Drum matrix weirdness

[Syntho]

When I click with my cursor to get the playhead at a certain measure, it will only go to beat 4 and some odd ticks. I can't ever get it to move right on the start of a measure, like measure 5 beat 1 with 0 ticks. When I activate the Graphic view in the drum matrix though it works fine.

[Syntho]

Also, does anyone notice that when you want to move a midi note, it won't actually move if you run the move command unless you click "Events" or "Note Events"? This is with Exact mode on. The little dropdown at the top of the Move box has the word Events with a little space on the left on it. After selecting it, it moves back to the left a bit and it moves the notes fine. Weird. Also, sometimes the Move command will only drag a note halfway from what I dragged it. Not sure why this is happening!

[Syntho]

While I wait for someone to chime in here's something else I noticed.

I'm not an audio user of SVP. I'm midi only. But today I wanted tp check out its audio capabilities. Loop recording isn't possible at all with audio, right?

When in overdub mode I noticed that it keeps to one track only and seems to record multiple audio files. Are all of those played back at the same time and summed in the background? Hmm.

[GaryN]

When I click with my cursor to get the playhead at a certain measure, it will only go to beat 4 and some odd ticks. I can't ever get it to move right on the start of a measure, like measure 5 beat 1 with 0 ticks. When I activate the Graphic view in the drum matrix though it works fine.

Well. I tried and tried but I could not duplicate this problem. With cursor quantization on, it's impossible to "land" anywhere other that on the increments set. With quantization off, the cursor will land anywhere you click it - not repeatedly in a "4 beats & change" position. This seems to be true even if you crank up the play offsets and/or everything else incorrectly.

Also, does anyone notice that when you want to move a midi note, it won't actually move if you run the move command unless you click "Events" or "Note Events"? This is with Exact mode on. The little dropdown at the top of the Move box has the word Events with a little space on the left on it. After selecting it, it moves back to the left a bit and it moves the notes fine. Weird. Also, sometimes the Move command will only drag a note halfway from what I dragged it. Not sure why this is happening!

The Events menu moving thing is true. Might be a bug or more likely it's just the way Exact mode works. You may be using Exact mode unnecessarily. With both Cursor and Display quantization adjustable all the way down to 64th notes, you really shouldn't have to use the Move command in exacting amounts very much at all - It's more intended for precise moves in SMPTE Time and such.

While I wait for someone to chime in here's something else I noticed.

I'm not an audio user of SVP. I'm midi only. But today I wanted tp check out its audio capabilities. Loop recording isn't possible at all with audio, right?

When in overdub mode I noticed that it keeps to one track only and seems to record multiple audio files. Are all of those played back at the same time and summed in the background? Hmm.

Loop recording, as in "Loop the same bar(s) over and over and record audio, switching to a new track each time the bar(s) repeat and then play them all back leaving me the ability to remove or edit any "take" afterward then merge them all together"?

Short answer: No.
Long answer: No, that's a limitation of the Acadia audio engine. Maybe something like that would have happened by SVP6…

[Syntho]

Well. I tried and tried but I could not duplicate this problem. With cursor quantization on, it's impossible to "land" anywhere other that on the increments set. With quantization off, the cursor will land anywhere you click it - not repeatedly in a "4 beats & change" position. This seems to be true even if you crank up the play offsets and/or everything else incorrectly.

Weird. The counter will never land on an even beat (always goes to 420 ticks/units). When I select a portion to edit, the edit indicators go from 1:4:420 to 2:4:420 for example (when trying to select measure 2 to 3). I actually just noticed that which amount of ticks it lands on depends on how far zoomed in I am. The grid size and the cursor quantization have nothing to do with it either. As soon as I switch over to the graphic view within the drum matrix, the problem is fixed. I just trashed SVP's preferences and that didn't help either.

It seems to do this only when I'm in the drum matrix editing a drum track, with the little drum icon ticked on the sequence window for it, and when I've got Display set to Matrix instead of graphic in the drum editing window.

[Syntho]

I've been using SVP extensively these past few weeks and I'm still having the troubles posted above. Another thing that's happening is that I'm getting the resource/CPU monitor popping up with an exclamation point like there's no CPU left for SVP to keep playing. Weird.

Is anyone else getting any of what I posted? I'm thinking of formatting my Mac again but I'm getting some of these same behaviors or my G4 laptop too, at least the thing about time selection in the drum matrix.

[Syntho]

The top photo is when the Matrix is activated. I'm selecting between measures 3 and 4. You can see it's off by a bit. Look at where the edit indicators are placed, as well as the in and out points to the upper left a bi. 2:4:240 to 3:4:240. The bottom photo is when I have the graphic view activated in the matrix and it selects everything fine as you can see. This happens when I select a portion to edit using the ruler.

