drone).
• Mix — Dry/wet blend.
• Input — Record level into the delay, ±12 dB. Drive it hotter to push the Tape and BBD voices into saturation sooner.
• Tilt — Tone shaping inside the feedback loop: below center the repeats fade darker each pass, above center they brighten. Because it lives in the loop, the effect compounds over the tail.
• Ping-Pong — Bounces the repeats left–right across the stereo field. Works in every mode.

Pitched feedback (all modes)

The Interval control transposes every repeat, and because the shift lives in the feedback path it stacks: set it to a fifth and the echoes climb a fifth, then a ninth, then higher — an arpeggiating spiral out of a single note. Intervals are musical and stepped (−12, −7, −5, −3, −2, 0, +2, +3, +4, +5, +7, +12 semitones), so they stay in tune. Pitch Mode switches between Normal (hold one interval) and Sequence (alternate between Interval and Int 2 on each repeat), and Glide adds portamento so the pitch slides between steps instead of jumping.

Tape voice controls

In Tape mode a set of tape-machine controls appears: Format (Reel, Cassette, VHS, or Dictaphone — the baseline bandwidth and wobble character), Age (wear, loss, and hiss), Drive (record-head saturation), Bias (over-bias for darker, compressed repeats), Wow and Flutter (slow and fast pitch wobble), Noise (added hiss), Dropouts (momentary level dips), Chaos (random drift across all of the above), and Wow Shape (sine wobble toward smoothed-random).

BBD voice controls

BBD mode swaps in bucket-brigade controls: Color (grit and aliasing), Degrade (how far the repeats fall apart, building with feedback), Chip (the base bucket-brigade model), and Chips (×1/×2/×4 in series — more chips give cleaner, longer, less-gritty repeats).

Try this: a synced 1/8 Digital delay at moderate Feedback for a tight rhythmic slap; a Tape delay with Age up and Feedback near unity for a warped dub tail; or Sync off, Interval +7, Feedback high on a single held note to grow a self-arpeggiating chord.

Current Modulation

The movement effect: chorus, flanger, and phaser under one roof, all driven by a shared LFO. It turns a static sound into something that shimmers, sweeps, or pulses — width and depth for pads, jet-whoosh for guitars and drums, watery throb for keys. Chorus and Flanger share one delay-based engine; Phaser is a separate engine, and switching to or from it crossfades so you never get a click.

Shared controls

• Rate — LFO speed, 0.05–10 Hz free-running, or turn Sync on to lock it to tempo via Division (1/1 down to 1/16, including 1/8T).
• Depth — How far the LFO sweeps — subtle movement to seasick.
• Feedback — Resonance, 0–0.95. Most audible in Flanger (sharpens the comb into a whistling peak) and Phaser (narrows and deepens the notches).
• Mix — Dry/wet blend. Around 50% gives the deepest chorus/flange; toward 100% a phaser becomes a vibrato.

Chorus

Thickens and widens by summing your signal with slightly detuned, drifting copies. The Chorus voice picker sets the flavor:

• Analog — A warm, dark two-voice chorus with bucket-brigade coloration. The Character control sets how much of that vintage grit and bandwidth-limiting is dialed in.
• Multi — A clean, wide multi-voice ensemble. Voices sets how many detuned layers stack (1–8), Drift morphs the modulation shape (triangle toward sine) for a looser or smoother sway, and Tone tilts the wet signal dark to bright.

Flanger

A short, swept comb filter — the classic “jet plane” whoosh. It has true through-zero sweep, and Feedback sets the resonance. Polarity flips the comb between Neg (a notch at the shortest delay — thick and hollow) and Pos (a peak — gentler, more vocal).

Phaser

Sweeps a series of notches through the spectrum for a hollow, swirling motion. The Phaser model picker chooses the voicing:

• Optical Vibe — Vocal and throbbing, with an asymmetric “watery” sweep — the pulsing vibe sound.
• Fixed-Notch — Evenly spaced, resonant notches; more pronounced and forward as Feedback comes up.
• Script — A smooth, subtle, even four-notch sweep. The understated, warm option.
• Vibrato — Wet only (no dry blend), so the phase movement reads as a pitch wobble rather than a sweep.

