How good would a master Drum track be that persisted regardless of what other Performances and Patterns were loaded in and out?

For that matter, just being able to change the Performance whilst the Pattern is running... that'd be a HUGE boon to productivity.

[quotePost id=115806]How good would a master Drum track be that persisted regardless of what other Performances and Patterns were loaded in and out?

For that matter, just being able to change the Performance whilst the Pattern is running... that'd be a HUGE boon to productivity.

[/quotePost]
Yup. So you might want to upvote the two ideascale suggestions I mentioned a few posts up!

Picking up from some of what I was talking about in my previous post, someone has made some packs that kind of turn Montage/MODX into an arranger, which you can see in this video. It's much more than what I'm asking about doing (I'm not looking for any kind of "auto accompaniment" other than the drums), but it does demonstrate both the ability to seamlessly change sounds over a drum beat and also to change the drum beat to an alternate variation (for a verse/chorus change for example), which are the two things I was talking about wanting to do. I believe he is using the left (scene) buttons only for changes to the backing, and the right buttons for changing the sounds he is manually playing with his right hand.

Since he's making extensive use of the hard buttons on the Montage, I wonder how practical this basic approach is on the MODX, with limitations that may arise from having only 4 scene buttons instead of 8, and from having to quickly select the sounds from the touchscreen rather than buttons. But using that general approach, I'm wondering if this would work, from within a single Performance:

...Use the 4 Scene buttons to do nothing but change between 4 rhythm patterns (say, Intro, Verse, Chorus, Ending).

...Dedicate one Part to the left hand bass sound, which would be played manually

...Have some bank of on-screen sounds that could be selected for the right hand sound as needed. Maybe this could only be a set of 6 available sounds, because they would be located in their own Parts, and we can't exceed 8 Parts (two being used up by the bass and drums, or maybe the drums don't take up one of the 8 "keyboard playable" Parts so we'd have 7). Or maybe we can leave it in "Performance Edit" mode and with, for example, bass in part 1 and drums in part 2, we can choose other (single part) sounds to bring in to Part 3 on the fly, and change sounds that way (from up to 16 on the screen at a time, perhaps ones that are already filtered by "star" or "favorite").

Is something like this feasible? Or is this a wild goose chase?

All that you see in that video is possible on the MODX - as is.

You'll just have to use the switch to the left of the Scene buttons to access the latter 4 Scenes, and back. And the Part Select Overlay on the touchscreen rather than the hard buttons. This Part Select Overlay hides under the button on the right, titled:

Part Select
Mute/Solo

This feature makes it far more accurate to activate/deactivate parts than using the standard view. It's a very ugly overlay. And sadly doesn't have an elements or carrier mode, but is the MODX equivalent to the array of buttons on the Montage.

So you won't have to do any other setup, those Performances will work as they are.

This is the approach my daughter uses when building her song segments. I think it's The Way of using the MODX/Montage.

It's also how I build complex arp setups that change a lot between scenes.

[quotePost id=115829]This Part Select Overlay hides under the button on the right, titled:

Part Select
Mute/Solo

This feature makes it far more accurate to activate/deactivate parts than using the standard view.
[/quotePost]
Thanks for reminding me about that. I used it a bit years ago... and then I completely forgot it was there! You're right about it being ugly, though. I always thought it was weird, since it overlays the 8-Parts of a Performance screen, that they didn't at least line up the 8 boxes of the overlay with the 8 Parts underneath, I always thought that was a little disorienting.

But bringing this back to the question at hand... Let's say I've got my LH bass sound in Part 1, the drums in Part 2, my RH piano sound in Part 3, and my RH organ sound in Part 4 (and assorted other RH sounds in the Parts above that). Even with the Part Overlay, I'm still not finding a way to keep the drums playing, keep my LH playing bass, and freely switch my RH sound from among the remaining Parts.

