Analogue-sequencer

List's been quiet for a while so I thought I'd tell you about
something I discovered that is cool

I recently incorporated my Sherman Filterbank into my live setup
(processing the Vermona PerFourmer to give me a little more variety
from its smooth Moog tones). The Sherman has an odd MIDI
implementation but the P3 is really well suited to doing stuff
flexibly and, with a bit of lateral thinking, I soon found a way to
accomplish what I wanted. I thought it might serve as an example that
you might enjoy - if not, delete me!

To explain further - the Sherman's envelopes are designed to be
triggered via audio signals. However, this function can be overriden
by sending it a couple of (specific) MIDI notes. The envelopes may
then be triggered by sending it two different MIDI notes each time you
want each of them to fire. 

So to sequence the Sherman's envelopes at the same time as the track
for which I am generating notes to be processed, I need to do the
following:

* Create a track for the Sherman with all its notes set to F4. (this
triggers the Sherman's ADSR)
* Create an Aux note for every note pitched at A4 (abs) to trigger the
AR.
* Set X to ON for every note to prevent transposes switching off the
note triggering by accident.
* Set all the gates to OFF.

What's this you say? It won't play!
Well, now you must set another Aux event to grab all Gates from the
track playing the synth (the one passing through the Sherman). Voila -
when the synth plays, the Sherman plays. Nice tight envelopes, even if
with a slow attack from the synth - something not possible with audio
triggering.

So far I've used two auxes (abs note and gate grab). I have two left
that I can use to either tinker with the MIDI controllable parameters
OR I could automatically switch off the audio triggering. 
Remember I mentioned that this required a couple of MIDI notes to be
sent initially to tell the Sherman to expect MIDI-only triggering?
Well, I could have a couple of steps of another Aux send these out as
abs notes then I could turn them off manually. Or I could do something
clever using the fact that Aux D has an accumulator. 

Now supposing this accumulator could be told to reach a certain limit
and then stay at that limit? We could make sure the first time it
played it sent our notes and that subsequent passes would place the
notes way out of range and stay there, playing no further part. There
are other ways of doing this too - but that's just food for thought.

Actually I'd probably be quite happy doing it manually just once each
power up and using the auxes for groovy filter tweaks. I only
mentioned this option because it's an example of just how flexible
this little beast is.

Tell me if I should shut up or if you like this kinda stuff.. 8-)

Paul
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Paul Nagle - SoftRoom Music - www.softroom.co.uk
          Bogus Focus Records - www.BogusFocus.com