Phaser adds two output trims: Level (output volume, to match the effect against the dry) and Character (vintage warmth on the phased signal).

Try this: Multi chorus with Voices at 4–6 and a slow Rate for a lush stereo pad; a slow Flanger with high Feedback on a drum loop for a rising sweep; Optical Vibe with a medium Rate on an electric piano.

Snarl Distortion

Drive and dirt, from a tight overdrive edge to a broken, sputtering fuzz. Where Saturation warms and thickens, Snarl clips hard — it reshapes the waveform toward a square, adding aggressive harmonics and sustain. A Voice selector picks the clipping character; four are diode/amp clip styles and the fifth is a full fuzz with its own extra controls.

• Silicon — Tight, hard clipping. The classic, most compressed and saturated distortion — the default.
• Germanium — Clips earlier and softer, with a warmer knee and a slightly squishier, lower-output feel.
• LED — Clips later and louder, so it stays more open and dynamic and responds to how hard you drive it.
• Op-Amp — Harder, harsher clipping with no diode softening — louder and less compressed, more raw.
• Fuzz — A gated, biased, asymmetric fuzz that can go from full and “woody” to torn and sputtering.

Shared controls

Drive sets gain into the clipper (from a light edge to a brick wall), Tone shapes the top end (darker to brighter), Level trims the output to match the dry signal, and Mix blends dry and wet. The clipping stage is oversampled so it stays clean, and runs at higher quality on export.

Fuzz controls

Selecting the Fuzz voice reveals its signature controls:

• Bias — The starve knob. Low keeps the fuzz full and woody (and it cleans up as you back off your source level); turned up it starves the circuit into gated, splatty, “broken” and vowel-like tones.
• Before — Pre-gain into the fuzz stage — how hard the signal hits it, separate from the overall Drive.
• Gate (extended) — Squelches the noise floor so decays cut off into sputtery silence rather than hiss.
• Voicing (extended) — Shapes the low end going into the fuzz: Demhe is fuller (more bass saturates), Hali is tighter (bass rolled off for a cleaner, more focused fuzz).

Try this: Silicon at moderate Drive for a rock rhythm crunch; LED with Drive high for an open, touch-sensitive lead; Fuzz with Bias in the top third for a torn, gated synth-bass sound.

Throb Tremolo

Rhythmic level movement — from a gentle sway to hard rhythmic chopping, and out to stereo auto-pan. An LFO modulates the volume; read at two stereo phases, that same engine becomes a panner. Three modes change what gets modulated.

• Amplitude — Classic tremolo: the whole signal rises and falls in level. The everyday choice.
• Harmonic — Splits the signal at a crossover and modulates the low and high bands in opposite phase, so it sounds like the tone shifts back and forth rather than just the volume — a hollow, phasey wobble.
• Pattern — A rhythmic step-gate: instead of a smooth wave, the level follows a repeating sequence of steps for stutter and trance-gate effects.

Shared controls

• Rate — Speed, 0.05–20 Hz free-running, or turn Sync on to lock to tempo via Division (1/1 down to 1/16, including 1/8T).
• Depth — How far the level dips on each cycle, from barely-there to full on/off.
• Shape — The modulation waveform: Sine (smooth), Triangle, Square (hard on/off chop), Soft Tri (rounded triangle), or Wander (a slow random drift).
• Mix — Dry/wet blend.

Mode-specific and stereo controls

• Crossover (Harmonic) — The split point between the low and high bands, 150–3000 Hz. Hi Phase (extended) sets how far out of phase the high band runs against the low.
• Steps (Pattern) — Pattern length, 2–16 steps. Smooth (extended) glides between steps instead of gating hard, and Shuffle (extended) adds swing to the odd steps.
• Phase (extended) — Stereo offset between the left and right channels, 0–360°. At 0° it’s a mono tremolo; at 180° it becomes auto-pan. Width (extended) spreads the modulation depth between the two channels.

