Lesson 3
Reading a panel
Several hundred modules and no two panels alike, which sounds like several hundred things to learn. It is not: every control on every one of them answers the same gestures and carries the same markings, and the application will explain any of them on request.
Every knob is the same knob
Drag vertically to change a value. Double-click to put it back to its default, which is the value it held when the module was created. That is the whole vocabulary, and it does not vary.
Some modules have hand-drawn panels that paint their knobs rather than assembling them from stock parts, and those look quite different. They answer the same gestures and carry the same markings, so the difference is only ever in the picture.
What a knob tells you before you touch it
A knob can carry three markings, each in its own colour so you can read a crowded panel at a glance.
One panel's knob row. Wave and Warp carry the star; the other six do not, which is the point of marking them.
Start here. It marks the handful of controls that most change the sound of this module, and turning one of them will be audible immediately.
An automation lane is driving this control. The arc shows where the lane is taking it right now.
A CV bus is modulating this control. The ring shows the modulated value as it moves.
The stars are worth using as intended. A panel of twenty knobs does not tell you where to begin, and on the modules that carry stars there will be two or three of them. Turn those first.
The figure above shows stars, because a still picture of a panel nobody is automating cannot show the other two. The arc and the ring appear once something is driving a control, which is what the automation and modulation lessons are about.
A driven knob keeps your setting
This one is worth knowing before it confuses you. When an automation lane or a CV bus is driving a control, the pointer does not chase the value. It stays exactly where you left it, and the arc or ring shows where the value is being taken.
That is deliberate, and the reason is simple: a pointer that followed the modulation would lose the thing the modulation is measured against. Your setting stays visible and stays yours, so you can always get back to it, and you can see at a glance how far something else is pushing it.
Both can be running at once. Automation moves your setting, and CV sweeps around wherever automation has taken it.
Asking what a control does
You do not have to guess and you do not have to leave the panel. Hover any knob, slider or switch and the drawer's Module Info page explains that control: what it does to the sound, and when to reach for it.
With nothing hovered, the same page describes whichever module window is focused. So the drawer answers both questions you have when a panel is new - what is this module, and what is this knob - without either of them needing a manual.
Press 1 to bring that page up if the drawer is showing something else.