BTW (damn, no editing on this site!), ignore the part of my previous post where I said, "Or maybe we can leave it in 'Performance Edit' mode and with, for example, bass in part 1 and drums in part 2, we can choose other (single part) sounds to bring in to Part 3 on the fly..." etc. This was dealt with earlier in the thread, and it won't work. (Well, it kinda works, but it will occasionally glitch, which makes it unreliable and so unusable as a real-world performance solution, as described in the last paragraph of post #110326 and Bad Mister's response confirming the issue, "you can use Category Search while the drums are rolling, but I did not list that among the suggestions because recalling sounds while the drums play may not consistently happen without some minor hiccup/interruption in the play.")

(I posted before I was done, and can't edit, so just wrapping up the thought here...)

I think there might be a way to do it, because it is kind of a subset of what is being done in that pseudo-arranger video I mentioned... but I'm not seeing it. The main piece I'm missing, conceptually, is keeping a manual-played LH bass consistently available through the rhythm and right-hand sound changes. The arranger demo shows the rhythms changing and the RH sound changing, but the rhythm changes are tied to an accompaniment pattern, and I guess the question is whether such a thing is possible with a manually played LH bass sound instead of an algorithmically generated one.

[quotePost id=115831]
But bringing this back to the question at hand... Let's say I've got my LH bass sound in Part 1, the drums in Part 2, my RH piano sound in Part 3, and my RH organ sound in Part 4 (and assorted other RH sounds in the Parts above that). Even with the Part Overlay, I'm still not finding a way to keep the drums playing, keep my LH playing bass, and freely switch my RH sound from among the remaining Parts.
[/quotePost]

Scene switching?

I sometimes bring in Part(s) by pressing a piano key. The way I have to do this is by using level to squelch a Part (negative offset to level) or let it pass. The reason I do this is that I don't have time to press a scene button to make this change due to the timing and what both hands are doing. So I'll assign a single note to be the target note. And I make sure that only a certain scene "arms" this target note. Prior to the complex fast run where, at a certain note, I need to change sounds I do have time to "arm" this by setting the scene number prior to the run. This way my trigger note isn't going to change the sound unless I want it to.

Thus far I've only employed this to "on a dime" piano key bring in a single sound. And then later I switch off this sound using scenes to "disarm". The approach could be extended to have multiple trigger notes that each bring in a different sound.

I've explained this before and I can do it again - but it sounds clunky and involved. So rather than go through that again, I would say I would do this in a more straight forward fashion if I could record control arpeggios. If I could record a user arpeggio with CC (or Sysex) then I would record scene change CCs (or Sysex) and handle this process in fewer steps. Not having this I use envelope follower instead.

The benefit, for me, of using piano keys is that I can choose where the "buttons" are that I hit and choose piano keys that are in proximity to where my musical notes are at the moment I need to make the change.

This is also part of why I've wished previously that a next-gen instrument would have more scene buttons and located for access of both left and right hand. 24 scene buttons for left, middle, and right ("all the way" across - may be different amount of coverage between -6, -7, -8) would be good. I was imagining the scene buttons would have more possibilities of parameters offset as well as count and physical placement for making choices on usage based on proximity to the hands. Not having to move the hands much and tapping up while holding notes in the right hand would be great although just reducing the travel (and not this close) would be an improvement.

However, until then, you can select sounds in more ways than XA (assign buttons), scenes, mute, keyboard control, superknob, assignable knobs, or sliders. The other way I referenced (but didn't walk through) isn't polyphony friendly due to using levels. However, I was limited in what I could do using note triggers. And, as I experimentally found out, increasing the key-on delay doesn't save polyphony although this seems like a "perfect" way to do this since element key-on delay can be huge (in terms of time). Unfortunately a note that hasn't started yet and is waiting on its delay still consumes polyphony for some oddball reason. Or I would use this trick to approximate keyboard control in an "on demand" way with much more control.

I believe all wishes implied have received ideascale items.

I'm not adding more gear to my rig because I deal with what's there fine without needing to go to additional external pedals, ipad, etc. My wish is focused on next gen (not concerned about current gen) because of how much I leverage scene buttons - more of them in a variety of locations (left/right hands) would be used more than most other buttons during live play.

