A lil' trick for recording automations while in song mode

I've never heard about this, I discovered it by myself so I thought that perhaps it should be useful for some others.
I've tried to search into this forum but I didn't find anything similar. Sorry if I missed it...

It's possible to record automations when you're in song mode: you Just have to stay on the song mode screen, in order to do that on my live ll I use 'shift+step seq' to enable automations recording, now If the parameters you want to automate are attributed to some project q-links, you can tweak them in song mode, and recording works fine.

Obviously, the problem is that automations are recorded in the sequences, so to make variations along a song you have to copy sequences...

But to my mind it's not a huge price to pay to keep confortable in grid navigation.
And that's the very reason why I find this trick interesting, some may think it's better to simply convert song to one big sequence, but I personally find painfull to navigate into sequences bigger than 32 bars...This trick allows to keep short sequences and so, comfortable grid navigation for possible further fixes.

But I know that this especially makes sense for who want to stay in standalone mode...

Maoxiung wrote:I've never heard about this, I discovered it by myself so I thought that perhaps it should be useful for some others.
I've tried to search into this forum but I didn't find anything similar. Sorry if I missed it...

It's possible to record automations when you're in song mode: you Just have to stay on the song mode screen, in order to do that on my live ll I use 'shift+step seq' to enable automations recording, now If the parameters you want to automate are attributed to some project q-links, you can tweak them in song mode, and recording works fine.

Obviously, the problem is that automations are recorded in the sequences, so to make variations along a song you have to copy sequences...

But to my mind it's not a huge price to pay to keep confortable in grid navigation.
And that's the very reason why I find this trick interesting, some may think it's better to simply convert song to one big sequence, but I personally find painfull to navigate into sequences bigger than 32 bars...This trick allows to keep short sequences and so, comfortable grid navigation for possible further fixes.

But I know that this especially makes sense for who want to stay in standalone mode...

Have you tried convering the song to a sequence after automation? If so, does it retain the changes made?

I'm genuinely interested
.

As said

Maoxiung wrote:automations are recorded in the sequences

so if you export song to a new sequence it will be done as usual and all sequences will be merged in one.
Nonetheless I don't see the need of this huge sequence, when this trick is precisely useful to get rid of that...
What is your idea?

Maoxiung wrote:As said

Maoxiung wrote:Nonetheless I don't see the need of this huge sequence, when this trick is precisely made to get rid of that...
What is your idea?

There are other reasons for converting a song to a sequence, for example to have a single audio track run across the entire length of the song, to have the ability to export track stems, etc.

But yes, the MPC isn't really set up for dealing with really long sequences, it's clunky. Locate points help, but these are limited to 6 points and labelling not possible.

But audio mixdown is available directly from the song mode...
Also, if by track stems you mean separated tracks for a further mix work, you can separate programs in the mix down options.
Do I miss something?

You cannot create track stems from song mode. Program stems are not the same thing, as you can use the same program over multiple tracks, each serving a different sound (especially with kits which can feature a mix of drums, loops and instrument sounds).

Or if you want to have separate stems for your drum sounds, they are likely to be from the same drum program. In those cases how would you produce separate snare, kick, hi hat stems? I guess you could split the kit over multiple programs, but I’d say that’s more clunky than dealing with a long sequence.

Ultimately there’s no right or wrong as you just work within your preferred workflow.

but if your workflow requires track stems or you need to record audio tracks across the entire song (rather than confined to individual small sequences), or have a drone running through the entire song (or across multiple sequences) then you’ll usually need to work with a single sequence.

Maoxiung wrote:But audio mixdown is available directly from the song mode...
Also, if by track stems you mean separated tracks for a further mix work, you can separate programs in the mix down options.
Do I miss something?

Ok thanx a lot for this explanation, I was sure to miss something...
I don't use stems as I try to work exclusively in standalone, but I'm aware that my mixing skill is very basic and that I should enter this work in itself one of this days, then I'm pretty sure I will need to switch on a computer for a complete job, (if I believe what I read from so much users).
Meanwhile I'm just trying to have fun with just this device : )