Keyboard shortcuts

The keys on this page are checked against the keys the shipping window responds to, in both directions, so this list is complete.

LOOM's shortcuts use a bare key or Shift unless the table says otherwise. An arrow with ⌘, ⌥ or ⌃ held is a system navigation gesture, so the track strips, the faders, the tempo field, the setting rows, the regions and the lanes ignore it and pass it on to the system. The two bar-ruler controls are the exception: on the playhead and on the song end marker, a ⌘, ⌥ or ⌃ arrow does what a bare arrow does.

The menu bar

LOOM draws three menus: File, View and Transport, in that order.

⌘Q quits. It is the standard macOS item in the application menu rather than one of LOOM's own. LOOM saves your song when it quits.

The File menu holds the four song items, Record Setup…, User Guide and Report a Problem, divided by three separators: one between Open Song… and Save, one between Save As… and Record Setup…, and one between Record Setup… and User Guide. Record Setup… has a section of its own because it configures your rig rather than the song. The last separator starts the help section, which holds this manual and the problem report.

⌥⌘R opens the Record setup sheet, where you choose what RECORD on the transport writes. See Record setup.

⌘/ opens this manual. The manual is a PDF that ships inside LOOM, so it opens in your default PDF application.

macOS reserves ⌘? for its own Show Help menu shortcut, so an application cannot use it for anything else. LOOM uses ⌘/, which is the same key without the shift.

⇧⌘R writes a report of what LOOM did this session and opens it for you to read. LOOM does not send it anywhere. To send it, attach the file to a message yourself. See Reporting a problem.

The View menu lists the three views, then a separator, then Show Logs. The three views form one radio group, and the current view has a check mark. ⌘1, ⌘2 and ⌘3 switch to the same three views as the VIEW switcher at the right end of the top bar. Show Logs sits below the separator because it opens an overlay over the current view rather than a fourth view, so it never shows a check mark.

⇧⌘L opens the session log. See Session log.

The Transport menu holds the two stop commands, with no separator.

⌘. presses STOP in the top bar. The transport stops, every track stops with it, and a running arrangement stops too.

⇧⌘. presses ■ STOP on the track you have focused. That track stops on its own STOP QUANTIZE setting, and the transport keeps rolling. Press ← or → first to choose the track. The FOCUS readout in the top bar names the track this key acts on.

Each press reports on the notice line: submitted when LOOM accepts it, or the reason when LOOM refuses it. If there is nothing to stop, LOOM refuses and says why.

Both keys work from any view and any control, because macOS sends a menu shortcut to the menu before the control that has keyboard focus sees it.

Neither key starts anything. To start the transport, press ROLL in the top bar. To start a track, put the keyboard on its ring and press Space.

While a dialog is open, every menu item is greyed out and the menu keys do nothing.

The main window

Bare Return and bare Space are not bound here. When LOOM opens, the first track's ring has keyboard focus (see The window), and a bare Return or Space on it starts a take. A window-wide binding on either key would compete with the ring for the same keystroke. Shift keeps them apart: Shift-Return and Shift-Space reach the window untouched, because every focused control on the way ignores a modified key.

The track fader

The fader ignores ← and →, so track navigation keeps working while a fader has focus.

The pan slider

The pan slider sits above the fader on a mixer strip, on loop-track strips and input strips alike. It starts at centre. On a loop track it sets the track's position in the main mix. On an input it sets where that input sits in what you hear and in what every track records from it. Both kinds of strip use the same control, with the same keys and the same readout.

⌥-click returns it to centre.

The pan slider responds to ← and → because it is a horizontal control and those arrows point along it. While it has focus, those two keys move the pan instead of moving between tracks. Press Tab to move off it first.

Shift moves the pan by one rather than by a tenth of a step because the readout counts in whole units. A smaller step would change the value without changing the number you see.

On a device whose main output is a single channel there is nowhere to pan a loop track, so its slider is drawn inactive and says so. It stays on the strip so the strip keeps the same shape on every interface; otherwise you could not tell not supported from broken.

An input's pan stays active on that device. A track always records two channels, so the pan is recorded into the take even when the interface cannot play it back to you.

Mute and solo on a track

These act on the focused track.

In the looper view they work wherever the keyboard is. In the mixer they work only while the LOOP TRACKS or INSTRUMENTS bank is showing, on that bank's focused strip; on the other banks they do nothing.

The looper view responds to the same three keys. They are listed under The main window with the rest of that view's keys.

⌥-click on a strip's SOLO button does the same as ⌥S.

⌥ switches to the other solo mode. It does not mean exclusive: in LOOM a plain solo already clears the others, the reverse of Logic's default. If you are coming from Logic, the modifier is on the key you expect but has the opposite effect on the mix.

The ROUTING page

These keys work while keyboard focus is on the MASTER bank's ROUTING page, where you build groups. See Groups: the ROUTING page.

⌘N is New Song on the File menu, and the menu takes it before the page can, so the page uses ⇧⌘N. Space ticks the source that has keyboard focus, the same way it presses any button.