[quotePost id=115833]Scene switching?[/quotePost]Good question. 😉 Maybe... if someone can tell me how...

[quotePost id=115835]I sometimes bring in Part(s) by pressing a piano key...The reason I do this is that I don't have time to press a scene button to make this change due to the timing and what both hands are doing. [/quotePost]Interesting approach. But it's nothing I'd need to do (unless it's somehow the only way I can do what I've requested, i.e. keep automatic drums and manual LH bass playing, while I swap among RH sounds). Time isn't the issue. I'll always have time for my right hand to hit a scene button, or to hit an on-screen button. The on-screen targets may be too small on the screen with 16 columns across, but most on-screen button sizes are fine (i.e. the sizes of the ones on Live Set screens, Category Search screens, or the Part Select Overlay we were just talking about, are all okay). So I don't need to repurpose keys to function as sound select button just to be able to get to them more quickly/easily. But if there's a way to use that trick to do what I'm asking about (keep automatic drums and manual LH bass playing, while I swap among RH sounds), I'd check into it further.

Secondarily, I've realized, there is a potential issue concerning knowing what control (physical button, on-screen button, or even key as you mentioned) will invoke which sound or function. I could choose to program the 4 Scene buttons to always be the same on any of my drum programs (e.g. buttons 1-4 are always Intro, Verse, Chorus, End), so I could remember those (or even print out labels, since those assignments would remain constant). But if, for example, the Part Select overlay were to be the mechanism by which to choose from among the possible RH sounds (which would change from one Performance to another), names--somewhere on the screen--would be more useful than numbers. (At best, it looks like maybe I could see the sound categories somewhere, but not the actual sound names.)

Of course, that concern may be moot if there's no way to do what I'm asking about in the first place. As discussed earlier in the thread, I know it is more of an "arranger" feature, at least from Yamaha's perspective, even though I don't want any auto-accompaniment beyond the drum part. But seeing that video where someone coaxed all kinds of arranger capabilities out of a Montage, and realizing that what I was asking for was--at least conceptually--something even simpler (no accompaniment other than the drums), I thought maybe someone would have figured out a way to do this. It was the fact that the Fantom-0 can do this that prompted me to take another look at whether there was any way to do this on a MODX, since I prefer a lot of the Yamaha sounds, plus I already own the MODX. 😉

I was thinking if you wanted to use the scene buttons for arpeggio variations like the video shows then an option would be piano keys, Assign 1+2, superknob, sliders, mod wheel, assignable knobs, or foot controller to bring in different RH sounds.

The piano key idea I didn't spell out will "burn" a Part 1-8 which acts as your "on off" message. Or, as I worked out yesterday, a 5-state selector where I used the lowest "F", "G", "A", "B", "C" white keys and each provided a different envelope follower value that could be "detected" by standard curves to turn on/off (by level squelching) sounds.

"C" (the highest key) yields a nearest-to-0 envelope value and the lowest "F" key is the closest-to-127 envelope value. With each of the other white keys between (and, to some degree the black keys) having different envelope values.

I started using FM-X key level scaling. One finding was that some keys use the same level no matter how drastic the curve is. "G" and "A" are always at the same level no matter where I put the crossover point (note) and no matter how I set the curve (linear, exp, and associated values). Therefore, to help nudge the level I used the filter scale (by key) and attenuate the fundamental frequency by essentially EQ'ing by key. This probably alone is enough to get the envelope to do what I want with more precision but I combine this with the amplitude scaling by key. This is how I have keys "F" through "C" provide different output levels (drastically different) and then use envelope follower as a way to detect which key was last pressed.

There's more to it - but that's the high level without some other gory details.

[quotePost id=115847][quotePost id=115833]Scene switching?[/quotePost]Good question. 😉 Maybe... if someone can tell me how...[/quotePost]

Set Keyboard Control stored in correct/desired ON/OFF state in differing Scenes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPV-qGkUywE

This do it?

