7.2.15 Pump

7.2.15.1 Adding Pump

1. Open the mixer and click an empty insert slot on the track you want to duck (the bass, the pad).
2. Choose Pump (under Dynamics). Its window opens.
3. Pick a trigger and, for AUDIO or MIDI, the KEY track it listens to. Or follow the Quick start.

To open the window again later, click the effect in its insert slot, or right-click it and choose Edit….

7.2.15.2 Quick start

Duck the bass under the kick

1. Right-click the bass track's header (or its mixer strip).
2. Choose Duck to and pick the kick track.

Pump is added to the bass, listening to the kick: to its notes if the kick is an instrument or drum track, to its sound if it is an audio track. It starts on CLASSIC, DEPTH 80 %, 1/4. Play the song and set DEPTH to taste.

A pumping pad, no kick needed

Add Pump to the pad, leave the trigger on TEMPO, pick CLASSIC and 1/4. A new Pump already sounds like this (the preset Classic Quarter). Set DEPTH between 60 and 90 %.

7.2.15.3 The window

A title bar across the top, the curve display in the middle with the shapes on its left and the GAIN meter on its right, and the controls below in four panels: TRIGGER, DEPTH, LENGTH, and the four small knobs. The INFO line at the bottom explains whatever the mouse is over.

The title bar

• Power switches Pump on and off. Off, the track plays as if Pump were not there.
• The preset box shows the preset in use, with ‹ › to step through presets (see Presets).
• The place line shows which track and insert slot this Pump is on.
• A/B plays the track without Pump, matched to the same loudness, so you judge the sound and not the level. Click again to go back.
• Δ plays only what Pump takes away, so you hear exactly where and how much it ducks. Click again to go back.
• ✕ closes the window. Pump keeps working. A/B and Δ switch off when the window closes.

The curve display

One curve, from left to right over one LENGTH. The top is full level, the bottom the full drop; DEPTH sets how far the bottom really goes.

• The caption says what the curve spans and how long it is: ONE CYCLE in TEMPO, AFTER EACH KEY HIT in AUDIO, AFTER EACH KEY NOTE in MIDI.
• The playhead and the dot run along the curve while the song plays.
• SHAPES on the left pick one of seven curves. CUSTOM lights when you draw your own.
• SNAP (OFF, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32) is the grid dragged points land on.
• The DEPTH tab on the right edge of the curve drags DEPTH, like the DEPTH knob.
• GAIN on the right shows the level Pump leaves the track at, right now.

The lamp

The small lamp at the top right of the TRIGGER panel is lit in AUDIO and MIDI and flashes on every hit or note that starts the curve. If it doesn't flash, Pump isn't hearing its KEY.

7.2.15.4 Triggers

In AUDIO and MIDI the curve plays once after each hit or note, then holds its end until the next one.

TEMPO

The curve repeats on the song's grid, starting on the bar, and follows tempo and time-signature changes exactly. WHEN STOPPED decides what happens while the song is stopped:

• RUN (the default) keeps pumping at the song's tempo, so you can set Pump up without pressing play.
• FLAT lets the track through unchanged while stopped.

Pressing play always lands the curve on the grid at once.

AUDIO

THRESHOLD sets how loud a hit must be to count. The bar shows the KEY's level as it plays and the white mark is the threshold: hits above it start the curve. Drag it, or double-click for −24 dB. A flam, a ringing kick tail or a rumble never counts twice.

Pre-fader key (off by default) decides where Pump hears the kick:

• Off: as the mix hears it, after the kick's fader, mute and solo. Mute the kick and the duck stops.
• On: before the kick's fader. Pump keeps ducking when you solo the bass, mute the kick or pull its fader down. Use it when you work on the bass alone, or when the kick is only there to drive Pump.

MIDI

Pump reads the KEY track's notes before its instrument, so the track can be muted or have no sound at all.

• NOTE picks which note counts. On a drum track, choose the kick: C2 · 36 in the usual drum layout (the snare is D2 · 38). ANY counts every note.
• Live notes too (on by default): notes you play live into the KEY track count too, while that track is selected or armed, or when you play its on-screen keys.
• A muted clip or note ducks nothing.

The KEY

Click the KEY field for the list: NONE, then every other track and bus with its colour.

• In MIDI the KEY must play notes. An audio track or a bus is refused there, and the hint bar says to use AUDIO instead.
• A KEY that would loop (it already hears this track through its routing, a send or another key) is refused, and the hint bar says why.
• A deleted KEY track reads (GONE); pick another. A hidden one still works and reads (HIDDEN).
• The KEY belongs to your song: loading a preset never changes it.

7.2.15.5 The curve

The seven shapes

Drawing your own

• Drag a point to move it; drag a diamond to bend the line between two points.
• Double-click an empty place to add a point, and a point to remove it.
• A curve has 2 to 16 points; the first is always at the start and the last at the end.
• A small wiggle while clicking moves nothing, and sliding a point in time keeps its level.

As soon as the curve is no longer one of the seven shapes, CUSTOM lights. Picking a shape replaces your drawing, and Ctrl+Z brings it back exactly.

7.2.15.6 Depth and length

DEPTH

How far the level drops at the bottom of the curve, from 0 % (no change) to 100 %. The knob shows the % and the dB it reaches: the default 80 % drops the bottom by 14 dB. At 100 %, a flat bottom (HARD, GATE) is silence; a sharp V (CLASSIC, LONG, OFFBEAT) is rounded a little by SMOOTH and stays just above silence. DEPTH changes glide, so it never clicks while you turn it.

LENGTH

How long one duck lasts, as a note length at the song's tempo. In TEMPO it is also how often the curve repeats.