The effect slot grid

Tab treats the eight slots of a chain as one stop, with a cursor that moves inside it. The grid in a mixer strip and the grid in the effect drawer respond to the same keys, except M and Esc, which work only in the drawer's grid.

On a track strip, M mutes the track. See Mute and solo on a track.

The tempo field

A setting row

A setting row takes no modifiers. Its values are a list rather than a scale, so Shift has no finer step to reach.

A row with more values than fit across the drawer wraps onto a second line. The row gets taller, every value stays on screen, and the keys above still reach all of them. The delay's DIVISION is the setting that wraps.

Every key here skips a value you cannot choose right now, so the keyboard reaches exactly what a click reaches.

An effect control

The effect drawer has two kinds of numeric control, and both respond to the same keys. Most effects show a row per setting, with the name on the left and a track you drag. The EQ shows a table of bands, and each cell is a number you drag up and down. See The mixer.

On some controls, a hundredth of the travel is not a hundredth of the range. The reverb's DECAY, the delay's TIME and the two cuts, and the EQ's six frequencies are on a ratio scale, so one press moves the same musical amount wherever you are rather than the same number of units.

When you land on a control, it says which value Delete would put it back to, so a screen reader reads that value before you ask for it. ⌥-click does the same thing with a mouse.

A setting that is a switch or a short list is drawn as a switch or a row of cells instead, and takes the keys in A setting row and Buttons below.

Buttons

Every button in LOOM ignores ⌘Return, ⌥Return and ⌃Return, so a modified Return meant for a system shortcut cannot stop a live track or change a setting by accident. The two buttons that discard material, ALL CLEAR and each strip's CLEAR, ignore them too. A bare Return on either of those begins a hold instead of firing it.

The record ring

A key that was already held down when focus arrived on the ring does not count as a press. Holding Return to clear a track moves focus to that strip's ring, so release the key and press it again to start a take. See Track strips.

A hold button

A Return that was already held down when focus arrived on the button does not begin a hold. Release it and press it again.

A region on the arrange timeline

A copy is a new region, so nothing recorded into the original follows it. D is the keyboard equivalent of a ⌥-drag.

⇧V, T and ⇧T change the region you are on in place rather than replacing it. Anything you have recorded into it stays with it, the change is one step in the arrangement's undo history, and ⌘Z undoes all of it. The region's menu (right-click it, or hold Control and click) changes the verb the same way, in one step. The menu lets you pick a verb instead of cycling, and ticks the one the region already has.

T, ⇧T, D, the two keys that resize a region and Page Up Page Down act only on the region you are on. So does ⇧V when that region is not part of the selection. When a larger selection is held, the notice line says what the key did, that it acted on the focused region alone, and how many things are selected, so a key never changes one region silently while you are looking at several.

When you move a region to a track that is not synced to the clock, the region stops firing on the arrangement grid and fires as soon as the playhead reaches it instead. Moving it back to a synced track puts it on the grid again. LOOM says which it did on the notice row under the timeline.

With Shift held, the same arrows edit the region you are on instead of moving between regions. ⇧← and ⇧→ move it one grid step earlier or later, and ⇧↑ and ⇧↓ make it one grid step longer or shorter from its end. When the region is part of a selection, ⇧← and ⇧→ move the whole selection one grid step and keep the spacing between its members, including any automation nodes in it; ⇧↑ and ⇧↓ still resize only the region you are on.

⇧Home and ⇧End extend the selection from this region to the first or last region on the track, and move you to that end.

The grid step is whatever SNAP says, a bar or a beat. A new region is one grid step long.

A lane on the arrange timeline

A track's lane and an automation lane are the same kind of control, and most keys do the same thing on both. The table notes the keys that differ and the ones only an automation lane responds to. The row's name, and what a screen reader says when you reach it, tell you which lane you are on.

The node cursor is the node the next key acts on, drawn as a ring around that node's marker while the lane has focus. Pressing a node with the mouse moves the cursor there, so the mouse and the keyboard always agree on which node you are on. The lane's spoken sentence says where the cursor is, what the control does from there, and how many nodes the lane holds.

With Shift held, the arrows move the node instead of moving between nodes. ⇧← and ⇧→ move the node at the cursor one grid step earlier or later. On a lane whose control holds a level, ⇧↑ and ⇧↓ move it up and down in value. A lane whose control is a switch has only two states, and a RACK PRESET or PRESET lane loads entries that have no order, so on those lanes the notice line says why the two keys cannot act there.

When the cursor is standing on a node that is part of the selection, ⇧← and ⇧→ move the whole selection instead, keeping the spacing and the shape between its members. The selection moves in time across every track and every lane it reaches into, and the whole of it is one edit.

⇧↑ and ⇧↓ move only nodes. When the cursor is standing on a selected node, they move every selected node on every lane, each by a step of its own lane's range, and the whole of it is one edit. If the selection holds a region as well, or a node on a lane whose control is a switch, the notice line says why the gesture cannot run and nothing moves. Select only the nodes you want to move in value, or use ⇧← and ⇧→ to move everything in time.

