Studio One: The Clip Launcher

The Launcher, with the Playlist shown to the right.

We put Studio One’s new clip launcher through its paces.

With the release of Studio One 7, PreSonus introduced an entire clip‑launching engine. It has more of a Logic Pro vibe than an Ableton Live vibe, and brings an enormous amount of versatility to your timeline. It’s early days, and the functions are relatively simple, so I thought before it gets too complex, we should break it apart and have a look at what makes it tick.

Let’s start by getting an overview of what it can and can’t do using the ‘DJ Jazzy Jeff — Get Some Air’ demo song that is freely available to download and mess about with in Studio One.

When you open up the project, you are faced with the tracks and clips spread around the existing timeline that we all recognise. The Arranger track is active and populated with intro, verse, chorus and so on. It’s all ready to go and sounds fantastic. A version of the song is also available in the new Launcher. To open the Launcher, click on the Launcher button in the toolbar; it looks like a 3x3 drum pad. It’s also bound to the B key on your keyboard, and you can find it under the View menu.

Basic Overview

The Launcher appears in a very similar way to a Scratch Pad, and overlays itself across half the timeline. What you’re looking at is a grid‑based representation of the same project. Each column is called a Scene, and you’ll notice that the Scenes are taken directly from the Arranger track. You can replicate a project in the Launcher by dragging your verse/chorus Arranger sections directly onto it. This action brings all the clips with it ready to play.

Another thing to notice is that all the scenes in the Launcher are visually the same size, although the number of bars within a scene can vary from scene to scene and clip to clip. It’s just that the Launcher is not following the timeline.

The Launcher and the timeline are sort of connected, but not always, while absolutely being so... In that you can use them independently or in combination, but the timeline ultimately has control (most of the time). This will make more sense in a minute, but let’s look at the interaction between the two.

When you first open the Launcher, the arrangement will still be in focus, and it’ll be the arrangement you hear when you hit Play. To activate the Launcher, hit the Toggle Cell Playback Active button.

When you first turn the Launcher on, the arrangement still has the focus, and if you hit Play on the transport, it’s the arrangement that plays. To flip it over to the Launcher you need to engage the Toggle Cell Playback Active button, which is the little grey sideways arrowhead just to the left of the Intro scene header at the top of the Launcher. When you click it, the focus is thrown across to the Launcher, but nothing actually plays back because we haven’t yet launched a Scene. Click the toggle again, and the arrangement will resume playback. However, it doesn’t resume from where it was; rather, it resumes from where it’s got to, because the timeline continues to play regardless of what’s in focus.

So, in the Launcher, click on the Play button in the Chorus scene header, and the Chorus will play and loop around. Back in the arrangement, the Timeline is still moving. If you click the toggle button now the arrangement will resume playback from wherever it currently is. It’s an interesting way of auditioning part of a song during playback....