Arranging the Timeline

The timeline is where you build your mix — laying clips out across tracks and arranging them in time. This page covers moving material around and getting it to line up musically.

Tracks and clips

Audio lives on horizontal tracks, and each piece of audio is a clip. You can have as many tracks as you need — add one with File ▸ Add Track… (Ctrl+T). A new track is selected automatically, so pasting a clip, the mute / solo shortcuts, and the FX rack all act on it straight away. Drag a track header to reorder tracks, and drag its edge to resize it.

You can also import directly as you arrange: drag a single audio file from Windows Explorer onto a track to import and place it there. Drop it on empty timeline space to create a new track. Dropping several files creates one new track per file at the same timeline position.

Moving and editing clips

Select a clip by clicking it, then rearrange freely. The common actions are on the Edit menu and the clip right-click menu:

• Move — drag a clip along a track, or to another track.
• Split at Playhead (S) — in a clip's right-click menu, choose Edit ▸ Split at Playhead to cut it into two at the playhead. The menu-bar command is Edit ▸ Split Clip at Playhead.
• Edit ▸ Duplicate (D) — make a copy.
• Edit ▸ Cut, Copy, Paste (Ctrl+X / C / V) — move clips around or between tracks. Ctrl+V pastes onto the selected track at the playhead. You can also right-click an empty track lane and choose Paste to drop a copied clip onto that track — click first to place the playhead where it should land.
• Delete (Delete) — remove a clip.
• Trim — drag a clip's edge to shorten or extend how much of it plays. A linked clip can't be edge-trimmed on the timeline — unlink it first, or edit its shared trim in the Clip Editor.
• Colour — right-click a clip and choose Colour to tag it, which makes a busy arrangement easier to read.
• Rename — double-click a clip's title strip (the thin band along its top) to rename it in place. Double-clicking the clip's body opens the Clip Editor instead.
• Open ▸ Scratch Editor — start a scratch session using the clip. Saving the session creates or updates a reusable Scratch item in the Library, without replacing the clip. See Scratch Editor.
• Edit ▸ Lock / Unlock — lock a clip (or press Ctrl+L) so it can't be moved or edited by accident. A locked clip shows a small padlock on its title strip.
• Transform ▸ Split Stereo Channels… — split a stereo clip's Left and/or Right channel onto its own new track. A small picker lets you choose which channels to split out; each one you pick lands on a fresh track as a stereo clip carrying only that side. It's non-destructive, and each new clip inherits the source's grid and tempo matching, just like a stem. (The option only appears for stereo clips.)

To clean up the end of your arrangement, Edit ▸ Trim Project to Last Clip (Ctrl+Shift+T) shortens the project to finish at your final clip.

Working with several clips at once

You can select more than one clip and edit them together:

• Shift-click a clip to select a range on the same track, from the clip you first selected to the one you Shift-click.
• Ctrl-click a clip to add or remove individual clips from the selection, even across different tracks.

With several clips selected, you can:

• Move the group — drag any selected clip and the whole selection moves together, keeping each clip's position and track relative to the others. The move is refused as a whole if any clip wouldn't fit or is locked.
• Nudge the group — Shift+← / → shifts every selected clip together (hold Alt as well for a finer nudge).
• Edit the whole selection — with more than one clip selected, right-click any of them for a dedicated menu that offers Copy, Cut, Lock, Colour, Duplicate, and Delete for all of them at once (in place of the usual single-clip menu). Delete, Ctrl+L (lock), and Duplicate also act on every selected clip.
• Copy, cut, and paste the group — Ctrl+C / X / V carry the whole selection. Paste drops it at the playhead, starting on the selected track and keeping each clip's relative timing and track, and is refused as a whole if it wouldn't fit.

Each of these group edits counts as a single undo step. A plain click on one clip goes back to selecting just that clip.

Snapping to the grid

By default, clips snap to the beat grid as you drag, so they naturally land on the beat. When you want to place something freely — for a small, deliberate offset — hold Alt while you drag to switch off snapping for fine, free placement.

Beat Repeat

Beat Repeat creates a tempo-aligned repeat region on one track. Move the playhead to the beat where it should start, then right-click a clip or an empty track lane and choose Effects ▸ Beat Repeat. Choose the region length (1/2 Beat, 1 Beat, 2 Beats, or 1 Bar), then choose its repeat division (1/4, 1/8, or 1/16).

The repeat starts at the snapped playhead, not at the pointer location where you opened the menu. A track cannot have overlapping Beat Repeat regions. To remove one, right-click a clip it crosses, choose Effects ▸ Beat Repeat, then choose the listed checked region.

Crossfading between clips

When two clips sit side by side on the same track, you can crossfade between them so one fades out smoothly as the next fades in — handy for blending the end of one loop into the start of another, or easing between two sections.

To create a crossfade, put the two clips next to each other on a track, then drag the facing edge of one clip so it extends over its neighbour. The region where they overlap becomes the crossfade. As you drag, Silverdaw marks the overlap with a diagonal hatch; when you release, it draws the crossfade curves across both clips. The earlier clip fades out while the later one fades in.

