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This is great, thanks so much for adding this in and supporting user requests.
Hi Mike,
I’m not aware of a function by which you can specifically tie or ‘link’ steps in the Zaquencer but there’s a few things you can do to achieve the effect you’re after.
My favourite is making judicious use of the clock divider function (pg 15 in the manual) which will let you change the length of any step relative to the BPM in equal increments for a whole track.
You could, for example, have a 32 step sequence where each step will be equal to one bar or a 32 step sequence where each step will be equal to a 32nd note.
Remember that the clock divider is set per track so you could have completely different clock dividers running on all four tracks that are locked to the same BPM. This is particularly useful if you’ve got a chord sequence on one track and drums on another track.
As you can set step lengths from four bars down to 96th notes (unless I’m remembering the manual incorrectly), you’ve got quite a bit of flexibility if you plan out your clock divider settings.
If you’re after very long step lengths but want to have as many steps per pattern as you can, you could set the clock divider to 1, set all the step lengths to four bars and mute every three steps after the first step per group of four steps (On Off Off Off, On Off Off Off, etc).
Have a play around with the clock divider with a sequence programmed in and hopefully that will make sense.
Nah, you don’t need to have Thru on the devices to make this work. Each device just needs to have a MIDI In. I have mine wired up as follows:
BCR 2000
MIDI OUT A
|
V
Midi Solutions Quadra Thru
| | | |
V V V V
In A In B In C In D-
This reply was modified 8 years, 9 months ago by rempesm. Reason: Bah, formatting got completely thrown but you get the idea I hope
I don’t know if the gear you’ve quoted above have MIDI Thru on them, but you could chain them together. You might find is there could be a little bit of a delay in timing for the final instrument in the chain.
The best thing to do, or at least what I opted for, was to get a MIDI thrubox as you’ve suggested. There’s lots of different brands available but I picked up a MIDI Solutions Quadra Thru which is powered by MIDI so it saves you the hassle of finding space on your power strip.
Going for this solution also gives you the option to route the second MIDI out to another Zaquencer or other gear for MIDI clock without sending any MIDI notes to it.
All together now: YES, THANK YOU!
Just need the ability to choose basic intervals from the Chord setting, e.g. major/minor 3rds, 5ths, etc., and this will firmware will be perfect (for what I get up to, anyway).
Although I’m sure there will be plenty of cool updates to come after this (wink wink), anything else would be pure gravy on top.
Thanks for continuing to develop this great sequencer, Christian.
While it’s not set up exactly as you mentioned above, there is a way to do this by having one track that is at a lower clock division than the track you want to repeat.
For example, if you have track one set at 32 Clock Division and then track two on the same pattern set at 1 Clock Division, the pattern within track one will repeat 32 times before moving onto the next one. As you might imagine, a variety of combinations between the different Clock Divisions and total number of steps you have active allows for a good range of desired repeats for a given pattern. The main point to remember is that the track with the lowest Clock Division will dictate how many times the pattern will run.
Obviously this isn’t as flexible as what you’ve suggested; however, if you’ve got a dummy track or one track that conveniently works with a lower Clock Division, it will at least give you the functionality of pattern repeats in a chain.
Hi Fernando,
It’s really worth having a play around with the Clock Divider. It really opens up some interesting rhythmic possibilities on the Zaquencer.
From my understanding of it, the Clock Divider determines how its respective track interprets the MIDI clock and it either divides down or multiplies up the rate at which that track moves to the next step. I’m sure there’s a technically more precise way to put it but that’s how it seems to work for me.
For example, if you set one track’s Clock Divider to ’1′, then each step is equal to one whole note which will indeed give you 32 bars of mute if all steps are active. Conversely, if you set that track’s Clock Divider to ’32′, you would only have one whole note for all 32 steps as each step is equal to a 32nd note.
If you wanted the whole pattern to have less bars, you could either change the Clock Divider value to another value, e.g. ’2′ for 16 bars with each step equaling a half note, ’4′ for 8 bars with each step equaling a quarter note, etc., or simply use the Skip Step function to cut out the steps you don’t want.
I would say it is vital to get familiar with the Clock Divider and Skip Step functions as well if you are interested in doing anything fancier than 4/4 time signatures.
Having a global parameter for that sounds like the perfect way to deal with it, Zaq.
I use the Zaquencer in both fashions, i.e. for putting together a track and for live jamming. For the former, I want to be able to have mutes ‘pre-programmed’ into the patterns as I’m sequencing everything up. When I’m just messing about, it would be much more intuitive to not have to worry about mutes on the Zaquencer when I’m chaining together patterns on the fly. I’d rather just fuss about with channel faders / mutes on my mixer in that scenario.
Fernando, to hopefully answer your query about grid intervals longer than four bars, you may want to have another look at the way the Clock Divider works in conjunction with tracks on different clock rates.
You could, for example set the Clock Divider on to ’1′ on your ‘mute’ track and that would essentially give you 32 bars of a mute. If your other tracks are on higher clock rates, e.g. ’16′ or ’32′, they will play through and just loop until the track with the lowest clock rate reaches the end of its sequence.
Of course, you would need to have patterns chained up for this to be of any real use but I think this sounds like what you are after.
Wonderful, I’m glad it wasn’t just me.
Looking forward to the next update!
Hi Zaq,
Thanks for the response.
No problem, I appreciate there’s some biggies to sort out at the moment (Sysex dumps and the like come to mind) but I was just curious if this was possible to implement. Pleased to hear it doesn’t sound too daunting of a task.
Look forward to hearing any updates on it.
Nice jam, really started getting into it after the 4:30 mark.
Do you have any thoughts on this, Zaq?
I appreciate you’ve been flooded with various requests and the software is for all intents and purposes complete but do you think the firmware has any possibility of supporting this in the future?
I just really think users would get more mileage out of the Chord function if it supported these basic intervals.
That would absolutely make the Zaquencer over the top awesome.
Put that in combination with some MIDI compatible FX pedals and come out swinging.
Don’t know how feasible this is in terms of limited memory but fully seconded.
Have a look in the .zip file you downloaded with the demo. There should be a folder in there titled ‘Overlay’. There are .pdfs with the overlay that you can print out from there. Have your hobby knife and double sided tape at the ready!
Time for another read through of the manual I think and not late at night when my brain isn’t functioning! Cheers.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 9 months ago by