Radias sequencer: turning steps on and off

[cibine]

Hi all,

I am a new radias user and have been enjoying this amazing synth for few months now. I ve mostly been synthesing sounds and recently I ve started using the step sequencer a bit more, but it seems I ve just found an annoying limitation on the radias (or maybe not?)

From what I see in the step sequencer menu after I record a sequence I can select which note/ drum part is visible on the 16 keys on step sequencer. I press edit-> menu> p15 step seq and set the 16 keys to: trigger. Then I can use the dial to choose and edit the steps for each note /drum part.

The question is, is there an "on the fly" edit option for this? I mean is there a more immediate way to select the recorded notes, so you can just press lets say a note on the keyboard and then see and edit the recorded steps for it (if there are any) and so on?

I am mostly interested in drum sequencing and since you are able to record midi out notes from the Arp - SSeq, it would be nice to be able to change drum steps on the fly, this is something i really enjoyed when I owned the electribes (ea and er-1).

Any ideas?

Thanks

[X-Trade]

The Radias really isn't very pattern friendly. I would have liked to see the patterns separate and selected (referenced) possibly so you can step through them live, but in general they haven't made the step sequencers very live-friendly at all.

I don't know if it applies to that field, but for example when you are editing keyzones you can hold down the EDIT/YES button with the right field highlighted and press the key you want for that field. Perhaps you can do that for the select field in the step sequencer?

[cibine]

Hi X-trade,

I tried out what you suggested and it does work but only in the step page of the Step seq menu. If you highlight a note and then press edit and a note on the keyboard it will assign the note you pressed for that note entry. Not what i wanted but still, this looks handy.

I thought maybe it would be possible externally via sysex but it seems that the dial and the particular entry doesn't produce any sysex messages. (It would be nice to even tap a pad on the pad kontrol and select the seq through there!)... ooo well

[X-Trade]

I thought maybe it would be possible externally via sysex but it seems that the dial and the particular entry doesn't produce any sysex messages. (It would be nice to even tap a pad on the pad kontrol and select the seq through there!)... ooo well

Kind of makes sense as the selection field isn't really changing any parameter is it - It's just changing which steps you are editing - a UI field only.


One thing I am looking into is being able to dump the sequencer pattern via SYSEX. The idea is for example if you have something where a certain button can transmit a SYSEX packet, you could change the sequencer pattern on the fly to a number of preset 'scenes' or patterns whilst playing. If anyone has any tips that would be handy - I can't find a way to simply dump just the parameters for the step sequencer. I didn't really 'get' the packet format described in the MIDI Implementation Guide either.


One thing I did notice is you can see what messages are being transmitted in the activity window in the editor. I know still not very useful for your situation but all valid observations. I don't think what you want specifically can be done, but there are other interesting workarounds for live pattern editing/switching.

[cibine]

Well first of all I am pretty new when it comes to sysex, but after looking into it does offer access to "hidden" or inaccesible features which is great .
I have a drehbank and via sysex and midiox I was able to access all the insert and mfx controls from the drehbank which is pretty sweet.

Ok, from what I see so far the step seq menu both in the trigger and step page gives out a sysex msg for all the note and step on/off, velocity and gate entries (all exept what I wanted!!!!:).

Anyway, I had a look in what u suggested and it looks quite possible. I actually just did it from bome's send sx with a very simple pattern.
I have been using a bit of midi-ox and bome's send sx to view, edit the incoming/outgoing sysex.

The problem I am having so far is that after reading through the sysex data, after doing a program dump the code seems a bit different. It seems that the starting F0 and the ending F7 Hex's occur only once and contain all the strings in between. This makes it a bit difficult to distinguish between the differrent commands. So I haven't been able to filter out all the unwanted data and extract the hex code that just refers to the patterns - steps.

Anyhow, i made one single timbre prog with a drum kit and a 4/4 kick drum sequence and dumped the prog. I copied the code to a text editor and then went back to the pattern and altered it slightly. I dumped this program again and copied the incoming code to another text.

I send the 1st hex seq to an initial timbre and that almost immediately changed the settings according to my initial drum kit program with the sequence. After I pressed a key, the sequence starts playing and then after transmitting the second dump back in ( with the 2nd sequence) the pattern changes. The problem though is that the radias stops playing now, so i need to retrigger the note to get the sequence to play again.

Maybe this is happening because I am transmitting data that have to do with altering the whole timbre, since I am sending back in the whole prog sysex and not just the pattern data....!

edit: I tested this with just sending a cuttoff change with sysex whilst the radias seq was playing and the sequence didnt stop. so I think we are on the right track here.

Any ideas on all these? by the way X-trade, are you using any sysex editors or viewers?


.....I guess we could just use midi and ableton or something and get over with it but somehow, i m starting to feel affection towards hexadecimal's after this o_O)