Try this: a synced 1/8 Square Amplitude for a chopped rhythm; Phase at 180° with a slow Sine for hands-free auto-pan; Pattern mode with 16 steps and a fast sync for a trance gate.

Quanta Bitcrusher

Digital destruction: bit-depth reduction, sample-rate decimation, and a wavetable shaper, all before any smoothing. Unlike most effects it deliberately does not hide the aliasing — the harsh, metallic, ring-modulator-like artifacts are the sound, taking clean audio down to crunchy 8-bit, ringing lo-fi, or full harsh noise.

Core controls

• Bit Depth — Resolution, 16 bits (clean) down to 1 bit (a square). Fewer bits adds gritty quantization noise; the default of 8 is a classic crunch.
• Sample Rate — Decimation target, 260 Hz–58 kHz. High is effectively off; pulling it down adds progressively more aliasing and ringing — the sound of an old sampler.
• Drive — Preamp into the digital stages, clean up to a brick wall — drives the signal harder into the quantizer.
• Mix — Dry/wet blend, so you can dial in parallel grit under a clean signal.

Extended controls

• Character and Shape — A wavetable shaper. Character selects the transfer curve (higher = more extreme harmonics); Shape blends how much of it is applied.
• Tone — A pre-digital tilt EQ (dark to bright) that shapes what hits the crusher. Tone Enable bypasses it, sending the hot signal straight into the digital stages.
• Bit Mode — Bits quantizes normally; Mask switches to a bitwise mode where Mask (0–255) knocks out individual bits for glitchier, less predictable artifacts.
• Bit Position — Whether the bit reducer sits before or after the wavetable shaper, which changes how the two stages interact.
• Anti-Alias — Raw for gritty sample-and-hold decimation, Smooth for a cleaner band-limited version when the aliasing is too much.
• Output — Make-up level (up to 2×), since heavy crushing shifts loudness.

Try this: Bit Depth 8 with Sample Rate around 12–20 kHz for vintage-sampler crunch; drop Sample Rate below 1 kHz for ringing chaos; use Mix at 30–50% to sit grit under a clean drum bus.

Patina Lo-Fi

Age and wear — the sound of tape, VHS, worn records, and cheap samplers. Patina is built around one big macro: Amount drives the whole degradation of whichever mode is active, so a single knob takes you from pristine to falling-apart. The extended controls then let you shape exactly how it falls apart. Its three modes are three different flavors of decay.

Shared controls

• Amount — The master aging control. Turns up the active mode’s wobble, noise, reduction, or warble together.
• Tone — A tilt from dark to bright (center is flat), for taming or brightening the worn signal.
• Mix — Dry/wet blend.

Gen-Loss

Generation loss — audio re-recorded onto consumer tape and VHS until it wears out: wow, flutter, hiss, dropouts, honky band-limiting, and magnetic saturation. Format sets the baseline machine (Reel, Cassette, VHS, or Dictaphone). The extended controls layer on top of Amount: Gen (extra generations of loss, 0–8), Wow and Flutter (slow and fast pitch wobble), Noise (hiss), Dropouts (level dips and crinkle), Saturate (tape soft-clip), and Chaos (random drift across the wobble and wear).

SR/Bit

Sample-rate and bit-depth reduction — digital, cheap-sampler grunge, driven by Amount. The extended controls set the ceilings that Amount reduces from: SR (the sample-rate ceiling, 1 = full) and Bits (the bit-depth ceiling).

Warble

Pitch wobble, from a slightly warped record to a spinning Leslie. The extended controls set its character: Depth (how far the pitch wanders), Rate (slow warped-record to fast Leslie), and Shape (from a steady periodic wobble to a drunken random wander).

Try this: Gen-Loss on Cassette with Amount around 40% for a lo-fi beat texture; Warble with a slow Rate and moderate Depth on a pad for seasick motion; SR/Bit with Amount high for full digital grunge.