[GaryN]

I'll go back in today or tomorrow and keep looking. I've still never seen or heard of this before. However, I've never been a "Matrix" user.
Are you using 4.5 or 4.2? Could be in one and not the other. I'm unable to duplicate it in 4.5

[Syntho]

How do you program your drum tracks if you don't use the matrix? It's a very nifty tool. I'm using 4.5

[GaryN]

How do you program your drum tracks if you don't use the matrix? It's a very nifty tool. I'm using 4.5

I have a full electronic drumkit. I play the tracks into an Alesis DM5 or D4 or both drum modules.  With SVP and Galaxy, I get to completely define the drumkit drum by drum. Recording real drums is the single biggest pain in the ass in a small studio. This way, I end up with "real" drum tracks without needing a big room to set up 5 or 10 mics, spend 2 hours repairing and tuning the drums, another 2 getting them to sound right and on and on. Instead, I get clean, quiet multi-tracked 16/44.1 samples.
Since I'm not a full-time drummer, I drop a few clams here and there - just how many I'll never tell…
I can then go and fix them in the graphic window just like you would fix a keyboard track.
Since my "thing" is more of a jazz-blues genre, this is almost mandatory to get the drums to sound "real", not mechanical.

The matrix IS a nifty tool. I have used it a number of times on stuff where a more-EDM feel was called for and even some country (!)
You know actually, by setting the "magic brush" and cursor quantization and durations et al you can get a very similar effect to the Matrix in the Graphic window.
This is just one of the great things about SVP as opposed to many others. You get to work your way, whatever it may be, instead of someone else's.

[Syntho]

Hey, have you double checked my issue in the drum matrix? The thing about dragging and highlighting/selecting a measure in the ruler and having it go to just before or after the actual part that I selected. I'd be really surprised if other people don't get this because it's doing it on all of my systems. Remeber, this only happens in the drum matrix with Matrix selected instead of Graphic.

[GaryN]

Hey, have you double checked my issue in the drum matrix? The thing about dragging and highlighting/selecting a measure in the ruler and having it go to just before or after the actual part that I selected. I'd be really surprised if other people don't get this because it's doing it on all of my systems. Remeber, this only happens in the drum matrix with Matrix selected instead of Graphic.

Yes I did - just now - now that you reminded me…
Yes. It does exactly what you say in Matrix Mode.
So…I did the difficult research procedure: I looked it up.

From the SVP MIDI OM Pg.226 "Matrix Display Mode"

"The Matrix Display Mode is optimized to provide an evenly spaced grid for inserting and deleting notes.
In this mode, inserted notes are seen as small squares centered cleanly within each grid space. Although note durations are not displayed, and note start times are not always clearly represented, Matrix mode provides a good environment for building and editing rhythms and patterns."

Although this doesn't directly address the cursor inexactitude (I can't believe I got to use that word!) it does hint that they kinda expect you to just pop notes on & off, and drag them around in the grid. If you grab a note or notes and drag, they DO land accurately. The next paragraph in the manual points out that the Graphic Window gives a 100% accurate representation of everything if you need it to be that way.

The point is; regardless of the display, you select some notes, move them and they go there.
So it's supposedly a feature and not a bug.

[Syntho]

Gary: Something I always ignored were the note names in Vision. Now I actually want to use them. The problem is that after typing the note names for drum samples into either the 'Default' patch area, or into the normal specific patch area in the Names window, I only get three "..." when I click into the patch names list in the pulse edit window. When it knows I typed something into that particular note name number, it shows three ... but otherwise it's blank. But funnily, the name shows up properly after selecting three ... like it should. I've fooled with this for an hour and it's still giving me crap.

PS: In regards to the last few posts, being able to click on an exact time to paste drum hits you've copied is what I wanted to do. I'm not sure what the benefit is of having that inexactitude as you mentioned. Hmm... guess it'll always be a mystery.

[GaryN]

PS: In regards to the last few posts, being able to click on an exact time to paste drum hits you've copied is what I wanted to do. I'm not sure what the benefit is of having that inexactitude as you mentioned. Hmm... guess it'll always be a mystery.

This is what you get when you use a DAW that was chopped off at the knees in the middle of its evolution. Everybody develops their own preferred workflow and good software developers do their best to accommodate that. There are ways to drop / paste copied notes at an exact point in a sequence in SVP. There is the "exact" box that enebles you to specify where all the way down to a 480th. You can open the drum track in the Graphic Window where you can be as precise as you want. You can even have the track open in both the Matrix and Graphic windows simultaneously and click in whichever one you like.! Try that in Performer or whatever! As I said, given an ongoing business, they would have continued to tweak the operation as needed to respond to the user base comments.

