# Generate Slides

Tools ▸ Generate Slides… writes a command down a marked range with its value
moving from a start to an end: a volume fade, a filter sweep, a pan from one
side to the other. It is on the pattern's right-click menu too, and the window
stays open while you mark a different range in the grid.

## The range

Mark the rows the slide should run over, at least two. A range over several
tracks repeats the slide in each of them. The slide is written on the command
page the cursor is on, and the title bar shows how many rows and tracks it
covers.

Until such a range is marked, GENERATE SLIDE is greyed, and its tooltip says
what is missing.

## Command

The commands a slide makes sense for, listed as MED lists them. Left out are
the ones a ramp would break, such as jumps and loops, and the ones with no
value to slide. Two are Mediante's own: 0F F6 Glissando and 0F FC Invert Loop.

The fields below change with the command, one row each: Arpeggio slides its
second and third notes, Vibrato its speed and depth, Set Volume the volume.
Each field slides on its own. MED relabels its fields the same way.

A command that needs the second command level cannot be written to a block
that has none. GENERATE SLIDE is greyed and says so, and Block ▸ Add Second
Command Level adds one.

## Start and end

Each field has a start, written on the first marked row, and an end, written
on the last. The rows between are interpolated evenly and rounded. The range
beside a field is what it takes, and a value outside it snaps back when you
leave the box.

For Set Volume the range follows the module, 0–127 on a module written by
Windows MED (MED4) and 0–64 on others, and a note below the fields says which
applies and why.

**DEC / HEX** switches entry between decimal and hexadecimal. MED's own dialog
is decimal only, which suits a cutoff in Hz or a pan of −16 to 16 but not
matching a value you can see in the grid. In HEX each value reads as the grid
will show it, negative ones included (−16 is F0). Switching never changes the
values themselves.

## If commands are in the way

This only matters where marked rows already carry a **different** command on
the page being written. The same command is not in the way: the slide rewrites
it. With the rows clear, every choice writes to the current page.

- **Replace them**, the default, writes the slide over whatever is there. A
  slide has to fill every row of its span to be a ramp, so this is what
  generating one normally means.
- **Use a free command page** puts the slide on the lowest command page that
  is empty in the marked rows, and leaves the commands already there alone.
  It names that page when it finds one, and is greyed when none is free.
- **Add a command page** gives the block a new page and puts the slide on it.
  That changes the block's shape, so saving afterwards rewrites the module
  rather than patching the original file. Greyed when the block cannot take
  another page.

The line under the button says which of these will happen, and to how many
rows, before you press it. MED has none of these choices: there, adding a page
is always a trip to [Block Properties](block-properties.md#cmd-pages).

## Warnings

A command on **another** page of the same row that drives the same thing, such
as a second volume command or a pitch slide against the one being written, is
left as it is, and both will run. The window warns before you generate, with
how many cells and where the first one is. It is a warning, not a refusal:
layering is sometimes what you want.

## Undo

One undo step takes the slide back. With Add a command page, the new page goes
with it.