Aperture Filter

A multimode analog-style filter that shapes the harmonic content of a sound and sweeps it. Filters are the heart of subtractive synthesis; Aperture gives you six modeled circuits, each with its own resonance behavior and grit, from clean and surgical to screaming. Automate the Cutoff or route a Motion LFO to it and static sounds come alive.

Models

The Model selector picks the filter circuit. Each has a distinct resonance and drive character:

• MS-20 — Aggressive and screaming. Resonance distorts hard and self-oscillates near the top. Lowpass only.
• Ladder — Warm and punchy, four-pole (24 dB/oct). Self-oscillates, and resonance thins the low end the way the classic circuit does. Lowpass only.
• SEM — Smooth and clean, with gentle, musical resonance. Supports all output modes — the versatile everyday filter.
• WASP — Gritty and dirty; the gain stages clip, so it gets nasty as you push resonance and drive. Multimode.
• CEM3320 — Clean and versatile, four-pole, with a switchable slope. Multimode; the flexible all-rounder.
• Steiner — Vocal and unusual. It self-oscillates but, unlike the Ladder, resonance does not thin the low end, so it stays full. Multimode.

Controls

• Cutoff — The corner frequency, 20 Hz–20 kHz, mapped exponentially so the whole knob travel is useful.
• Resonance — Emphasis at the cutoff, 0–1. Near the top the MS-20, Ladder, and Steiner models self-oscillate into a pure tone you can play.
• Mode — Output type: Lowpass, Bandpass, Highpass, or Notch. The two lowpass-only models (MS-20 and Ladder) ignore this.
• Drive — Input drive into the filter core, for saturation and a harder-edged resonance.
• Mix — Dry/wet blend.
• Slope (extended) — Chooses a gentler 12 dB or steeper 24 dB rolloff on the models that support both (SEM, WASP, Steiner).

Try this: route a Motion LFO to Cutoff on the SEM in bandpass for a wah-like sweep; crank Resonance on the MS-20 into self-oscillation for a screaming lead; use the Ladder in lowpass with moderate resonance to sit a bassline in the pocket.

Schism Harmonic

A harmonic-fault fuzz — a synth-like octave and interval generator. It fuzzes your input into a square wave, tracks its pitch, and then synthesizes fresh square-wave voices at octave, sub, or interval relationships. The result is glitchy, aggressive, and synthy: think octave-fuzz leads, monster sub-octaves, and unstable harmonizer chaos. It tracks one note at a time, so it’s happiest on single-note lines and bass — feed it a chord and it will thrash, which is sometimes exactly what you want.

Modes

• Octave-Up — Synthesizes a voice an octave above the input. Screaming octave-fuzz.
• Sub — A voice an octave below, for weight and synth-bass depth.
• Interval — A tuned interval. The Interval control sets the offset in semitones, up to two octaves either way (±24), for harmonized fifths, thirds, or dissonant stacks.

Controls

• Drive — Square-wave fuzz into the pitch tracker and the square voice — the raw dirt of the effect.
• PLL — Level of the re-synthesized voice (the octave/sub/interval that Schism generates).
• Square — Level of a synthesized voice at the original pitch, for body under the harmony.
• Tone — Tilt from dark to bright.
• Mix — Dry/wet blend against your untouched input.

Extended controls

• Tracking — How quickly and tightly the pitch tracker locks. Snappier catches fast lines but jumps around more; more stable is smoother but lags.
• Glide — Portamento on the tracked pitch, so the synth voices slide between notes like a mono synth.
• Gate — Squelches the synth voices below an input threshold, so decays and silence don’t squeal.
• Sub — Adds an extra voice one octave below the main mode, for extra weight.

Try this: Octave-Up with PLL and Square balanced for a fuzzy octave lead; Sub mode with Gate up on a bassline for a clean synth sub; Interval at +7 for a harmonized fifth. Keep the input monophonic for the cleanest tracking.

Atrium Reverb

The workhorse algorithmic reverb — pick a space and shape it. Where Continuum morphs one algorithm and Spring models a physical tank, Atrium gives you four tuned reverb topologies for placing sounds in a room, a hall, or a classic studio plate. It’s the go-to for everyday depth and glue.