Gary: Something I always ignored were the note names in Vision. Now I actually want to use them. The problem is that after typing the note names for drum samples into either the 'Default' patch area, or into the normal specific patch area in the Names window, I only get three "..." when I click into the patch names list in the pulse edit window. When it knows I typed something into that particular note name number, it shows three ... but otherwise it's blank. But funnily, the name shows up properly after selecting three ... like it should. I've fooled with this for an hour and it's still giving me crap.

It's not giving you crap - you need to dig into the process - you're going at it wrong. You need to create and then subscribe to a Notes Names Document. This is either created from scratch or pulled from (subscribed to) Galaxy. Note names are different from Patch Names. They can be altered at will. You're using a D4. It came with the drum sounds arranged in an arbitrary way decided by a long-lost soul at Roland. Many units stay that way forever, but many get changed over time - especially if the triggers are being used. Folks rearrange them to their liking so they're NOT set in stone. So, you create a Note Names Document. You can make one covering the basic drum sounds from scratch easily (unless you just have to have ALL of the sounds across the entire 4 or 5 octaves listed). Note however, they change if you change the patch. the drums are basically the same (mostly) but they need different names just like different synth patches would.

The best way to do all of this is to use Galaxy. Then you can just have your D4 dump all of that into a Galaxy Patch bundle, have SVP subscribe to it and it's all good. You WILL have to create some Note Names Docs yourself, 'cause they don't exist for the reasons described above.

This is waay more than I can instruct you to do in a post. Welcome to the learning curve. This is the basic path:
Windows > Names
Click: D4 / Patch Name Doc column
   Nothing there? You'll have to make one
   Got it? Open Patch Name window… click Notes column next to active patch - that opens Note Names window
Scroll to note, type in drum name. Repeat over as many notes as needed.
Store docs in Opcode folder.
In patch name window, next to D4, subscribe to Names doc you created.

Wasn't that easy? If/when you get that far, holler back and I'll give you a tip how to make them all pop up in a new sequence.

[Syntho]

I was actually editing a patch name document that I already subscribed to. I also tried creating a new one (from within Vision) and was subscribed to that, but the behavior above is what happens. Let me go try this one more time, this time from Galaxy...

All of them pop up in a new sequence? Do tell.

[Syntho]

I created one in Galaxy, then edited the note names in Vision but it still gives me the same issue. Just some '...' by the ones I entered note names to. Your instructions were what I did originally, and just now as well. There's gotta be something wrong here. Is there a way to edit the note names in Galaxy? I saw the sample names listed in there already for the D4, like the Big O kick and so on.

[GaryN]

Yo, Syntho…

I've attached two files here. One is a D4 Galaxy Bundle. It's the default patches and key assigns as came when new.
The other is an SVP sequence named "Start 2". The seq contains a track for the D4 with note names showing. You want to keep this seq as your Start seq. Use it anytime you start a new project.

Put the Galaxy Bundle in the same folder as your other D4 stuff. The D4 patch window and Notes are subscribed to the Galaxy bundle, so the drum names should come up. You may have to open the Patch names window, click the Note names column next to D4 and subscribe to it - I don't know because I've never tried to "transfer" this setup like this before.

It's likely you'll need to experiment a little to get everything integrated into your Studio setup - just keep the originals separate and play with copies in case it goes wrong.

Note (lol) that the drums are in the same order as the notes they're assigned to. You can and you should rearrange them into whatever order works for you by dragging the dots to the left of the manes in the column with the vertical arrows. Personally, I keep the kick on the bottom, then the snare, the toms then cymbals so like things are grouped together. You can add additional drums or change names by typing directly into the Names window.

Again, I gotta stress I've never tried this - odds are that something is gonna get weird and need to be figured out but hopefully it shouldn't be too bad and be well worth it for you.

[Syntho]

With your files, the note names show up in the tracks list once selected, but again it doesn't show up when you click that field to select the note. It has a bunch of '...' for every custom note name.

I think I'm just continually finding little bugs here and there that Opcode never fixed. I tried selecting another drum module and entering custom note names but it's the same thing: it shows up once selected on the left side as usual, but when you're actually looking in the list of drum notes after click-holding in the note field popup, it's just '...' for everything. Or maybe it's not supposed to show up there in the first place?

[Syntho]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwfX0k-fqK0 - a little into the video the guy uses an SC-88. The note names window works fine in the video. I added an SC-88 to OMS and tried it in SVP but it still gives me the same '...'  I also trashed the preferences of SVP but that didn't help either. EDIT: And booted up another Mac using System 7 and I get the same thing. SOMETHING is going on here...

[Syntho]

Surely someone else on this forum uses SVP and can test the Note Name issue?

I just dug out my old SV DSP 4.2 CD to see if it gives me the same problem with the "..." next to each note name I type in. Unfortunately my CD got cracked somehow. Maybe there's an image of it floating around somewhere. But regardless, I've tried SVP 4.5 on System 7, OS8, and two different computers, and it does the same thing across all of them.