Getting my head around Patterns in JJosXL 3.02

I've been getting really confused from reading the manual about just how to use the new Pattern Bank feature...I'm hoping to use this new feature as a kind of Ableton clip mode for live sets. Is this the right idea for things? How many patterns can I be running at a time? I would like to set it up in vertical rows of 4 top to bottom.

Row

1. Kick patterns
2. Other Drum patterns
3. Sample loops
4. Midi patterns/loops to my hardware modular synthesizer.


Can someone walk me through it? Just the MPC set up for the Pattern Bank(I've been just getting confused from the manual!)

Thanks

this feature was just released. we are all still trying to figure it out! check back here and other threads as im sure others will eventually get things worked out.

and of course, if you figure stuff out too, don't be afraid to share!

peace

I don't think you are the only one confused about the new features in the 3.0 version. The features are so new that feed back has to be given to make it even more useful. Without feedback from music producers the software wont be as intuitive.

I designed a program that became so much better when someone in the industry used it and gave me feedback.

The biggest cause of confusion is the way a song can be made from start to finish. I have my way, you have your way and the programmer gives us several ways of doing it our way. I will do my good deed for the day by giving him some feedback.

As for Ableton: I never used it.... but for the most part if you press MODE/PAD 15 then F1/Loop edit then Play (you can just press a pad to to make a pattern) then turn the wheel to inject a pattern right away. You can also press the view (F3) for more options. You have 99 pattern options.

The programmer is usually swift when it come to well need sprucing up of features. So stay tuned.

I think the last post is confused between the already existing pattern view, and the new pattern registration idea. There isn't any link between them afaik.

My issue with the new patterns (possibly not helped since I have no ableton knowlege) is that it is another idea just added by JJ without much help in explaining its purpose. OK, there is the manual, but that just gives the technical idea - not any indication of what use I can gain from it. And the accompanying Youtube video is typically un-musical. 10 minutes of duff drum patterns over and over isn't giving me a feel.

Can anyone advise - is this feature designed for purely live use? Just on drum progs? Useful for sequencing external gear? I am just not sufficiently excited by this release to experiment. A previous poster asked for people to share patterns - I can understand why people were reluctant to contribute, but I can also understand that he perhaps didn't know where to start with creating ones which would be useful.

This looks like another JJ idea which will be left largely untouched. Like who out there actually uses Looper, Arp, Audio Tracks etc etc?? How many non-MPC users out there are going to switch for any of these features?!

I agree that this is very confusing.....looking forward to user feedback for some help!!

rarara wrote:I think the last post is confused between the already existing pattern view, and the new pattern registration idea. There isn't any link between them afaik.

My issue with the new patterns (possibly not helped since I have no ableton knowlege) is that it is another idea just added by JJ without much help in explaining its purpose. OK, there is the manual, but that just gives the technical idea - not any indication of what use I can gain from it. And the accompanying Youtube video is typically un-musical. 10 minutes of duff drum patterns over and over isn't giving me a feel.

Can anyone advise - is this feature designed for purely live use? Just on drum progs? Useful for sequencing external gear? I am just not sufficiently excited by this release to experiment. A previous poster asked for people to share patterns - I can understand why people were reluctant to contribute, but I can also understand that he perhaps didn't know where to start with creating ones which would be useful.

This looks like another JJ idea which will be left largely untouched. Like who out there actually uses Looper, Arp, Audio Tracks etc etc?? How many non-MPC users out there are going to switch for any of these features?!

I agree with the pattern to pad confusion, but I use audio tracks all the time to layer synth tracks and Kay down basslines.

I totally agree about some features. But we have to look at it like this.... these new features are just more options to get out ideas,tools. it maybe something that you don't use everyday but when that situation comes your so glad you have it. As far as flat out option's, in my opinion we have one of the best hardware sequencer's in jjosxl.

With these new options you can have drum fills always on hand to use in any track. as well as synth riffs,be it internal or midi,all with different loop points. i havnt tried it with audio tracks but if it works you can chop up audio directly in the track. Think of all the sequence variations you can do using patterns. Look at the editing feature's in grid mode & the main screen. The ability to add chords & arps & to edit each note visually. As well as draw automation of midi cc's on any track. Edit duration,velocity,fx sends,pan,modulation,volume & see the notes on a time line,all one one screen?....& without a computer!? sick!