Voicings

• Room — Tight, natural, short. Adds space and depth without washing the sound out — good on drums and up-front elements.
• Hall — Large and lush, with a long, smooth tail for pads, vocals, and cinematic depth.
• Plate — Bright, dense, and smooth — the classic studio plate sound, flattering on vocals and snares.
• Ambience — Mostly early reflections with a light tail; a subtle sense of room without an obvious reverb.

Controls

• Size — The dimension of the space, from small to cavernous.
• Decay — How long the tail lasts.
• Tone — A tilt on the wet signal, dark to bright.
• Mix — Dry/wet balance.

Extended controls

• Pre-Delay — A gap (0–250 ms) before the tail begins, so the dry hit stays clear before the reverb blooms.
• Diffusion — How smeared and dense the reflections are, from grainy and discrete to smooth.
• High Damp and Low Damp — Roll off the treble or bass as the tail decays, so it darkens or thins naturally over time.
• Width — Stereo spread of the tail.
• Mod Depth and Mod Rate — A gentle chorusing of the tail that de-metallizes long reverbs and adds movement (most noticeable on Plate and Ambience).

Try this: Plate with a short Pre-Delay and Mix around 20% on a snare; Hall with Size and Decay high and a touch of Mod Depth for an evolving pad wash.

Continuum Reverb

A morphing reverb with no modes or presets — just one algorithm that continuously reshapes itself. Its whole identity is the Morph control: a single sweep takes you from a tight little room, through plate and hall, out to an infinite ambient wash, with everything (size, decay, and diffusion) moving together along the way. Because it’s one continuous surface, Morph is the perfect automation or Motion target for reverbs that grow and breathe.

Controls

• Morph — The identity knob. Sweeps the entire character from a tight room to an infinite wash. Automate it for build-ups and swells.
• Decay — A trim on the tail length around whatever the Morph position implies.
• Tone — A tilt on the wet signal, dark to bright.
• Mix — Dry/wet balance.

Extended controls

• Pre-Delay — A gap (0–250 ms) before the tail begins.
• Absorb — High-frequency damping: low is bright and open, high is dark and absorbent, as if the room swallows the highs.
• Mod Depth and Mod Rate — Chorusing of the tail for movement and to smooth long washes.
• Width — Stereo spread of the tail.
• Freeze — A lamp toggle that pins the tail for an infinite hold. Lit, the reverb sustains forever as a frozen pad — play new notes over it or ride it into a drop.

Try this: automate Morph from low to high across a build for a reverb that opens into a wash; hit Freeze on a held chord to sustain an infinite pad under the next section.

Scatter Granular

A granular texture and time-warp unit. It continuously records your signal into a buffer, then re-plays it in small overlapping grains — the basis for clouds, stutters, smears, pitch trails, and reversed textures. Great for turning a simple sample into an evolving pad or a glitchy rhythmic bed. Three modes drive the grains differently.

Modes

• Granular — A cloud of grains read from the recent input, scattered in time and pitch. From a light shimmer to a thick wash.
• Micro-Loop — Captures a short slice and repeats it, for glitchy stutters and locked loops. The Loop control sets the slice length.
• Time — Varispeed tape: the Speed control sweeps the playback rate (pitch and speed couple), for tape-stop dives, slow-downs, and reverse.

Core controls

• Size — Grain length, from short and pointillist to long and smeared.
• Density — How many grains play and how much they overlap, from sparse and stuttering to a dense continuous cloud.
• Position — How far back into the recorded buffer the grains read, from near-live to deep in the past.
• Mix — Dry/wet blend.

Extended controls

• Pitch — Transposes the grains, ±24 semitones (two octaves either way), for pitch trails and shimmer.
• Spray — Randomizes each grain’s position and pitch, loosening a tight loop into a scattered cloud.
• Feedback — Re-records the wet output back into the buffer, building smears and washes that grow over time.
• Reverse — The probability that any given grain plays backwards.
• Texture — Spreads the grain sizes from uniform to irregular for a rougher, more organic cloud.

