the dreaded phrases and song editing

[tilly154]

I have been searching for an you tube on making phrases and songs, I am finding it an extremely frustrating hair pulling out experience..

[Choppin]

Hello,

 

Welcome!  The song sequencer functions like what is called a "Tracker" also sometimes called a "Mod Player".  The concept is this: a series of patterns identified by a unique number are placed on a grid of tracks.  Each pattern is triggered in sequence according to it's position on the track in the grid, the tempo of the song, the number of repeats for the specific pattern at its current position, and will play any pitch shifts of the whole pattern. 

 

Hopefully, you don't mind reading.  There is a discussion about it with some details I participated in in this thread:

You should go through the whole thread for more information.  I'll include a big chunk of the description of the sequencer use below that is also in the above thread.

 

 

Quote

@Hugh

All 8 tracks? ok, something simple for demo purposes: Row Row Row your boat as a round.  I do type a lot, so be patient.  I'll try to keep it short.

 

Make sure you don't have any media (wav files and such) loaded and ready to play when you hit start.  Make sure the [song] button is off.

We'll create the phrase we need first.

 

Press [Phrase] so that the phrase light is on (not flashing)  Use the + and - keys to bring up a phrase number you don't mind changing.  I chose 107.

 

Press[Edit] and set the beat to 4/4 - Press [Exit]

 

Press [Phrase] one more time to get the phrase light and the recording light flashing.

 

Rec Mode should be New;  I use Quantize off for this but if you want it on it should probably be triplet 8th or triplet 16th notes; End measure should be 04 to create a 4 measure phrase - the whole tune of Row Row your boat.

 

When you are ready, either start playing or press [Record] - record the tune.  Save your phrase with the [Write] button.  Make sure you change the phrase number so it matches the number you want to write to.  It seems to always default to the first empty phrase.

Press [Exit].  Turn off Phrase by pressing phrase several times until it is no longer lit.

 

Ok, let's build a song out of row row your boat.  Press [song] so that the button is lit. Press [Edit]

 

Alright, I'll demonstrate a couple of different things.  First, lets talk about adding Hex layers.  In a stage setting, zones 1 and 2 can play back Hex layers.  In the Song Sequencer, we specifically have to set the Midi channels to 1 or 2.  Any track set to either of those channels can play back a hex layer.  To keep this discussion on track, I have to refrain myself from launching into what seems possible in theory as far as midi control and so forth.  I'll just say this, a phrase records midi events and control messages - you may be able to control stage settings automatically through the song sequencer and... well, back to the task at hand.

 

In the edit mode for the song, I want to make the first and second tracks Hex layers.  By default, track 1 is set to midi channel 5, and track 2 is set to midi channel 6.  This is so the song sequencer is avoiding channels 1-4 that the stage settings default to.  So on the menu, select Song mixer > Channel and set it to 1

 

Cursor Back until you see Bank Select MSB.  For Hex layers, change this to 97

 

Below that, you'll see Program Change.  Change that to 19 - synth voice (could be any hex layer, but we'll just use this for demo purposes).

 

If you press the zone + button, it will switch to track 2.  Change the midi channel to 2, and change this to a hex layer also, but use program 34 (or another if you like)

 

For the rest of the tracks, leave them as defaults or change them to other midi channels you desire.  In theory you could change them all to 1 and/or 2 and use hex layers, but it's likely only to register the last program change for that channel.

 

Feel free to change any of the mixer settings for the particular track.  I left them alone.  Once satisfied, use the zone - and + to set the track number back to 1.  Press [Exit] and then select Track Edit and press [Enter]

 

There is a measure counter in the upper right.  From what I can tell, this is based on the time signature of the phrase on the first track playing.  So in our case, if our phrase plays 1 time, it will count up 4 measures.  We can keep track of where musically we are in the demo.

 

Okay, right now, our song shouldn't have any cells that have phrases stored in them.  In general, the song sequencer stores a series of cells of phrases on the various tracks.  Each cell for each track can be repeated in sequence up to 99 times.  That gives us a lot of options when structuring our song.   I will demonstrate a little bit of this flexibility.  We will add 4 cells to track 1.  Do this by pressing the Number 1 key (insert) 4 times.

 

The knobs can be used to control the individual parameters or you can use the cursors keys and the + and -.  You'll notice numbers 001 through 004 on the left hand side.  These are cell numbers for that track.  To switch between cells use Knob 1.  Next to the number is the phrase that will play.  You see it defaults to Ph000.   We'll want to change this to 107.  Use Knob 2 to change this. Next to that you'll see 01.  This is the number of times that particular cell will repeat.  Use Knob 3 to change this - but we'll leave it at 01 for now.  The last number is a pitch shift.  Use Knob 4 to change it.

 

For the 4 cells we added, change each Ph to 107.  Leave the other values alone.  When done, advance to the next track use the zone + key.

 

For Track 2, we'll set things a little differently just to show the flexibility of the song sequencer.  Insert 1 cell.  Since our song is going to be a round, we need 4 beats before we start playing on this track.  I've never used phrase 108, so by default, it is an empty 1 measure 4/4 phrase.  I'm going to set this cell to Ph108.  After that, I'm going to insert another cell so press the 1 key again.  This new cell labeled 002, will have our tune playing again so I will set the phrase number to 107.  Now, instead of adding 4 individual cells each playing 107 one after the other, I'm going to use the repeat option for this cell.  After the phrase number, set the repeat number to 4.  

If you press the Start/Stop button, track one will start with the hex layer synthvoice and after 4 beats, track 2 will play the phrase with the other sound we set it to.

 

Go through the rest of the tracks, add blank phrases - you can use the repeat option - and then add a cell (or group of cells) with phrase 107.  You'll probably need more than 4 cells or repeats, probably at least 8 so that all of the tracks sound at least once during the round.

That's the concept and the basic operation of the track sequencer.  The difference when making your own songs would be using multiple phrases with different musical parts and melodies.

 

Note, the measure numbers do not correspond to the number of cells added, so don't get that mixed up.  If you have a long song, I'm not sure if the limit is the number of cells or the number of measures that can be played.

 

If you need to remove cells from a track, press the 0 key (delete).  If you need to remove an entire track, when you press the [Edit] button when you are in song mode, you'll be in Sing Edit mode.  This is where we found the slections for Track Edit and Song mixer.  If you continue scrolling, you'll see Track Clear.  Choose this to clear the selected track.  If you want to reset the entire song, choose Song Initialize.

 

[tilly154]

thanks for that choppin, bit of fiddling there....maybe they could write an app for it lol