Marker Track

The marker track designates points in the segment used for Boundaries and Segment Alignment. Objects in this track are of two types:

• Marker

  A point at which the segment can stop playing, or at which a secondary segment can be cued when the segment containing the marker is the primary segment. Markers are displayed in blue along the top edge of the track window.

• Enter Switch Point

  A point at which this segment can start playing when its normal start point is aligned with a past event. Enter switch points are displayed in green along the bottom edge of the track window.

The track can contain any number of objects of either kind. When two objects overlap, they are displayed with hash marks. You can cycle through the Properties Window for overlapping objects by right-clicking on them and selecting Cycle Markers or Cycle Enter Switch Points on the shortcut menu.

The following figure shows a segment with a track containing markers and enter switch points at the beginning of every measure.

Generally, markers and enter switch points are placed at the ends of short phrases that make up a segment, or at places that are natural stopping or starting points in the segment. For example, a segment that is 24 measures long might have six different phrases of four measures each. A marker track could be used to ensure that the segment always starts or stops at a phrase boundary.

Note If you insert a style containing Variation Switch Points into a segment, they affect the segment as if you had inserted enter switch points in the marker track of the segment. However, the variation switch points of the style pattern are not displayed in the marker track of the segment.