Try this: Granular with big Size, high Density, and a little Spray for an ambient pad out of any sample; Micro-Loop with a short Loop and a fast tempo for stutters; Time mode automated from 1× down to a crawl for a tape-stop.

Spring Reverb

A physically-modeled spring tank — the dispersive “boing and chirp” of a real helical spring reverb, not a room or a plate. This is the drippy, splashy, vintage-amp reverb sound: surf guitar, dub, garage keys, and anything that wants character rather than a clean space. Kick it and it clangs. There are no modes; the controls voice one spring.

Controls

• Mix — Dry/wet blend.
• Decay — Tail length — how long the spring rings out.
• Tension — The dispersion amount: the springy, chirping character. Low is tighter and more echo-like; high is the full boing.
• Tone — Voices the midrange from dark to bright.
• Size — The spring length, which sets the round-trip time and the spacing of the echoes.

Extended controls

• Pre-Delay — A gap (0–120 ms) before the tank begins.
• Damping — Rolls off the treble as the tail decays, darkening the ring over time.
• Drift — A slow detune of the springs that de-metallizes the chirp train so it sounds less mechanical.
• Boing — Extra transient twang on the initial hit — the clang when a signal first strikes the springs.

Try this: high Tension and Boing with a short Decay on a surf-style guitar or plucky synth; more Decay with Damping up for a darker dub-style splash on a snare or chord stab.

VST3 effect plugins

Any scanned VST3 effect can sit in a chain alongside the built-in effects — pick it from the Plugins submenu of the add menu. Plugin effects open their own editor window, and their settings save with the project. Remove a plugin effect from the chain and its editor window closes with it.

If a plugin effect fails to load (say, on a machine where it’s not installed), audio passes through that slot untouched — the rest of the chain keeps working. Exports warn you and name the plugin so nothing slips through silently. Exports also compensate for plugin latency automatically, so plugin-heavy chains stay sample-accurate in the rendered file.

10. Browser & Library

The sidebar browser (Ctrl+B to toggle) manages your sample library. It scans watched directories, indexes files with full-text search, and organizes them by tags, collections, and types. Drag samples from the browser onto tracks to load them.

Tabs

• Places — Drill-down folder navigation through watched directories. Breadcrumb bar shows the current path.
• Tags — All tags with bookmark counts. Click a tag to filter.
• Collections — User-created groups of bookmarks with per-slot settings.
• Types — Filter by sample type: Loop, Oneshot, Particle, or Drum.
• Recent — Recently used samples, auto-pruned after 30 days.

Search

Full-text search (SQLite FTS5) across sample names and metadata. Debounced — results appear as you type.

Preview

Click a bookmark to preview it. Play/stop via transport controls. Volume and seek controls at the bottom of the browser.

Drag & drop

Drag bookmarks onto machine slots — any bookmark type works on any sample machine, the receiving machine adapts to the bookmark. Drag raw audio files from your OS file manager onto tracks. Drop a folder onto the browser to add it as a watched place.

Selection and bulk operations

The browser supports multi-selection. Ctrl+click toggles an item in or out of the selection; Shift+click extends the selection to a range. The right-click menu offers Rename for a single item and Delete for the whole selection — bulk delete is one click. Delete asks once and is undoable on the filesystem only via your OS trash; treat it as destructive.

Workspaces

A workspace is a top-level grouping for projects, useful for separating client work, song ideas, or tutorials. Create one with New Workspace from the browser context menu or the main menu. Each workspace has its own recent-projects list.

11. Sample Editor

The sample editor lives in its own view. It shows a zoomable waveform display, machine-specific controls, and a bookmark grid.

The editor is cursor-first. Dropping an audio file gives you a waveform with a cursor — no machine is loaded automatically. Click-drag a selection and the editor spins up a temporary preview machine for that region so you can audition before committing anything to a track. Bookmark regions render directly on the waveform as coloured overlays so you can see at a glance what’s already been marked up.