TRIPLET makes it two thirds as long and DOTTED one and a half times as long. The readout under the buttons shows the length in ms at the song's tempo. Bar lengths follow the time signature: in 3/4 at 120 BPM, 1 BAR is 1.5 s.

7.2.15.7 Smooth, Nudge, Mix and Trim

7.2.15.8 Duck to

Right-click a track's header or its mixer strip, choose Duck to and pick the track to duck under (the list shows your tracks with their colours). In one undo step Pump:

1. uses the track's first Pump, or adds one at the end of its rack;
2. listens to the other track's notes (MIDI) if it is an instrument or drum track, or its sound (AUDIO) if it is an audio track;
3. sets CLASSIC, DEPTH 80 % and 1/4. A Pump that was already there keeps everything else: THRESHOLD, NOTE, SMOOTH, NUDGE, TRIM and the feel.

Ctrl+Z takes the whole duck back. If the duck would loop, nothing is added and the hint bar says why. If the Pump it uses is switched off or at MIX 0, the hint bar tells you, because you would hear no duck.

7.2.15.9 Presets

The preset box shows the preset in use with a tag: FACTORY, YOURS, EDITED once you change something, or Custom when the settings are no preset.

• Save updates your preset in use; Save As… saves under a new name, asking before it replaces one you have. Delete… asks first and moves the preset to the Recycle Bin. Factory presets can't be changed.
• Reset to defaults brings back a fresh Pump with no KEY.
• Loading a preset is one undo step. Saving, renaming and deleting change nothing you hear.
• A preset never holds the KEY: it sets the sound, you set what Pump listens to. If a preset can't use your KEY (a MIDI preset over an audio-track KEY), its sound still loads and the hint bar says what to pick.
• Your presets live in your User folder (see Locations).

Factory presets

7.2.15.10 Automation

DEPTH, SMOOTH, NUDGE, TRIM, MIX and the power can be automated. Right-click one of them for Create automation (the lane starts at the value it has now), Edit automation lane… and Clear automation. A lane in Read moves the knob on the face as the song plays.

With a lane on the power, a click while the song plays in Touch, Latch or Write switches it and writes the switch on the lane. In Read the lane is in charge and the click is refused with a reminder in the hint bar.

LENGTH, the feel, THRESHOLD, the trigger, the KEY, NOTE, WHEN STOPPED and the shape are set by hand. Dragging a knob does not yet record into a lane: draw the lane instead.

7.2.15.11 Controls and gestures

Every knob turn, shape pick, point edit, KEY or trigger change and preset load is one step on the studio's undo list. A/B and Δ are listening switches: not undo steps, and not saved with the song.

7.2.15.12 Asking the assistant

With an AI assistant connected, everything on the face can also be done by asking: ducking one track to another, the trigger, the KEY and the NOTE, the shape or a drawn curve, the presets, automation lanes, A/B and Δ. Each change is one step on the studio's undo list.

Examples: “duck the bass to the kick”, “make the bass duck only on the kick drum's C2”, “use the hard shape”, “put a kick duck on the bass”, “what is Pump doing on the bass?”, “let me hear what Pump removes on the bass”.

7.2.15.13 Good to know

• No added latency. The track plays on time, and exports sound exactly like playback in all three triggers.
• Silence stays silence. At DEPTH 0, MIX 0, or with nothing to hear, the track passes through unchanged.
• Put Pump before effects that add delay. After a look-ahead limiter, Pump hears its KEY slightly early. Duck to adds Pump at the end of the rack, so move it up if the track has one.
• Only MIDI can duck early. AUDIO reacts to what it hears, and live-played notes can't duck early either.
• The Arranger band's drums can't be a KEY. Use a drum track or a MIDI track with the kick pattern.
• On the master Pump works in TEMPO and MIDI, but not in AUDIO.
• Saved with the song: every setting, your drawn curve, the KEY and the Pre-fader key. When you reopen the song, the preset box finds its preset again by its settings.

7.2.15.14 Recipes

A ghost kick

Make a MIDI track with a kick pattern and mute it (or give it no instrument). On the bass's Pump choose MIDI and that track as the KEY. The bass ducks to a kick nobody hears.

Duck just before the kick

MIDI with the kick as the KEY, NUDGE −10 ms, so the kick's attack lands on a bass that is already out of the way. Or load Pre-Duck Kick.

A rhythmic gate

GATE, 1/16, DEPTH 100 %, SMOOTH about 0.5 ms for a hard chop. Or load Gate Sixteenth, or Triplet Gate for a swung chop.

A build into the drop

Load Four-Bar Rise on the pads or the whole music bus and place the drop on a 4-bar line: the music rises over the four bars and is full right before the drop.

A gentler pump

Lower MIX to around 50 % instead of lowering DEPTH: the dry track fills in under the duck.

7.2.15.15 Troubleshooting

Nothing ducks. Check the power and MIX. In AUDIO and MIDI, watch the lamp: if it doesn't flash, check the KEY, THRESHOLD (AUDIO) or NOTE (MIDI).

The duck stops when I solo the bass or mute the kick. Switch on Pre-fader key (AUDIO), or use MIDI from the kick's notes.

A long kick misses hits. At fast tempos a kick still ringing loudly into the next one can be missed. Raise THRESHOLD towards the kick's peak, or shorten the kick.

The track stays quiet between hits. SOFT and SWELL end low in AUDIO and MIDI. Use CLASSIC, HARD or LONG.

MIDI won't take my KEY. In MIDI the KEY has to play notes. For an audio track or a bus, use AUDIO.

The drop clicks. Raise SMOOTH to 1 ms or more.