I'm maybe underthinking your problem, but from what I understand, this is the ideal way to do it, and despite being a recent addition to what Scenes can/can't store, I think this is The Way to do this.

To my mind, it's stunning that Keyboard Control state had to be added to Scenes in an update, after the MODX came out, so Montage didn't have it until then, either.

Mind you, still can't save effects presets, and folks were asking for that in the first weeks of the Montage's life.

[quotePost id=115848]I was thinking if you wanted to use the scene buttons for arpeggio variations like the video shows then an option would be piano keys, Assign 1+2, superknob, sliders, mod wheel, assignable knobs, or foot controller to bring in different RH sounds.[/quotePost]
Or on-screen buttons. I have no aversion to using them, as long as they are not too small.

[quotePost id=115848]The piano key idea I didn't spell out will "burn" a Part 1-8 which acts as your "on off" message. Or, as I worked out yesterday, a 5-state selector where I used the lowest "F", "G", "A", "B", "C" white keys and each provided a different envelope follower value that could be "detected" by standard curves to turn on/off (by level squelching) sounds.[/quotePost]
I can't use the lowest keys, because my MODX is the 76, and I need to play down to the lowest E for LH bass. In theory, I would not necessarily be averse to using the top 7 keys (everything above the highest C) for sound changes... except for the fear of hitting them accidentally while playing!

Just to be clear, are you saying I could use the envelope follow function and the top 7 keys to switch among 7 RH sounds that would play above the LH bass split point? That's really interesting. Though the setup required sounds like it's above my pay grade... and the fear of accidentally hitting one of those keys while playing is real. But the idea is kind of fascinating, even if it's not something I'll pursue.

Whoops... As I'm typing, I'm realizing it can't support 7 "RH sounds" on 7 keys... because there are only 8 Parts available total, and as you said, this approach burns a part, and the LH bass takes up a part, so the max would be 6 (I'm assuming the drum track, not being a "keyboard playable" part, doesn't need to take up one if the first 8). I think this crosses below the threshold of what makes sense for my intended usage anyway, which I'll get back to below.

[quotePost id=115849]Set Keyboard Control stored in correct/desired ON/OFF state in differing Scenes.[/quotePost]
I think Scenes looks like it could be a viable way to give me a limited version of my original starting point for this thread... I think it would let me keep the drums going while giving me 8 "LH bass plus Some RH sound" options to select on the fly. I had originally been hoping to choose any sound I wanted at any time, but the closest Bad Mister got me was 15, which isn't bad... I decided I could live with that (post #110346) except then I realized I also wanted to keep LH bass going, and that's where it seemed to fall apart. So yes, the Scene approach looks like the way to do it, though now I'd down to 8 possible RH sounds. (This assumes that I can keep the drums going seamlessly through the Scene changes, which I'd need to confirm.)

But here's where I've made it even trickier, with my more recent revisiting of the topic... Instead of a single drum beat that plays through the whole song from beginning to end, ideally, I'd like to be able to alter the drum pattern (e.g. for intro, verse, chorus, and ending), and the Scene buttons seem to be the only way to do that. If I'm using the Scene buttons to change drum patterns without changing sounds, those Scene buttons aren't available to change sounds without changing drum patterns. Maybe the Scene feature has enough flexibility that I could, for example, use Scenes 1-4 just to change drum patterns without changing any sounds, while using Scenes 5-8 just to change RH sounds (while it continues to play whatever drum pattern I last had playing)? That would be cool, but now we're down to only 4 possible RH sounds.

