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[BUG] How do you make a repeating, 16-step long note in a single 16-step clip?
feijai
Washington, DCPosts: 43
To make a 14-step long note, press the head of the note, and while holding it down, press the tail 14 steps further.
To make a 15-step long note, press the head of the note, and while holding it down, press the tail 15 steps further.
To make a 16-step long note, press the head of the note, and while holding it down, press the tail 16 steps further? Nope. This is for some reason the procedure for creating a drone note, which is terribly inconsistent. I can't find any way, in an N-long repeating clip, to create a note that is N long. Is there some secret procedure? Other than a workaround by literally duplicating the entire clip to make it twice as long, a grotesquely ugly hack.
Post edited by feijai on
Answers
after 16-step long note, zoom in as far as you prefer then scroll to the end of the sequence and delete a pad. that way the smallest amount 'dead air' is achieved. alternatively, if you want to do this faster, extend clip length by 1 beat. scroll back to the first 16 step view, create your 16-step long note. now scroll to the next page that only has a beat. you can zoom in all the way from this view, and only need to scroll back once to remove end pad. shorted clip length by that beat and your done. hope those two workarounds help.
I appreciate the workarounds, but surely you must agree that this is nuts. Is there literally no way to make a 16-step-long note in a looping 16-step-long sequence? This can only be described as a bug.
drone note accessibility was deliberately chosen to be more accessible in this case. in reality the issue the trade-off causes probably only affects a small minority of people, generally for synths clips you would only need a perfect 16th hold for the most driest/non-reverbed/no delay/no release time sounds and even then there are multiple workarounds luckily. id rather have the option for drone notes than none personally. there are always gonna be compromises on a all-in-one groovebox when compared to a fully featured DAW.
What? 16-step rhythmic samples designed to start and end exactly on the bar are very, very common. For example, a third of the default samples on my Microsampler are like this: and none of them can be played via MIDI on the Deluge. Similarly, many synthesizers have arpeggiator patterns or rhythmic wave sequences designed to last exactly one bar, and none of them can be played by the deluge without hacks. Looking at my rack, I have four synths in this category. I think this was a major mistake.
Why do you think this is either/or? This is entirely a GUI consistency error, for which there were many simple solutions. For example, rather than click on the beginning, then the final pad for a drone, you could hold the first pad and while holding it press mute -- you know, one pad beyond the final pad. That seems fitting. Or press SHIFT-final-pad. As it stands the Deluge has a crazy hole in its ability to define notes.
Why not make the clip 32 steps and just make two 16 step notes?
Could be a solution but it is bad solution, when you are live performing and you want to switch clips after 16 bars.
I would love to have a feature, where you e.g. define the long note by pressing start and end, holding start and pressing end again where the end pad then turns e.g. white to show that this is no drone note.
Odo Sendaidokai from Berlin
generally i was thinking in terms of use-case in the box. when using midi i guess it's a different story. but when you're in the box only, if you are only using a clip for 16beat clip length with a note spanning those 16 beats and you don't want it to drone, especially if they're samples...you should be using audio clips. they're made for looping.
I don't disagree that there are more workarounds to this problem when using in-the-box sounds, but for me the big use case of the Deluge is as a sequencer for external gear.
At any rate, it's still pretty astonishing that, rather than find a simple interface option for making a drone note (I still like left pad - mute), Sythstrom chose to eliminate a feature of their own machine, and a not unused one at that, and replace it with the drone note. Who breaks their own device to add a feature when doing so is utterly unnecessary? :-(
With the new higher resolution, one can make the note virtually indistinguishable from 16 steps.
@feijai I agree completely. I understand that a decision was made to bias the UX of creating clip-length notes towards people who are creating drones, but it feels inconsistent and confusing to me. When I first observed this behavior, I thought it was a bug, because when you create multiple adjacent same-pitch notes in a clip, multiple notes are played, yet this behavior is not consistent for clip-length notes.
I appreciate all the effort Synthstrom has made to create Deluge, but I feel that inconsistent behaviors like this should be revisited and made more consistent. There are certainly ways to solve this problem that result in more consistent behavior.
Initiating necromancy!
Drone notes are great. But it causes so many other side effects. Like trying to set a sample in a kit for a buildup transition the length of the clip. Currently really bugging me. Hopefully there is eventually an alternate firmware that makes a drone note shortcut something else, like, first note plus audition or something.
The current workaround isn't too bad, I just hold shift and turn <> right one step and then back left and that un-dronifies it.
there's an unfortunate tone of ingratitude creeping into this thread. the drone note function IS more useful for some users, & this was a logical way to implement it.
a 16 step note that retriggers every 16 steps is BY DEFINITION slightly shorter than 16 steps. so the logical way to create one in your pattern is to make a 15 step note & extend it, either with the sequencer or with the release time.
characterising this as a 'problem' or the machine as 'broken' does nothing to get things changed or win sympathy to your position. it is a feature of the UI that many find useful, it is NOT 'broken'.