It can be a bit over whelming but the possibilities are crazy with the stuff he's doing. If you ever tried to sequence on a keyboard from the 80's & 90's,you feel what im saying. To me it even has better options than the fantom-x that i traded, for the 2500!
& im never going back.
Love'n it.Peace.

in this same top page of the forum, there is a post from mikelo showing how he used the BUTTON mode to implement a much requested "round robin" feature. i would never have even thought of using button mode for this, yet he did it. really well, in fact, also he's the best drummer i've seen on the MPC1000 - better than i am by several measures.

just an example of how an unassuming feature can come back months later and solidify as irreplaceable.
give it time.

maybe pattern to pad, then use the pad mixer for live variations?

It isn't like Ableton Live, or Fruity, there's only 1 layer. It's just a bucket, to fill with clips, which you extract from your drum/midi tracks. Then you get 1 pattern track to sequence them, and that's it.

It's a clipboard, for making it easier to jumble things around. Instead of having to copy/paste bars in a track, you can extract them in batch to your pattern bank, then experiment with them in different orders, sequence them, and drop them back into your sequence on a single track.

You only get 1 track. If you have a pattern of kick rhythms, that's it. You can't layer more on top, there's only 1 pattern track layer. You can have it play along with your sequence, and do the rest on there in tracks. Or, you can export the pattern track sequence out onto a drum track.

This makes it handy for certain things. It replaces sampling the output for some things. Before if you made a little beat on a track using a drumkit program, and wanted to make it a single phrase, you'd have to sample the output, and then assign that .wav to a pad.

This is like that, but you sample MIDI internally. You sample a bar in a track directly, and can assign that to a pad if you want, which lets you do things you couldn't with sampling the output. With your beat .wav on a pad, all you can do is trigger it. With the pattern phrases on a pad, you can trigger it, but it's the original MIDI data, so you can edit it later.

It's another little tool, like the arp, chords, and old patterns. I view it like a virtual MPC, that allows you to sample your track, internally to the virtual MPC. But it's a whole other MPC, inside your MPC, which means it's not integrated in the same way, and is limited.

Instead of mode->program, using the pad, you've got, mode, and a function button up top crammed in there. It's a hack, and only has 1 track, but you can sample MIDI. That turns out to be useful. Instead of copying/pasting bars, you have the alternative workflow of extracting those bars to phrases, which allows more freedom.

You can't easily jump around in the timeline, there's no markers. These pattern phrases are kind of like markers, where you can trigger bars from your track, and order them into a sequence, which can then be dumped back out onto a track. Nothing majorly new, just extra tools to make things easier.

I hope this helps you understand better. I think a lot of the problem is how they worded it. Things don't feel intuitive, because the words don't align to what we'd expect, so it throws us off. Also, there's some bugs, and "assign" is spelled "assigne".

It's not what people wanted, to make it like Fruity or Ableton, but, it's useful, and brings the MPC closer to the power we expect from PC software.

thanks Jamon - helps clear some things up. do you think it could be the first step to something more evolved?

still so many other features i'd rather have seen first though........

It depends on the technical limitations. It's useful, just kind of not what people would expect.

Like in Ableton Live!, you can set little loops to begin playing at the next bar, and they all work together, right? Well, there's something similar with the new phrases, when you're in the main screen, and they're assigned to pads. If you hit a pad, it starts a phrase, which loops or plays once, depending on that pad setting.

You could put kick patterns on row 1, snares on row 2, etc. Then you should be able to hit a kick pad, them come in with a snare from row 2, hit the currently playing kick while hitting a new kick at the same time, and it switches into a new variation. That's like how track mutes work, except instead of muting and unmuting, you're triggering and untriggering phrases.

That almost works, except it doesn't "wait for next bar" to begin playing, and there's no quantization of start time. If you have good timing, you can use it for performing live, and arranging like you would in Fruity. But instead of filling out a grid, it doesn't save grid marks, it saves the MIDI data from the phrases you trigger.

If you hit record in a regular drum track, with patterns assigned to pads, you can hit a kick phrase, and it will loop, and that data is recorded to the drum track as if you were playing it. Then you can hit a snare pad, and that is looped on top, also merging the data onto the track. It's useful, just in different ways.