To spare you having to read the thread from the start... My original thought was, the band has dozens of songs that can use the same drum beat, and where I would draw from the same set of commonly used "bread and butter" sounds, so I was hoping to have a single Performance I could use for a lot of different songs, just by changing the tempo, and picking different RH sounds as I needed them. "Pick at sound at will" would be ideal. "Pick from a set of 15" would be workable. "Pick from a set of 8" starts getting really limiting. "Pick from a set of 4" and we're firmly into the "separate Performance for (nearly) every song" territory I was originally trying to avoid. But if I give up on the idea of changing up the drum patterns during the song, so at least I maintain 8, that could probably handle a decent number of songs. (This also shows why Jason's use-the-keys approach becomes more of an issue, since that reduces the 8 to 6, I believe, as I mentioned above.)

Again, I know I'm asking for things that are more typically asked of an arranger, at least in the Yamaha world. It was that video that showed how the Montage could be cleverly programed to behave more like an arranger that made me think maybe there would be some way to do what I was after after all. And we've gotten closer with some of these ideas. But in the end, I think it remains not quite the right tool for the job.

If Part 1 is Bass and you can live with an "8Z" style drum kit then you could have bass and drums on the same Part. Because you wouldn't be using an arpeggio for the bass. You'd locate the drum keys below or above your highest note and have your sort order as through so you can directly play the bass part while the arp is running targeting the off-keyboard drum split.

... and you'd end up with something more like a 7 or 6 piece drum kit so you have the elements you need for bass.

That's one way to get a Part back. I think not without a lot of work to realize your drumbeat likely possibly having no stock ones to pull from that are both 8Z and compatible with notes being at a different range.

Splitting a Part into instruments "A" and "B" using assignable switches gives you more instruments to select than Parts. Selection isn't as easy as just hitting a single button due to having to select both Part and assignable switches for these.

You only have so many buttons and if you use scenes for changing the arpeggio then you're stealing from RH sound selection.

So maybe you do have scenes 1-4 for arpeggio selection and scenes 5-8 for RH Part selection and use [ASSIGN 1] to select between instrument "A" and "B". So scene 5 with [ASSIGN 1] off is one instrument. Scene 5 with [ASSIGN 1] on is another and so on. You'd have to tap (up to) two buttons to keep the instrument straight and you'd have more of a burden to keep that straight. But you may have hardly used instruments with [ASSIGN 1] on vs off - so you'd pretty much know what those are vs. the primary instruments using [ASSIGN 1] off.

The piano key selection can be anywhere. That part I burn I note range limit the Part to only the keys used in the Part selection. When I've used this before I actually have a trigger key within the line I play (16th note run - top of the run) so the note doesn't consume any space on the keyboard. It's a trigger note that is also used to play actual notes. So it's not a "keep away" for actual notes. For an array of "presets" (like a popular tonewheel organ) - they'd probably use as "keep away" notes dedicated for Part selection.

But theoretically, you could have

Part1 = Bass + 7Z Drums
Part2 = RH Instrument A, B
Part3 = RH Instrument A, B
Part4 = RH Instrument A, B
Part5 = RH Instrument A, B
Parts 6,7 = open for maybe using two 2-Part instruments or 1 3-Part instrument
... or, if you were going to "pack" Parts 2-5 then you could use one of these Parts for a normal drum Part and not bother with "7Z"
Part8 = Burn Part (if using that method)

... just in case someone else was wondering about how the half-for-arp and half-for-Part selection would work: this is where we see the value in turning ON/OFF scene memory. The 4 ARP changing scene buttons would only have the ARP category "on" so pressing these buttons would leave alone your Part selection and vice-versa for the Part selecting scene buttons.

While I did say that I don't need switching to be so fast that it would be worth using keys rather than the scene buttons or (adequately sized) on-screen buttons, I think two-button sequences would be the proverbial bridge too far... I would want switching to be done with a single button press rather than a sequence of two, both for speed, and to eliminate some possible in-the-moment confusion. Combine that with the (relatively) small number of selectable options, and the fact that the buttons are not labeled with what sounds they will call up in a given performance, and that's just too far from my goal, even if it weren't a ton of work to assemble, which it sounds like it would be. But I have to give you points for really interesting ideas! In the end, though, I'm not sufficiently committed to doing this on the MODX to put that much effort into it to achieve what is still a pretty compromised result.