Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

Thanks Aaron.  I use XMIX pretty much, incredibly usefful, you find the same feature on the groovebox MC 307, MC 505, MC 909 and D2 (I'm owner of these toys too). But its not possible to append patterns with the XMIX. Maybe its because my poor english, so I didn't explain my self well. 
   
  I meant, to traslate an entire pattern, to the end of another pattern.  I have a pattern.  I duplicate it, make some variations to the cloned pattern, and then, put it at the end of the first patttern without replacing its tracks, but making the pattern longer.  So, I startted wit a 8 bars pattern, duplicate it, and I end with a 16 bars pattern.  You must know  that sometimes, composing music throught pattern method, makes you lose the continuity of the song, and sometimes it cuts patches with a long decay time (like pads) when changing pattern. This is rare on the XL7, I love it, but when sending MIDI tracks to other synths, changing pattern affects some sounds, cutting the sound.  I have worked on this,  deleting the 0 point program change messages turning all the tracks to "ext", so I'm able to see these hidden messages. 
  Anyway, this append pattern feature could be helpful, but is not the great stuff.  
  Something that could be really insteresting, is to have patterns with different lengths for each track.  You find this feature on the pattern sequencer of the Yamaha EX7.  You can assign different lengh to each track, not only on measures, but also on bars!!!.  This is so, so cool, because you can keep, for example, the kick drum track on just 2 measures, and create a track of 16 measures for the pad melody.  Tracks can have lengths adjusted not only to measures, but bars, and decimals, centesimals.... this feature makes you able to create very complex patterns, with diferent tempo and lenght for each one of the tracks, so each pattern never repeats on the same way.  Now that's an amazing feature on a sequencer. 
   
  Sorry for bothering or being so much critic, but I love to dig very deep on my hardware, really enthusiastic for technologies possibilities, and always think, how they could be better, and try to get the best of the features that I see can improve my compositions. 
   
  Waiting forthe 3.0!!!1 (just joking....)
   
  thanks again Aaroon. 
  

Aaron Eppolito <synthesis77@yahoo.com> wrote:
          Ugh, I can't figure out how to get yahoo mail to quote stuff so I can interleave comments (I did the last one by hand).

Append Pattern:
You can use Xmix for this too! (that seems to be my answer for everything here!) You'll still have to get them one by one, but you can pretty quickly go into XMIX and dial up the source pattern. Then, you simply push the button for destination track then the button for the source track over and over. You can then save the pattern over itself or to a new pattern.

Transpose:
Yeah, there's no way to limit bar range. Ideally, it'd have a realtime transpose feature along with realtime quantize.

Comments:
Don't know if you were around back when I did 2.0, but much of those features were requests from this mailing list!

-Aaron

----- Original Message ----
From: Mauricio Balma <balmaproducer@...>
To: xl7@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2008 2:34:08 PM
Subject: Re: [xl7] list edit increment

Thanks a lot Aaron for your complete answer. It's incredible when you
have years using a device, and when you think you know it all, somebody
comes and teach you something new about it. I know that also some
comments from the users, can result on improvements for future products,
so that's my intention. 

Other points that I could mention: 

Append pattern. During the composition process, I use to duplicate
patterns, saving the same pattern on the following memory slot. Then, I
go to that pattern, and add variations to notes, make modifications,
add new melodies, etc, in order to create a second part of the original
pattern. It would be very useful, if you can take that pattern, and put
it at the end of the previous patttern. I don't how to call it, append
pattern or merge patterns, but this is not possible on the command
station. You have to use the copy track to clipboard function, track by
track, one by one, and that's tedious. Lots of synths that I've used,
specially workstations like the Yamaha Ex5, SY99, W7 and Motif, have
this feature. Not scential, but helpful.

