You were recording. You just didn't know it.

Nothing to arm

A session starts with the first note you play. It ends when you stop for a minute, or when you open another project. Very short ones, under four notes, aren't kept, so bumping a key or a fader doesn't leave clutter behind.

Notes, sustain and other CCs, pitch bend, aftertouch and program changes are all kept, with the input they came from. What sequencers, the Looper and other cards play is not, and neither is a session you play back.

Each project has its own sessions. Open a project and you see what you played in it. Everything stays on your Mac.

Find the good bit

Click the clock next to the tempo in the Patch window to open the Sessions drawer under the canvas. Click a session to open its player. The top strip shows the whole session, so busy stretches are easy to spot. Drag the two yellow handles around the part you want.

Below it, the section plays on a piano roll, with chord names and numerals above and a keyboard that lights as the notes play. The header shows the key and tempo the project was in when you played it.

Loop Section repeats it. The Speed slider goes from 0.25× to 2×, and since it's MIDI, slowing down doesn't change the pitch. Press Space to play or pause, L to loop, and the arrow keys to jump 5 seconds.

In today's key

The Transpose slider moves the session up or down by up to an octave. When the project is now in a different key, a To button (To C major, say) picks the shift that fits it best. The roll, the chord names, the replay and anything you save all follow.

The session itself never changes. Transpose and quantize are just how you hear it now.

Tighten it to the tempo

You probably played without a click. Quantize snaps the section to the scene's tempo, with beat one at the start handle. Pick 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 or 1/8T, and a Strength below 100 % to keep some of your timing.

The section rounds to whole bars so it loops cleanly, and bar lines show on the roll. Change the tempo and the grid follows. Turn Quantize off and you hear it as you played it.

Keep it as a loop or a MIDI file

Use as Loop puts the section on a new Looper card, on the cable of the input that played it. If the transport is stopped, it starts and the loop plays from bar 1. If it's running, the loop comes in on the next bar. A Looper holds notes only, up to 16 bars.

Save as MIDI… writes the section as a standard MIDI file, with the tempo, for your DAW. Both use what you hear in the player: transposed and quantized, or as played.

Through today's patch, or the setup from then

Playback goes into the patch as if you were playing again, so it reaches the same synths through today's cables and effects.

Changed the patch since? Choose Setup from Then in the Play Through menu. It brings back the patch you had when you played, as one step you can undo in the Patch window with ⌘Z.

How long sessions stay

Sessions are kept for 7 days unless you choose otherwise. Star one and it's kept until you delete it. Settings › Sessions has the rest.