Waveform panel

• Selection — Click-drag to select a sample region.
• Zoom & scroll — Mouse wheel to zoom, drag to scroll.
• Onset detection — Analyze transients with configurable threshold and silence gate. Selection edges snap to detected onsets.
• Slice markers — Visual overlay showing calculated slice boundaries.

Bookmarks

A bookmark is a named region within an audio file. Each bookmark has a type (Loop, Oneshot, Particle, or Drum), a color, and per-machine settings. Bookmarks are stored in companion files (.wav.ggmarks) alongside the source audio, so they travel with your samples.

• Create — Select a region, click Create Bookmark.
• Edit — Click a cell to rename, change type, or recolor.
• Drag — Drag a bookmark cell onto a machine slot to load it.
• Export — Save a bookmark as a standalone audio file.

12. Transport & Playback

Controls

• Play / Stop — Space toggles playback.
• Loop mode — Single scene repeats indefinitely.
• Follow mode — Advance through the playlist. Each scene plays for its playthrough count before moving to the next.
• Loop bar — Lock playback to a single bar during editing.

Scene navigation

Click a scene in the scene grid to switch to it. Alt+click to view a scene without moving the playhead (useful for editing ahead during playback).

VST3 sync

When running as a VST3 plugin, GrooveGrid locks to the DAW’s transport. Position is calculated deterministically from the DAW’s PPQ (Pulses Per Quarter) — no drift, no accumulated timing errors.

Export

Render any portion of the project to disk or bounce it into a new in-app sample track. The Export dialog opens from the main menu or a track’s right-click Export entry, which pre-fills the dialog with sensible defaults for what you clicked.

Exports match live playback. Clock-divided tracks, multi-scene loops, playthrough counts, and probability all render the same notes offline as you hear in the app — in both the WAV and MIDI paths.

Scope

• Track — single track within a scene. Defaults to the scene’s full bar range; can be narrowed.
• Loop — the active loop bar of a scene (single bar, every non-muted track). Uses the loop-bar lock when enabled, otherwise the first bar.
• Scene — one scene’s tracks across all bars. A track filter can narrow the included tracks; an empty filter exports every non-muted track.
• Sequence — the whole arrangement, every scene in the master playlist.

Format and destination

• WAV at 48 kHz / 24-bit by default. Audio renders through the full machine graph at offline render speed.
• MIDI writes a Standard MIDI File with strum, polyphony, and automation flattened to notes.
• Stereo mix versus Stems — pick a single stereo file or one file per track/stem.
• Pre-FX versus Post-FX — Post-FX (default) runs each track’s effects chain before the mix or stem. Pre-FX bypasses the per-track FX and writes raw machine output. WAV only — MIDI ignores the flag.
• Bounce to Sample — instead of writing a file, load the rendered audio into a new Loop track in the project. Audio only.

Trimming and seamless loops

Pre-roll and post-roll bars pad the render with silent lead-in and tail. The Seamless toggle wraps loop tails so that a Loop or Scene export crossfades cleanly with itself when played on repeat.

13. Keyboard Shortcuts

On macOS, Ctrl refers to Cmd.

Global

Scene grid

Tracks area

Mouse modifiers

Sample editor

14. Settings & Auto-Update

The Settings window groups app-wide preferences. The most common ones to know about:

• Audio device — Input and output device, sample rate, and buffer size. Switching the input device preserves multi-channel routing, including Bluetooth headset inputs.
• Scale plugin editors to display DPI (Windows only) — Fixes plugin editor windows that open undersized on 150% / 200% high-DPI displays. Requires an app restart after toggling.
• Update channel — Stable or Nightly. Stable receives polished releases at a slower cadence; nightly receives every release as it’s built. The auto-updater only offers builds from the channel you’ve opted into.

Auto-update

GrooveGrid checks for updates on launch. When a new version is available on your channel, the app downloads it in the background and stages it as a .ggupdate file. Restarting the app applies the update. You can also trigger a check manually from Help → Check for Updates.

A full history of releases per channel, with changelogs, lives on the website’s download history page.