Sections
Marking the verses, choruses and breaks inside a song, so you can see them and jump to them.
Downstage 0.9.0 · updated 13 Oct 2026A section is a named part of a song: a verse, a chorus, the long instrumental where somebody has to count. With sections marked, Downstage shows which one is playing and lets you repeat it, skip to the next, loop it, or jump to any other.
Sections are optional. A song without them simply shows its bar count.
Two ways to mark them
Use either, or both in the same set.
A SECTIONS track
Add a MIDI track to the arrangement and name it SECTIONS. Draw an empty clip wherever a section
starts, and name the clip after the section.
- Only where each clip starts matters. Its length is ignored: a section runs until the next section begins, or until the next song.
- The track never needs to make a sound. Leave the clips empty.
- Any track with the word
SECTIONSin its name works —Markers +SECTIONS, for instance — if you would rather call it something else.
This is the quickest way to mark up a whole set, and it keeps the locator lane uncluttered.
Locators that start with >
Name a locator with a leading > and it becomes a section instead of a song:
> Verse 1>> Chorus works as well — any number of > at the start is read the same way.
Which is better?
They look identical in Downstage. The difference is what Live can do with them while a song is playing:
| Shown in Downstage | Jump to it while stopped | Jump to it mid-song | |
|---|---|---|---|
Locator (> Chorus) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Clip on the SECTIONS track | Yes | Yes | No |
Live will only make an in-time jump to a locator. So a section that exists only as a clip can be started from while Live is stopped, but not jumped to in the middle of a song.
You do not have to choose up front. Mark sections with clips, and when you want to jump to them mid-song, let Downstage add the locators for you — one button per song.
The first section of a song usually starts exactly on the song's own locator. Downstage reaches it through that locator, so it is jumpable mid-song without one of its own.
Which song a section belongs to
A section belongs to the song it sits inside: from that song's locator up to the next song's. A
section placed on or after a SONG END marker — a ring-out, say — still belongs to the song that
just ended.
Section names can repeat as often as you like. Every song can have a Chorus, and one song can have three.
A line of context
Put a short note in curly braces after a section's name and Downstage shows it beside the section:
Instrumental {acoustic gtr only}More in Notes in {braces}.
Where a locator and a clip are in the same place
If a > locator and a SECTIONS clip start on the same beat, they are treated as one section, and
the locator's name is the one shown.