The Riff tool is a simple utility for playing and recording phrases. It has no real editing functions - that role is filled by the Group tool. The Riff tool is useful for looping phrases (repeating them endlessly), and is often used as a target of the Bang tool.

The "Load Rec" item in the More menu will load the Riff tool with the most recently recorded MIDI input. If you select "Load Rec (1b space)," it will look back in time to find the first one-beat space, and will load the Riff tool with all MIDI input recorded after that. The "Load Rec (4b space)" does the same thing except it looks for a four-beat space. The "Load From Snarf" and "Load from File" items in the More menu let you load the Riff tool from the Snarf buffer and from a Standard MIDI File, respectively.

After loading a phrase into the Riff tool, you can play it by clicking the mouse button anywhere within the phrase window. Clicking the mouse again, while the phrase is playing, will terminate playback. The Loop button is a toggle switch - if you turn it on, the phrase will be played repeatedly until you explicitly terminate it, either by turning the Loop mode off or by clicking the mouse within the phrase window.

The "Loop Quant->" item lets you select the value by which the loop repeat time will be quantized. For example, if the Riff tool contains a phrase whose length is not exactly a multiple of 4 beats, you will probably want to set the loop quantization value to 4b. Similarly, the "Start Quant->" item lets you select the quantization value used whenever the riff is started.

The Snarf item in the More menu will put the current phrase into the Snarf buffer. The Strip item will strip the current phrase - all leading and trailing space (rests) will be removed.