Keep running into issues while trying to clarify my previous reply. Here’s attempt #3:
I often make mistakes while doing a lot of lifting and dropping, and I’d like to share some “safer” tape navigation tips I haven’t seen described anywhere else.
Moving a take by beat marker increments
This is helpful if you want to do something like move a take exactly 1/8 over or align a specific part of a take with a marker.
Slide the take you want to move (shift + blue encoder). It will change color to indicate it’s selected. Continue holding shift and use the arrow keys to move the selected point to the nearest bar marker.
If you start at the beginning of a take, this makes it easy to do something like move it 4 bars over.
If you start in the middle of a take, it will move that exact spot to the nearest bar marker. If you take some time to put the loop in point at the exact spot you want on a bar marker, you can hit stop to return to that point and can use the above method to move that exact spot to a nearby marker.
Navigating the tape in free mode
It can be annoying to press shift+arrow over and over to get from a pattern at 0:30 to a pattern at 5:30. Additionally, I often leave a 60s gap on my tape so I can record and chop up things on the tape itself, and this technique has made it faster to skip those sections.
In beat match mode, shift + arrow takes you to the next beat marker. In free mode (metronome → green encoder fully counterclockwise), shift + arrow takes you to the end of the current take or the beginning of the next take on that track.
Moving a take in free mode
A few times I’ve wanted to push takes right up against each other (or move them to the other side of a gap of silence), and I combine the above methods to speed up the process:
Switch to free mode and start to slide a take. Arrow keys will move that take as closely as it can go to the next take on the same track.