From there, you should be able to quantize, to fix if your timing was off slightly in triggering them, since it's just normal MIDI data on the track. You can also edit it like normal. But the thing is, it doesn't feel right. If you have layers that are supposed to align, and your timing isn't robotic, then it sounds a little off, and you can't do fun things with the pads like fills and retriggers for neat effects, so it kind of doesn't feel right for performing a composition in realtime.

The NEXT screen has fills, which can be fun, and "wait for next bar", which keeps the timing tight, but, you can only having 1 phrase going at a time, and you can't seem to be able to record it. So, it feels different for performance, but it's also not quite right, because it's so limited. It might be good for using the MPC as a live drum machine, since you can have a beat going, then hit a pad to have it get ready to go to another, but that's not that much different than the NEXT SEQUENCE mode.

rarara wrote:thanks Jamon - helps clear some things up.

Yeah thanks for breakin it down, it sounds useful but not really a feature I'd use too much but it's cool to have it available. But this is why I haven't updated to v3.0 yet, something that I wouldn't use so until the bugs get sorted out I'm just working on v2.30, no point to update when there's more bug updates to come and I'm not using the new feature anyway. The os is moving in the right direction though. If this new feature leads to adding something like the patter chain mode in FL (a grid where you can arrange your patterns to create your songs, it's a very quick and visual way to arrange and is not limited to just 2 simultaneous patters; it looks similar to grid edit) it would be dope; both features together would make a sick combo.

rarara wrote: still so many other features i'd rather have seen first though........

I agree with you there, this was a pretty big update, it's been out for 3-4 days now and everyone's been pretty quiet about it and trying to figure it out. Meanwhile, mikolo dropped the bomb in another thread with a workaround for the round robin feature that a lot of people had requested in the past and the thread immediately started receiving replies on how dope the workaround is, and that's just a workaround. I think there are still a lot of simple but useful features that can still be added to the os.

It's all good though, JJ aint done yet! He'll be hitting us with more features soon like he always does, I'm just not sure this one was worth the month-long wait.

Jamon wrote:It isn't like Ableton Live, or Fruity, there's only 1 layer. It's just a bucket, to fill with clips, which you extract from your drum/midi tracks. Then you get 1 pattern track to sequence them, and that's it.

It's a clipboard, for making it easier to jumble things around. Instead of having to copy/paste bars in a track, you can extract them in batch to your pattern bank, then experiment with them in different orders, sequence them, and drop them back into your sequence on a single track..........


I hope this helps you understand better. I think a lot of the problem is how they worded it. Things don't feel intuitive, because the words don't align to what we'd expect, so it throws us off. Also, there's some bugs, and "assign" is spelled "assigne".

It all makes sense now. Thanks Jamon for the explanation.

Hey Jamon and MPC forum users! Let me run my ideal way of producing on the MPC to maximize speed and efficiency; tell me if you like it and what is your's.

I really like simultaneous sequences. One sequence is for percussion and the other for melody. I use sequences as two track pattern banks. After I make a sample melody I can scroll through my rhythm sequences.

The problem comes in when it's time to do the arranging. SS doesn't work in song mode. Also, deleting a kick here and a snare and sound there is a pain .

Solving this problem is the Holy grail of MPC production. I think it may go like this.
-Simultaneous Sequence merge. Merge Mode/Pad 13
-Actual Mute of Pad without pressing it: Mode pad 7 then F5 twice.

That's it!! The funny thing about it is these features are already part of the MPC. A little tweaking is all that is needed.

As for music production the JJos will be complete.

This is a customer suggestion also.

I like simultaneous sequence too, but it's too limited. I was hoping the pattern mode addition was going to be a grid of simultaneous sequences.

The sequences would be the patterns. You could make sequences of drum beats, some melodies, one for vocal hook, then go into your sequence song grid, and play them with pads, or mark them out with the cursor. Then you hit play, and it plays your whole song as programmed. Now if you want to tweak something, just go into the sequence, and change it, and then go back to the song mode to hear it all together.

Instead, the song mode last I checked was just stringing together sequences. The new pattern sequencer is like that too. Although you can create patterns like that, and record them into a sequence, it isn't quite the same, because it ends up as a bunch of marks on a track. With separate sequences, it's more powerful, and keeps each part in its own container. Then you can go back and edit it easily.