Reinforce: add parts beside a stem pack

Reinforce adds synthesized parts beside a stem pack in Tracks. It follows the material’s tempo, recurring hits and chords, then renders new lanes you can mix with the originals. Start with separate stems: a bass lane, a drums lane, and a keys, guitar or strings lane give it the parts to work from.

Bring in the stems

Drop a stem-pack folder or zip into Tracks. You can also drop audio files into the room, or send them from the Library by dropping them onto Tracks in the sidebar. The files become lanes.

Play the set and listen to what is already there. Each lane has gain, pan, mute and solo, so you can hear the bass or drums on their own before adding anything. S solos a lane; press it again to hear everything.

Open ⋯ ▸ Reinforce from the Tracks toolbar. Check the Bass, Drums and Chords source labels before choosing parts. Reinforce needs separate stems; on a set without them, it says so. Begin with a pack that already contains the separate recordings.

Choose what to add

Enable the parts you want and choose their presets. You do not have to add every part in one pass.

• Sub adds a synthesized bass part beside the stems.
• Kick+, Snare+ and Hat+ add kit hits.
• Hook composes a motif using the key and chords.
• Pad doubles the chord chart.

For a first pass, try one part. Add Sub when you want to explore a bass layer, or a kit part when you want to hear what another drum sound contributes. Listening to one addition makes its effect easier to judge before you build up the set.

The new sounds come from the built-in synthesis. Your stem recordings remain the material Reinforce follows, and the added parts appear beside them as separate lanes.

Check tempo, pattern and chords

Without a MIDI clock, Reinforce reads the tempo from the audio. If that disagrees with the master’s number, the audio reading takes precedence. The summary tells you where the tempo came from, so check it after the render instead of assuming the toolbar number was used.

Pattern mode follows recurring hits rather than every onset. Use it when you want the reinforcement to follow the repeating pattern. Hits moves the added hits earlier or later in milliseconds; listen to the original drums and the added hits together while judging their placement.

When there is no keys lane, Reinforce reads chords from the bass so Hook and Pad can still follow them. The summary says where the chord information came from and names any part it could not make. Read that summary before deciding whether the result matches what you intended.

Render, then mix

Press Reinforce. The new parts appear as lanes beside the originals. Play the set, then use the lane controls to bring each addition into the mix.

Try muting an added lane and bringing it back. Solo it to hear the sound itself, then return to the whole set to judge its level and timing. Gain and pan place it in the mix; sends feed reverb and tempo-based delay. + FX adds a built-in effect or an installed Audio Unit if you want further shaping.

A rerun replaces the previous reinforcement lanes. It leaves their old audio files intact, but the earlier lanes are replaced in the set. Treat another press as a revision of the reinforcement you just heard.

Keep the assembly

Use ⋯ ▸ Save to keep the Tracks assembly as a .tracks file, including its plug-in state. ⋯ ▸ Save as Song… makes it a song that keeps its bounces, moments and history inside itself. Use Bounce when you want to render the assembled mix.

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