Transponse track: how much I miss a more useful transponse function
when composing tracks!!!!. On the knobs (play mode), you have four
different functions for the 16 knobs. Adding a transpose function would
be so, so helpful when composing and playing on realtime. what I do to
replace this missing function, is to use the transponse hold button,
when you are playing live, sometimes tracks beg you for a inmediate pitch
change, in orden to create variations on harmonies. Also, when
composing, for example a 8 bar pattern, you will like to change the pitch of
the notes on a bass track on +2 or -3 transposve value, but it's not
possible, you can only select note range (-G2 to C8), but not measure
range. You have to go to edition screen, and change pitch note by note on
the desired range. Or copy that range, save it on a new pattern,
apply the transponse change command, copy it to clipboard, going to
previous pattern, erase range from 5 to 8, and then pasting the recently
edited segment...

A good implementation of this, are the crappy Roland Groovebox
series. You can store the same pattern on a 16 locations map (using the mini
16 notes keyboard to select patterns). You can store on the slots, the
same pattern but different transponse notes for each track. So, lots
of variations can be stored using the same pattern, without having to
create a new pattern with different pitches for each tracks. that's cool
and a good idea... 
This could be added on the EMU, without having to add new hardware,
on a screen like the mix screen, where you can see a simple graphic for
the volume and pan. honestly, that button was like new, I never use it,
so I opened the EMU,and used the switch circuit of the mix button, to
replace the broken one of the pattern select button, that died for
overusing it. 

Hope to be constructive on my comments. 

I admire the LINK feature on the patch edit function. These are the
features that I love on a synth. Haven't found something similar on
other devices. One of the features that strongly identify the EMU style.
These are the things that make you worth the money you paid for the
synth. Experimental, deep, something to look over for hours during
patch edition. Creates synergy. Resulting patches, are more than the
simple addition of their components. I have created so great patches using
the LINK function.... congrats for this feature....

Balma




Aaron Eppolito <synthesis77@...m> wrote:
Thanks for the feedback. It's always nice to hear that we hit
the target for people. I snipped some things out of your post to
answer:

----- Original Message ----
From: Mauricio Balma <balmaproducer@...>
To: xl7@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 12:12:12 PM
Subject: Re: [xl7] XL7, compared to...

> I just complaint about issues like: 

> Moving the curson on the edition mode, in order to advance from note
to note.
> Editing a big group of notes one by one is horrible tedious,
since you have
> only the cursor buttons to navigate throught them. 

Oooh, but you don't!!! Simply hold the Home/Enter button while turning
the encoder wheel! It'll increment you forward and back through notes,
leaving you on the same field. If you don't turn the encoder,
Home/Enter will take you to the title, so make sure to at least move one note
(and back if you didn't really want to move) so as to stay on velocity or
whatever.

> I like to add randomized values to my notes to give a human touch to
the track.
> I don’t like too accurate start times, so, if recorded
quantized, I go note by note
> to modify the start time of each one.
That’s very hard on the command station.

Wow, that's dedication. Note/List Edit were put in there as a last
resort if you really had to edit that sort of detail. It's not something I
try to use too often. When I do, it's usually to erase (or transpose)
that one bum note in a track. You can use it to do full editing, but
it's really just to hard to do computer style sequencing on a 2x24
character display!

> For example, you aren’t
able to hear a patch before overwriting it

I wish you didn't have to save presets at all and instead, they'd save
themselves with the pattern!

> you are not able to browse
by category when you are gonna save a patch
> (so, you could find faster
empty slots for saving patches)

Good point! I can't remember why we didn't put that in there, I'd
imagine it'd be easy, but I vaguely remember something like that the Save
Patch class and the Category Patch class depended on different base class
for some reason or something like that.

> But I want to let you know that I’m a big fan of your design. 
Have more than 20 synths,
> some of them wonderful machines like the Vsynth,
the Virus or the roland Jupiter, and
> command station are between my
favorintes, and one of the synths I’ll never sell.

Thanks again! I have a soft spot for them - every time I clean my
apartment and stumble across the development equipment, I wanna go add
features! Now if I could only fix my encoders in software...

-Aaron

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