Plug-in Reference

147
MIDI Effects
StepDesigner
Creating a Basic Pattern
1. Use the Pattern selector to choose which pattern to create.
Each StepDesigner can hold up to 200 different patterns.
2. Use the “Step size” setting to specify the resolution of the pattern.
In other words, this setting determines how long each step is. For example, if this is
set to 1/16, each step is a sixteenth note.
3. Specify the number of steps in the pattern with the “Number of steps” setting.
As you can see in the note display, the maximum number of steps is 32. For
example, setting “Step size” to 16 and “Number of steps” to 32 would create a
two bar pattern with sixteenth note steps.
4. Click in the note display to insert notes.
You can insert notes on any of the 32 steps, but the StepDesigner only plays back
the number of steps set with the Step size parameter.
• The display spans one octave (as indicated by the pitch list to the left). You can
scroll the displayed octave up or down by clicking in the pitch list and dragging up
or down.
This way you can insert notes at any pitch. Note that each step can contain one
note only – the StepDesigner is monophonic.
Click and drag
to view other
octaves.
• To remove a note from the pattern, click on it again.
5. On the Controller pop-up menu, select Velocity.
This pop-up menu determines what is shown in the lower controller display.
6. Adjust the velocity of the notes by dragging the velocity bars in the controller
display.
7. To make notes shorter, select “Gate” on the Controller pop-up menu and lower
the bars in the controller display.
When a bar is set to its maximum value (fully up), the corresponding note is the full
length of the step (as set with the Step size parameter).
8. To make notes longer, you can tie two notes together. This is done by inserting two
notes and clicking in the Tie column for the second note.
When two notes are tied, the second note is not triggered – the previous note is
lengthened instead. Also, the tied (second) note automatically gets the same pitch
as the first note. You can add more notes and tie them in the same way, creating
longer notes.
9. If you now start playback in your host application, the pattern plays as well,
sending out MIDI notes on the track’s MIDI output and channel (or, if you activated
the StepDesigner as a send effect, on the MIDI output and channel selected for
the send in the Inspector).