TIP

Crossfades are made by dragging a clip's edge over its neighbour, not by dragging its body — clip bodies can't overlap and simply butt up against each other. A linked or locked clip can't be edge-trimmed, so unlink or unlock it first (see Moving and editing clips).

Right-click a clip that's part of a crossfade to change or remove it:

• Crossfade to next / Crossfade from previous — pick the shape of the fade:
  • Smooth blend — an equal-power crossfade that keeps the blend sounding even in level through the transition. Good for most musical transitions.
  • Fade out / in — straight fades, with one clip dropping in level as the other rises. Useful when you want a simpler, more obvious handover.
• Remove Crossfade to Next Clip / Remove Crossfade from Previous Clip — take the crossfade off again.

A clip can fade in from the clip before it and fade out into the clip after it at the same time. Crossfades play back live and are included when you export your mix.

Bar numbering

The timeline is numbered in bars, starting at 1 by default. You can change where the count starts in Project Properties using Bar counter start — setting it to 0 or lower leaves lead-in bars before bar one, which is handy for clips that begin with a silent intro.

Tempo, beats, and the grid

Everything lines up against the project tempo and its beat grid.

• When you import audio, Silverdaw detects its tempo (BPM), key, and beat positions automatically, so clips can be matched to the project.
• The first musical clip you place on a track sets the project tempo: Silverdaw seeds the project BPM from that clip's detected tempo. This happens once — later clips don't change it, and clips marked as samples don't seed it — and you can fine-tune the tempo afterwards from the transport bar: type a value, or scroll the mouse wheel over it (or use ↑ / ↓) to change it by 1 BPM, holding Alt for fine 0.01 BPM steps. This is on by default; switch off Set project tempo from first clip in Preferences ▸ Timeline to keep the project at its current tempo instead.
• If detection is uncertain, you can set a clip's BPM by hand and slide the beat grid across its waveform to line it up. This is done in the Clip Editor.
• The project's own tempo is set in Project Properties.

By default, dropping a musical clip onto a track automatically matches it to the project tempo (Silverdaw switches on Warp for you). You can turn this off with Auto-warp clips to project tempo in Preferences ▸ Timeline if you'd rather clips keep their own tempo until you warp them yourself. The first clip and simple samples are not auto-warped.

For a file whose BPM is marked with ~, the detected value is a rough average. Auto-warp applies one uniform stretch, so the grid can drift as the recording changes tempo. Split the clip into steadier sections and refine each section's beat grid for closer alignment.

Once a clip's tempo has been detected, Silverdaw also nudges it so its bars line up with the project's bar grid — so slicing, splitting, and marker placement stay on the beat, even when a clip begins with a little silence before its first beat. Clips with no detected beats (such as simple samples) are left exactly where you placed them. Switch this off with Align clips to the beat grid after analysis in Preferences ▸ Timeline.

Getting the grid right is what makes loops, slicing, and snapping all fall neatly into place.

Moving the playhead

The playhead is the vertical line that marks where playback is. Click anywhere on the ruler at the top of the timeline to place it there, or drag along the ruler to move it (a grab cursor appears over the playhead). Press Space to play or stop from the playhead.

You can also move it from the keyboard:

• ← / → step the playhead one grid line at a time, and Alt+← / → step it more finely.
• Home / End — or Ctrl+Shift+← / → — skip to the start or end of the project and scroll the view there.

Press Esc to clear your selection. With a track and one or more clips selected, the first press clears the clips (and any selected automation point) but keeps the track selected; a second press clears the track too.

Markers

Markers are labelled points you can drop on the ruler to mark places in your arrangement — the start of a chorus, a drop, or wherever you want to jump back to. They appear as small triangles on the ruler and are saved with the project.

• Add or remove a marker — press M to place a marker at the playhead (press it again at the same place to remove it).
• Move a marker — hold Shift and drag it along the ruler; it snaps to the grid. (A plain drag over a marker moves the playhead instead, so the two never get in each other's way.)
• Jump between markers — press Ctrl+← and Ctrl+→ to move the playhead to the previous or next marker.

You can also set the transport's previous / next buttons to step through markers instead of jumping to the project ends — see Previous / next buttons in Preferences ▸ Timeline.

The metronome

The timing display includes a Metronome click. Switch it on to hear an audible tick that follows the project tempo, so you can check by ear whether a loop or beat sits in time. Toggle it from the timing display or by pressing K. The metronome is off by default, and its on/off state is saved with the project.

Zooming

Use the View menu to change how much of the timeline you see: Zoom In (Ctrl++), Zoom Out (Ctrl+-), Reset Zoom (Ctrl+0), or pick a Zoom Preset (20%, 50%, 100%, 200%, 400%, or 800%). Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+8 jump straight to 100%–800% zoom. Zoom to Fit (Ctrl+F) sizes the whole project to fit the timeline width and jumps the view to the start.

Automating changes over time

Effects and levels don't have to stay fixed — you can draw automation that changes them across the timeline, such as a filter sweep or a fade. Automation is edited in a lane under each track; see Automation.