Of everything in Serum 2, the CLIP tab probably gets ignored the hardest. The granular and spectral oscillators soak up all the attention, while a complete MIDI clip system sits right there inside the synth, one that can rough out basslines and chord loops quicker than most people can in their DAW.
Never opened it? Let me show you what’s in there.
What the CLIP tab actually is
A Serum 2 preset can carry MIDI clips inside it — short musical phrases like basslines, chord loops, arps and melodies. They live in clip banks, 12 slots per bank. Open a preset that ships with clips, press one key, and you get a real phrase played through the patch instead of a held note.
The mental model: it sits halfway between an arpeggiator and a piano roll. An arp reshapes whatever you’re holding; a clip is a written phrase that performs itself.
Why 12 slots changes sketching
Treat a bank as a compact idea board: 12 groove variations gathered in one spot. You flip through them from your keyboard rather than dragging MIDI files in and out of some browser.
Sounds like a trivial difference. It isn’t. “Press key, hear idea, press next key” is a feedback loop measured in seconds; digging through loose MIDI files in a DAW costs minutes per idea. And sketching speed is mostly a function of loop speed.
My routine: one bank per sketch — a handful of bassline variants, a handful of chord rhythms. The moment one grabs me, that’s the track.
Trigger phrases from one key
Every clip launches from a single key, which turns a MIDI keyboard into a phrase board: each key holds an idea, playing in time through whatever patch is currently loaded.
It also happens to be the best way I know to audition presets. Rather than holding a note and imagining the groove, you hear every patch actually performing a bassline. Weak patches out themselves within seconds; the good ones do their own selling.
The killer feature: drag to your DAW as MIDI
Once a clip clicks, drag it straight out of Serum 2 into your DAW and it arrives as ordinary MIDI. At that point it belongs to you: edit the notes, swap the patch, stack layers on it. This is exactly why clips beat audio loops for sketching. An audio loop marries you to a sound; a clip is nothing but notes.
The loop I run constantly:
- Audition clips until something fits the sketch.
- Drag it into the DAW as MIDI.
- Rewrite two or three notes so it turns into mine.
- Swap presets at will, because the phrase no longer cares about the sound.
How I use clips for basslines
Basslines gain the most here, since a held note tells you nothing about groove. A bass patch that seems boring sustained can be exactly right once it’s running a rhythm full of rests and offbeats. With clips you hear the patch doing its real job while you browse. It’s also the quickest way to shop for a bass sound: fire up a clip, then page through a pack from our Serum 2 presets sorted by genre and judge each patch on an actual phrase.
This techno bass makes the point. Held, it’s plain; inside a moving phrase, it suddenly makes total sense.
Writing your own phrases? Everything in how to write basslines holds inside a clip as well: roots before anything fancy, rhythm ahead of pitch, and rests wherever the kick lands.
Clips vs the arp and the sequencer
Serum 2 also carries an arpeggiator and a sequencer, and the three overlap enough that people get lost. The short answer: the arp reshuffles held notes in real time, the sequencer walks through a programmable pattern, and clips replay complete written phrases. Sketching song ideas? Clips take it. Live movement over a held pad? The arp. The full comparison lives in Serum 2 arpeggiator and sequencer.
Testing the workflow costs you nothing: download our free Serum 2 presets, choose a bass patch, open the CLIP tab and fill a 12-slot bank with bassline ideas against it. If you later find yourself wanting bigger libraries to sketch from, the Serum 2 preset bundles are the best value we have on complete genre collections.
FAQ
What are clips in Serum 2?
MIDI phrases saved inside a preset, arranged in banks of 12 slots. Hit the assigned key and the phrase plays back through whatever patch is loaded.
Can I export Serum 2 clips to my DAW?
Yes. Drag any clip out of the plugin and it drops in as standard MIDI, editable like any other.
Do clips work in every DAW?
Playback happens entirely inside Serum 2, so clips run anywhere the plugin does, VST3 or AU. The drag-export part requires a DAW that accepts dropped MIDI, which describes nearly every DAW out there.
Are clips the same as the arpeggiator?
No. An arp transforms the notes you’re holding in real time, while a clip replays a phrase that was written down. Different tools for different problems.
Sometime this week, open the CLIP tab and build one bank of 12 bassline ideas. Features that pay for themselves on day one are rare. This is one of them.
I run Monosounds.studio and make the packs myself. Ten-plus years of producing, 97+ releases, 16,000+ downloads. Every Serum 2 preset we ship passes a CPU check on a mid-range laptop and gets used in a real track before release. If it does not survive a mix, it does not go in the pack.
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