I’ve been holding out on updating to v3 but due to 2.15 being really solid. I’m getting more curious about 3 though! I haven’t really wrapped my head around the A/B/C/D layers of sequences though. If a switch from A to B, does that then switch all sequences, similar to tiggering a scene in Ableton Lives session view? Could it be viewed as an alternative to song sections? Or is it independent per sequence in some way?
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its independent per sequence. nothing like ableton scenes.Comment
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Allright! Seems so convuluted to shift many then? I struggle a bit to see how it works in practice and I haven’t really found any videos or detailef descriptions of how it works. The prospect of more sequences is one of the reason I consider updating but not being able to actually get a good odea of how it works holds me from experimenting.
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Played a live set with the new firmware at the weekend. ABCD switching was very useful for changing sequence content/length during each track (intro, verse etc). Songe mode is now very elegant and can handle everything I need it to. A perfect box now.
To summarise, there are 4 different sequences addressable by each pad rather than just 1 so instead of 16 sequences, you have 16x4=64.Comment
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But say I’m switching four sequences at the same time, out of which two I’m switching from A to B and the other two I’m simply turning of to start two other. Do I need to do select the once going from A to B individually and change or could all of this be easily manouvered in some way?
I guess I just have to download and try but I don’t really have the time to learn a lot of new things atm and as far as I’ve understood this update is not as kind to old presets as previous updates have been?Comment
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So think of it like this, there are 16 sequences. These can sequences pads, play a pad chromatically, or control external devices with midi. Those 16 sequences each can have 4 variations - A B C D. The 16 sequences can be run at the same time. They can only however run a single of the four variations. So you might actually have 64 different sequences, but only 16 can be active at the same time.
How I use it is to add variation to a sequence. So let's say I have one sequence that is controlling my synthesizer. I have a pattern which is playing. I can copy that, paste into sequence B (or C or D), make some changes to it. Then I can on the fly change from A to B, having the synthesizer play the different pattern. This was doable in the past, but you had to use one of the 16 primary sequences, which meant you had less sequences available for other tasks. -
As to your question of how the UI actually works when wanting to switch to variations on sequences, here's my best description.
On the sequence page, you rotate the bottom right encoder until the A, B, C, & D buttons are showing on the right panel.
All sequences begin on A. You start however many you want by touching them. When you want to change one to a B or other variation, rotate the upper right encoder until that square is highlighted pink and then press one of the other letter buttons. The one it is currently set to will be highlighted. If you wanted to change several sequences at the same time from A to B, you'd need to be fast enough rotating the knob to set each of them individually before the step quantization causes the pattern to restart.
If there are too many to change manually like that fast enough, you can easily set it up in song mode, as the right grid of song mode lets you set both the sequence and the variation letter you want to play for that song part. -
Thanks byrdinbbylon, that’ts exactly the kind of info I wanted and it sounds kind of what I expected. With the improved song mode I can see it make a lot of sense. I’m more intrigued now than ever to try.
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Sorry, I don't understand your question. Previously there were 16 sequences, 1 per pad in the 4x4 grid. Now there are 4 per pad in the grid which you can select either manually in sequence mode or automatically within a song. If the bottom left pad is allocated to triggering a kick drum for example, you now have 4 different sequences for that.Comment
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Yeah this all makes sense, thanks a lot! I think I just need to try it out to really get how it can fit in my workflow. I tend to switch multiple sequences simultaneously and don’t really see how the layers could facilitate that without trying or seeing a more comprehensive video of it in action.Comment
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Weird follow up perhaps, but could anyone share a preset.xml file from one of their projects using multiple layers of a sequence pad? I’m curious how much has changed in the presets
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I have some very good news for you: Blackbox 3.0 has scenes now too!. It's part of song mode and it works very much like you describe. I'm not an Ableton user, but I can tell you that creating and touching a scene in Blackbox switches a bunch of sequences or sequence patterns (called layers during the beta period) at once. It's superb.
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Upgraded and i think I can work with this, looks really nice!
Noticed a weird thing though. Opened a project made in 2.1.5 with multiple miditracks (midi assigned to sequences, not to pads) and they seem to aggregate over each row, also with other sequences in the row. So an example:
- In the bottom row to the left I have a sequence chromatically playing a pad. This is fine.
- In the next sequence I have a midi only sequence. In 2.1.5 this works just fine. In 3.0.9, however, this includes the correct sequence but also all steps from the previous sequence.
- In the next sequence all correct steps are there but also all from the previous sequence so not it has all steps from the previous two sequences.
I guess this is some kind of bug and in reality I don't know how many will be affected by it. I can probably work around it by editing the xml file but it's a bit weird.Comment
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3.0.9 here, & away from sequencing for a moment- is anyone else finding the LFO modulation depth a bit up-one-end?
if I send LFO to pitch, to make my nice 12-string mutisamples warble nicely, I find I am only able to add a couple of % of depth before I'm in "you're doing something wrong" territory, & backing off the depth on the LFO page doesn't seem to make any difference.
what I'd expect is for the LFO's own depth control to be a sort of master LFO level, like a mod wheel almost, & the destinations each receive a percentage of that depending on their own individual depths.
so you might set up the pitch with a tiny amount, the filter with a tiny amount, the volume with a tiny amount & the pan with a big old handful (this is all to simulate a leslie effect), then use midi controllers for the master LFO depth & speed.
what have I missed?Comment
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I'm convinced now that the way the mod matrix works in the BB is counter-intuitive.
it seems it's not multiplying the two mod values together & dividing by 100 to get proper scaling, it seems rather to be adding them & then attenuating the result back to 100% max.(with three sources, you'd multiply them all together & divide by 10,000)
so if your values were 50 on the CC & 50 internally, you'd get 2500/100 = 25, which is what you'd expect. what I'm seeing is more like 50 + 50 = 100 then divided by 2 back to 50.
try adding an LFO to the filter or pitch... see what I mean? I was trying to build a leslie simulation with it- nightmare!
& setting up crossfades with a single midi CC controlling the levels of two pads gives you a huge dead-band because you can't achieve a log/antilog relationship between the one that's a positive percentage of the mod value & the one that's negative. being able to balance their relative CC'd levels with proper scaling against the actual midi volume would help.Comment
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I keep getting save error when I try to save a project on 3.0.9. Anyone else have this problem?Comment
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3.0.7 bug?
If in KEYS sequence only C4 notes are used, sequence cell resets to PADS mode and becomes empty on re-entry, while still triggering notes that were entered before.
Going back to KEYS mode after reset happened, removes ghost notes and leaves an empty sequence.
(i know that C4 is default pitch for samples without root note metadata, and that i can use PADS mode to do what i want. Im just bringing it to your attention.)Comment
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More Patterns please ! 4 Patterns per Pad is simply not enough to create even a simple song when using all pads as instruments, should be increased to 16 or at least 8 or if everything fails 6 per Pattern to make it useable. As said before we were able to sequence every Pad/Instrument from a single pattern before this update which means we could have 16 different Patterns per Pad per Project.
Also Mono Legato is desperately needed here
Thanks for your hard work!
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I just updated to the 3.0.7 but now all my midi sequences are messed up. Looks like they've have stappled. From left to right pads: 1. bassline, 2. that bassline with chords 3. that bassline with those chords with the arp etc. They we're all seperate and now they're all together and I have to adjust them 1 by one.
Another question. What was the last update with USB midi out? I really liked that, but it seems that from 1.9 until 3.0.7. there is no USB midi out anymore.Comment
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