Your knobs, on the patch.

Learn a knob, plug it in

Drag from an input's round teal jack to a setting's row on the effect card. Click Learn knob in the cable's inspector and turn the knob you want. The row shows the setting's live value as you turn.

A learned knob is claimed by the cable: its messages stop there, so your synth doesn't also hear them.

Knob, slider or wheel

Each cable knows what it is on your controller, and the pill on the cable shows its icon. Until you pick one it guesses from what it learned: CC 1 is the mod wheel, CC 64 to 69 (the pedals) a button, anything else a knob. On action cables, a note on channel 10 is a pad, any other note a key, a CC or program change a button.

Pick a different one in the Control section of the cable's inspector whenever the guess is wrong. For a knob, a wheel or a button it's just the picture; a slider works differently.

Amount, Pickup or Jump

The value on the card is the base. Turning the knob right adds up to the Amount, left takes as much away, and the middle leaves it as set. A small Amount is a nudge, a big one a sweep.

Pickup leaves the setting alone until the knob passes its middle, so nothing jumps when you first touch it. Jump follows the knob at once.

Sliders set a range

A slider doesn't nudge the card's value, it sets it. Give it a Min and a Max in the cable's inspector: at the bottom the setting is Min, at the top Max, and in between it moves evenly from one to the other. Put Min above Max to flip the slider. The pill shows the range, like 40–110.

With Pickup, a slider waits until it passes the card's own value, not the middle. Each cable catches at its own spot, so one slider driving two cards picks each up as it gets there.

Or let an LFO turn it

An LFO sends a steady wave instead of a knob: sine, triangle, saw up or down, square or random, from 1/16 triplets to 16 bars, in time with the tempo. It restarts when you press Play, so the movement lands in the same place every time.

Different per scene

Control cables and LFOs are saved per scene, so the same knob can drive the arpeggiator in one song and the velocity in the next.

Pads and keys that do things

Not every control is a knob. Run a control cable to an action row and a press does something: swap the Channel Swapper to the strings, mute channel 2, latch the arpeggiator, step to the next scene, play a fill.

Every effect, every sequencer and every input has an On / off row, so a pad can start the bassline or silence a keyboard. The Drum Sequencer keeps its Fill Now row next to it. No pads to spare? The keys on your Mac can do the same through the Computer Keyboard card.

One cable carries a whole row of pads. Learn them one after another and C1, C♯1, D1 and D♯1 become Piano, Bass, Strings and Brass.

Toggle or hold

A press can flip a switch and leave it, or hold it only while your finger is down. Hold a pad for strings over the piano and let go to get the piano back. Holds never end up in your undo history.

Keeps the keyboard playing

Keys you map are claimed: they stop at the cable and never sound. The input shows how many it has given up, and its inspector lists each one and where it goes.

A press does one job. Learn one that's taken and the inspector says where, “Already used by Channel Mute · Mute”, with a Replace button: it's unlearned there and learned here, and a single Undo puts it back.

Switch an input off

An input has its own power switch, at the top of its inspector and on its card. Off, it sends nothing into the patch, but its learned presses and knobs still work, so a pad, even one on the same controller, can switch it back on.

Any card that's switched off wears a red Off pill on its top edge, or a power dot on its corner when minimized. Click either to turn it back on.