Shortcuts and Random: working fast

01Why the keyboard

On stage your hands are on the keys and your eyes on the band. Every move that needs the trackpad costs you a look at the screen. KiMiA gives almost every common move a single key on the Mac’s keyboard, so you can switch screens, recall a Set pad, jump to a panel or stop a stuck note without looking for a button.

All the shortcuts below work with KiMiA in front and no text box in use (in a search box, the keys type). Two ways to see them inside KiMiA:

• Hold ⌘ on its own: every shortcut appears over the screen until you let go (Lesson 2.1).
• KiMiA Help (⌘?), page Keyboard shortcuts: the same list, to read at leisure.

02Every shortcut

03Four habits worth learning first

1. z and x to flip between Play and Edit while you design: hear it in Play, fix it in Edit.
2. Shift with a letter in Edit: ⇧F for the filter, ⇧A for the envelope, without scrolling.
3. ↑ ↓ then ← → to walk through controls and nudge them; ⌥ for the fine moves a filter needs.
4. ⌘., Panic, the moment something sticks. Learn it before you need it.

04Random: a new sound in one click

Sometimes the fastest way to a sound is to start somewhere unexpected. Random, at the top of Edit, moves the sound’s values toward values good sounds use, in one press. Its button opens a small window:

• Amount: how far each value moves. At 100% (where it starts) every press is a new sound; low settings make variations of the one you have. A choice, such as a wave or a filter type, changes with Amount’s chance, always to another one.
• From: Factory sounds takes each value from a random factory sound that uses the same engine, values good sounds really use; Anywhere picks freely inside the range the factory sounds use. Neither can reach a runaway feedback, resonance or drive.
• Layer A (the layer in focus) and Whole patch (every layer that plays): the presses themselves. These also switch Filter 2, Character and the inserts on or off at even odds, so each press can be very different.

Random also works on a smaller scale:

• A panel’s dice, in its title bar, moves only that panel: just the filter, just the envelopes, just Insert 1. It switches the panel on if it was off.
• Random on one control, in a slider’s right-click menu, moves only that slider.

Random never touches a layer’s power, the levels, the Layer range or the Playing panel, and it leaves the Amp envelope’s Delay alone, so a random sound never goes silent for seconds after each key. Every press is one Undo step: ⌘Z takes you back to the sound before it.

05Try it

1. No mouse. Load 02 · Split Bass and Pad. Using only the keyboard: go to Edit (x), jump to Filter 1 (⇧F), walk to Cutoff with ↓ and lower it with ⇧←. Then go back to Play (z).
2. Typing keys. Play a C major chord with A, D and G, then move the octave up with the full stop.
3. Sketch. On 02 · Bell Pad Layers, open Random, press Whole patch five times, and undo back to the one you liked best with ⌘Z.
4. Explore. Set Amount to 20% and press only the filter panel’s dice a few times: variations, not new sounds.

06Module check

07What’s next

You know your way around KiMiA. Now the synthesis begins. In Module 3 · Oscillators you will start where every subtractive sound starts: two oscillators, mixed and detuned, the pulse wave, the Sub and the noise, the Supersaw and unison.