The Scratch Pad is an editing tool in Studio One. Scratch Pads act as quick storage to hold Events, Parts, and entire Song sections for later use or re-use, reducing clutter in the Arrange view as you assemble your Song. Scratch Pads look and act much like the Arrange view timeline, sharing the same editing capabilities and displaying the same set of Tracks.
When a Scratch Pad is visible, it is displayed to the right of the Arrange view. Because they act like alternate timelines, clicking the ruler above a Scratch Pad changes the focus of the
transport to the Scratch Pad. Playback then begins inside the Scratch Pad when you press Play. To switch back, click on the ruler above the Arrange view. This can be done even during playback.
Scratch Pads and the content placed within them are stored with the current Song.
Creating a Scratch Pad
To create and display a Scratch Pad for you to work with, click the Scratch Pad button, which looks like this: Once a Scratch Pad exists in the current Song, the Scratch Pad button changes to reflect that fact, and looks like this: You can click the Scratch Pad button to show or hide the Scratch Pad display.
You can delete or create additional Scratch Pads as needed by clicking the triangle next to the Scratch Pad button and choosing the Add Scratch Pad or Delete Scratch Pad option from the pop-up menu.
Just one Scratch Pad can be displayed at a time, but you can switch to any other by clicking the triangle next to the Scratch Pad button, and selecting the Scratch Pad of your choice from the pop-up menu.
To rename a Scratch Pad, double-click its name in the Arranger Track Inspector, and enter the new name into the provided text field.
Working with Content in a Scratch Pad
To copy Events, Parts, or Arranger Track sections to a Scratch Pad, simply click-and-drag them into the Scratch Pad window. To copy content from a Scratch Pad to the main timeline, click-and-drag it into the Arrange view. If you wish to move an Arranger Track section into a Scratch Pad, removing it from the main timeline, hold [Alt]/[Option] as you click-and-drag the section.
Editing within a Scratch Pad works very much like within the Arrange view, as outlined in Editing.
Loop Playback within a Scratch Pad
Each Scratch Pad has its own loop cycle range setting, distinct from the main timeline. The default loop length is four bars, but you can shorten, lengthen, or move the loop range within the Scratch Pad timeline as needed, as described in Looping During Mixing.
Using the Listen Tool with Scratch Pads
You can use the Listen tool to audition Events and Parts in Arrange view, in sync with content playing back from the Scratch Pad. To do so, while the transport is playing, select the Listen tool and click on the desired Event or Part in Arrange view.
Bouncing
Bouncing Instrument Parts
When working with musical performance data, users often want to print the audio being generated by external MIDI and internal virtual instruments to audio so that the Part can be treated like a normal Audio Track. Studio One offers a special feature to accommodate this.
To quickly bounce any Instrument Part to an Audio Track, select the Instrument Part, and then select Bounce Selection in the Event menu or simply press [Ctrl]/[Cmd]+[B] on the computer keyboard. This renders the selected Instrument Part to a new Audio Event and place it at the correct Timeline position on a new Audio Track. Note that the Instrument Part's active Insert Effects, as well as Volume and Pan settings, are rendered to the new bounced audio file. The new Audio Track is created without Inserts, and with Volume and Pan set to their defaults.
When an Instrument Part is bounced, the Part is muted, since the new Audio Event is taking its place. The Instrument Part is grayed out to indicate this. To toggle the mute on the Part, select the Part and press [Shift]+[M] on the keyboard.
Any number of Instrument Parts can be selected and bounced to audio at once, even across multiple Instrument Tracks. A new Audio Track is created for each Instrument Track whose Part is bounced to audio.
If you want to create a single Audio Event, you should first merge various Instrument Parts on an Instrument Track to create a single continuous Instrument Part. To do this, select the desired Parts and choose Merge Events, or press [G] on the keyboard.
Bouncing Audio Events
When many edits have been performed across an Audio Track to one or multiple Audio Events, the arrangement can become difficult to look at and hard to work with. For instance, if a drum loop has been cut into many slices, with some parts duplicated, other parts deleted, and so on, moving or rearranging the Events can become difficult.
In this case, it may be helpful to render some or all of the contents of a Track to a single, continuous, new Audio Event. To do this, select the desired Audio Events and press [Ctrl]/
[Cmd]+[B], or select Bounce Selection from the Event menu. A new Audio Event is created for
each Track that has an Event selected. The new Audio Events is created and placed according to the position and range of the selected Events for each Track.
Note that Bounce Selection is unaffected by Track Volume, Pan, and Insert settings, as it is only dealing with the Audio Events exactly as they exist in the Arrange view. Thus, the result of this process does not affect what you hear; it is simply an organizational tool.
Similarly, drag-and-drop any Audio Event or selected range of audio to a location in the File Browser to export an audio file to that location.
Creating Audio Parts
It is also possible to clean up the arrangement by using Audio Parts, where multiple separate Audio Events can be placed into a single container in the arrangement, while keeping the separate Events accessible in the Audio Editor. To do this, select multiple Audio Events in the arrangement and then press [G] on the keyboard, or [Right]/[Ctrl]-click and select Event/Merge Events from the contextual menu.
If you drag-and-drop an Audio Part from the arrangement to the File Browser, an Audio Loop is exported. For more information on Audio Loops, refer to the Editing chapter.
To dissolve an Audio Part so that the separate Audio Events are again accessible in the arrangement, [Right]/[Ctrl]-click on the Audio Part and select Audio/Dissolve Audio Part from the contextual menu.
Bounce to New Track
You can create a new Audio Track from a selected Instrument or Audio Track which includes all Insert effects, by selecting Bounce to New Track from the Events menu, or pressing key
command [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[B] in Windows, or [Option]+[Cmd]+B in Mac OS X.
You can also right/[Ctrl]-click on an Event and chose the function from the Events sub-menu.
Bounce File Management
Every Bounce operation creates new audio files that are placed into the Pool for the current Song.