Analogue-sequencer

On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 20:56:23 -0000, "colinfraser_com"
<colin@colinfraser.com> wrote:

>Modifying Paul's idea slightly, what if the first 8 keys are for 
>selecting patterns, and keys 9 - 16 represent playlist steps.
>The labelling for PART could become PART/PLAYLIST STEP to make this 
>clear.

Certainly the labelling of this in production units would give newbies
a better starting point. Sounds good. You might even consider the term
"Pattern Sequence" instead of playlist. OK, too radical maybe. 

>One LED above the playlist step keys would be green to indicate the 
>current playlist position, the rest would be red to indicate the 
>length of the playlist if it were longer than one step.

What colour if one step?

>The playlist will always start on step 1 (key 9), and a bar of LEDs 
>will always show the length. The PLED display can lose the length 
>indication and be less cluttered.

Nice. Can some be amber? The look of a row of amber LEDs would make it
visually very obviously different from the other modes.

>The pattern on the current playlist step would be indicated by red 
>on one of the LEDs 1 to 8, and pressing one of the step keys 1 to 8 
>alone would select a new pattern for the current step.
>But if you hold one of the playlist step keys (9 - 16) the LEDs 
>above 1 - 8 will show the pattern on that playlist step, and the 
>keys will allow it to be edited.

And could you use hold at this point and keep this step running until
you released it? Could be useful. Could be very useful actually.

>To alter the length, you would hold the current softkey and press 
>the playlist step key for the last step.
>Transpose and repeat control would move to the knobs above the new 
>playlist step keys, but otherwise operate in the same way, as would 
>chg and hold. No need for adv when stopped though - all playlist 
>steps would be directly accessible.

Cool. I wonder if it's possible to have a "mute" option to mute a
playlist step's output but still have it last the same duration? Oops,
here I go again...

>This would leave the PAGE key free to somehow enable selection of 
>patterns 9 to 16 in 3 bank mode. Holding PAGE plus a playlist step 
>plus a pattern key seems a bit much, so maybe PAGE could toggle an 
>indication in the display showing whether 'upper' or 'lower' 
>patterns would be selected.

And maybe toggle the colour of the LEDs to show the patterns are in a
different range. Mind you, might not be worth the effort if nobody
actually uses this mode. Does anyone?

>I don't think this version would be any more space consuming than 
>the current implementation. When I get a chance, I'll implement it 
>as a test build and see what people think.

Well, I feel sorta bad for bringing all this up - it's not actually a
priority of mine even (my priorities are always knob-related, ask my
wife). But I started to think how I'd review it and how hard I
initially found playlists to get to grips with and reckoned it was
worth a look before a certain sharp SOS reviewer gets his hands on it
and his head round it...

Hopefully it'll help in the long run

Paul
---
Paul Nagle / Soft Room Music
Email: paul@softroom.co.uk www.softroom.co.uk
                           www.BogusFocus.com