Mixing: groups

A group gathers voices so you can treat them as one: a compressor on all the drums, one fader for the whole kit, one send to the reverb. "Open in TuttiDAW" makes it a group track inside the program's group, with those voices in it.

Code	What it is	In the studio
group(name)	a group of voices	a group track inside the program's group
.group(name)	puts a voice in a group	the voice's track becomes a child of that group

Like bus and .send, these are TuttiDAW-only: a program that uses them does not play on strudel.cc.

A drum group

Declare the group on its own line, give it effects with .fx and a fader with .mix, and put voices in it with .group(name):

group("drums").fx("Drum Buss").mix({vol: -3})

kick: s("bd*4").bank("tr909").group("drums")
snare: s("~ sd").bank("tr909").group("drums")
hats: s("hh*8").bank("tr909").group("drums").mix({vol: -8})
bass: note("<c2 g1 a1 f1>").ply(4).s("sawtooth").lpf(600)

The kick, snare and hats play through the Drum Buss, then through the group's fader: -3 lowers all three by 3 dB. Each voice keeps its own .mix too - the hats are 8 dB down inside the group.

Sends from a group

A group sends to a bus like a voice does, with a level in dB. The whole group goes to the bus at that level - here the drums share one room while the bass stays dry:

bus("room").fx("Reverb", {dryWetBalance: 1, decayTime: "1.5s"})
group("drums").send("room", -14)

kick: s("bd*4").group("drums")
snare: s("~ sd").group("drums")
bass: note("c2 ~ c2 g1").s("sawtooth").lpf(500)

Buses belong to the program: a group can send to any bus the program declares, and its voices can still send on their own too.

A group's fader, pan and send levels are numbers (a group track has no clip to move them). A group cannot be put inside another group.

A voice without a group

.group("drums") with no group("drums") in the program is a warning: the editor offers to add the declaration, and until then the voice plays in the program's group like any other.

In the studio

The group track sits inside the program's group, with its voices as its children. Its effects, fader and sends belong to the code, like a bus's: change one by hand and the group is detached from the code (Re-attach brings it back). Move a voice out of its group by hand and that voice is detached. Remove .group("drums") from a voice and its track moves back to the program's group; remove group("drums") itself and the group track stays, marked "not in code", while its voices move back.