⇧Home and ⇧End extend the selection along this lane, from the cursor to the lane's first or last node. Nothing already selected is removed, so you can build a selection across several lanes a run at a time.

Add Option for a much smaller movement on both axes: ⌥⇧← and ⌥⇧→ move the node by a fraction of the grid step, and ⌥⇧↑ and ⌥⇧↓ by the same fraction of the value step. Use the plain gesture to place a node roughly and Option to fine-tune it.

A selection stops at the end of a lane's range rather than flattening against it, and each lane stops on its own. If the highest selected node on one lane is already at the top, ⇧↑ leaves that lane's nodes where they are and still moves the selected nodes on the other lanes; the notice line names the lane that stayed put. If every lane is already at the top, ⇧↑ does nothing at all. ⇧↓ works the same way at the bottom.

If the grid step the node is moving to already holds a node, a single node steps past it to the next free one, so one press can move it two steps. A selection does not step past: it lands where you sent it, and any node it lands on that is not part of the selection is replaced. The notice line says how many were replaced. Moving a selection is one edit, so one ⌘Z takes the whole of it back, including the nodes that were replaced.

⌘A selects everything in the arrangement, regions and nodes together; press it again to clear. To select every node on one lane, put the cursor on its first node and press ⇧End. S adds or removes one node. Esc clears the selection.

With TOOL set to POINTER, you can drag a rubber band on any lane, a track's lane or an automation lane, and it catches every region and every node it crosses. On an automation lane the band starts only once you drag: a press without movement still adds a node, as it always has.

A selected node is drawn hollow: the marker keeps its shape, so you can still tell a ramp from a jump, and its middle is open. The notice line says how many nodes are selected and the span they cover, and names the regions in the same sentence when the selection holds both.

Pressing a node with the mouse makes it the selection, the way pressing a region does. Hold Shift and the press adds that node to the selection or takes it out again, leaving the rest alone.

Dragging a node with the mouse

On a lane whose control holds a level, press a node and drag it. Sideways moves it in time, by whole grid steps; up and down moves it in value, and a drag can do both at once. If the node is in a selection that also holds regions, the drag moves the whole selection in time only, and up and down is ignored. An outline shows where the node will land, and the move is made when you let go. A drag is one edit, whichever axes it moved, so one ⌘Z takes the whole drag back. Pressing a node and releasing without moving selects it and puts the cursor on it, and changes nothing.

Use a drag to shape a curve roughly. At the working lane height a level lane fits its whole range into a band a few nodes tall, so a single pixel is a large change. To set a particular value, use ⇧↑ and ⇧↓, with Option for the fine step.

On a lane whose control is a switch, a press flips the slot at that point as it always has, and there is nothing to drag it to.

To clear or remove a lane, use the controls on its row; there are no keys for them. See The arrange view, under Clearing and removing a lane.

See The arrange view, under What a lane does while you play, for what an automation lane does while the arrangement performs, and under Jumps and ramps for what the two node shapes mean.

The arrange view describes selecting several things at once, under Selecting more than one thing. One selection holds regions and automation nodes together, and every mouse gesture there has a key: S adds or removes the one you are on, ⇧Home and ⇧End take a run along the track or lane you are on, ⌘A takes everything in the arrangement, and Esc clears.

⌘Z undoes and ⇧⌘Z redoes. In a field you are typing a value into, they undo your typing. Otherwise, what they undo depends on where the keyboard is:

• In the effect drawer or on a slot grid: the last change to an effect chain. See Undoing a change to an effect chain.
• In the drum editor, after a BARS change: the last change to the drum loop's length. See STEPS/BEAT and bars in Instrument tracks. With no length change to undo, the key does what it does anywhere else.
• Anywhere else, while the arrange view is showing: the last arrangement edit.

Each track's own audio history is separate. It lives on that track's UNDO button and takes no key.

The bar ruler above the lanes

The strip of bar numbers along the top of the arrange timeline holds two controls: the playhead, and the song end marker at the right-hand end. Both are reachable with Tab. In the header row, the playhead comes just after the PERFORM buttons (PERFORM FROM TOP, PERFORM FROM HERE and, while a performance is running, PERFORMANCE STOP), and the end marker comes just after the playhead.

With Shift held the arrows move four grid steps instead of one.

You can also click anywhere on the ruler to put the playhead there, or press and drag to scrub it along. It snaps to SNAP either way.

With the song stopped, moving the playhead starts nothing: the transport stays stopped, no track is armed and the arrangement does not start. ROLL then plays from wherever you left it.

With the song rolling, a click arms a jump instead of moving the playhead: a hollow marker appears at the bar you pointed at, and the playhead arrives there on the boundary JUMP Q names, the next bar unless you have changed it. Escape cancels it, and clicking that same bar again jumps at once. See The arrange view.

With Shift held the arrows move it four bars, which is one phrase.

The end marker has no Home key. It would mean bar 1, and LOOM refuses bar 1 for every song that has a region in it, so the key could only ever be refused.

Dialogs

The dialog swallows every other key, so the window behind it does not act on a keystroke meant for the dialog.