You have pads! (Sort of.)

[AlenK]

As an XW owner do you look with envy at the four pads on the MZ-X300 and especially the sixteen pads on the MZ-X500? MZ-X owners can use them to trigger phrases or articulations, play samples and (only on the X500) trigger chord progressions. 

 

Well, thanks to the designers of the XW synths and especially the mad genius who designed the XW's step sequencer you can do some of those same things using the step sequencer's eight Pattern selection buttons, which on the XW-P1 are also used to select different banks of tones. 

 

While they aren't square nor quite as large as the pads on the MZ-X models they are still fairly large and easy to hit. Unlike the pads on the MZ-X models they are conveniently positioned in the center of the keyboard, which means they are just as easy to hit with the right hand as the with the left. On the downside, unlike the pads on the MZ-X500 but exactly like those on the MZ-X300 the pattern buttons aren't backlighted nor are they velocity sensitive. Furthermore, they can't be made to work in a "hold" fashion, where the event you triggered stops when you press the pad again or indeed in the regular manner of MZ-X pads in which the event only happens while you are pressing down the pad. Finally, unlike with the MZ-X pads you can't trigger more than one event at the same time.

 

This earlier thread describes how to use the pattern-selection buttons to select phrases. But with a few other tricks, the pattern-select buttons can instantly start (not just select) phrases that play once or loop. On the XW-G1 they can be used to trigger instant playback of user samples. 

 

What's that you say? Tell us the tricks already? Okay. They are fairly simple if you are comfortable with programming the step sequencer. First reserve Pattern 1 as a "do nothing" pattern. That's right; it should remain completely empty, which means we'll only have seven buttons available for doing stuff (which is still three more than the MZ-X300 has). The second trick is that instead of using a control track to stop a pattern, we use it instead to switch to the first pattern by using the Pattern Select NRPN command assigned to a knob. The third thing to do (it's not really a trick) is to set the Pattern Change Timing parameter to "Real" instead of "Wait."

 

When programming a pattern to play a phrase, this time if we want it to play only once we insert a value of zero (for Pattern number 1) in a step of the control track that points to the knob programmed with the Pattern Select NRPN command, placing it just after the phrase or pattern ends. All steps on the track prior to that one need to have a value of one less than the pattern number you intend to play the phrase from (e.g., use 3 if you are playing it from Pattern 4). With Pattern 1 selected initially and the step sequencer running, pressing another pattern button will instantly play the phrase/pattern assigned to it. When the phrase is done the sequencer jumps back to Pattern 1 where it does....nothing. Want to stop a phrase/pattern early? Just press the Pattern 1 button. 

 

Now you know why a "do nothing" pattern is required. The sequencer has to stay running for the buttons to instantly play a phrase/pattern when a pattern button is hit and it has to seem to do nothing when it is not busy playing a phrase/pattern. 

 

Regarding articulations, while the XW-P1 has only a tiny few in sampled form unlike the MZ-X models, you can fake some of the missing ones using specifically-designed patterns and/or phrases that control pitch, volume and timbre (filter cutoff, distortion, etc.) instead of playing notes. This is essentially how the Sampled Pitch Forms listed in the MZ-X500's Appendix document work, which despite their name control more parameters than just pitch. 

 

What about playing samples on an XW-G1? Well, instead of playing a phrase a pattern can simply play one note of a user sample tone on a suitable Part (usually one of Parts 8 to 15). 

 

What about chords and chord progressions? Well, that can be accomplished by using a pattern's chord track pointing to a suitable tone on part 16. If you need more than three simultaneous notes use some of the other tracks to add them (an exercise left to the reader). You don't need to use a phrase in this application but you could of course trigger one to generate all of the notes in your chords at once instead. Chord progressions can't drive auto-accompaniment like they can on the MZ-X models because, of course, the XW synths don't offer that feature. The step sequencer is the closet thing to auto-accompaniment that an XW synth has and we borrowed it to do this instead.