Arranger

Module ID seq.arranger · Category Utility

A five-section song, playing its Build. Each section is a block as wide as its bars, and each lane's level runs under them as an orange line, with a green strip wherever its gate is high. The ticks on the Crash lane are Hits. The white line is the playhead.

The Arranger is a song's timeline. It holds up to 32 named sections, each some bars long and played ×1 to ×16 times, in order, and eight lanes of automation that the sections move. A lane can ride a part's fader, pick a drum pattern, open a filter over a build or press a Looper's button, and each section says what it does when the section starts: hold, jump, ramp or hit.

It counts bars from a Clock, like the sequencers, so the song stays in step with everything else the Clock drives. Press ▶ Play and it starts from the first section.

Inputs

Outputs

Triggers last half a step.

Parameters

The sections, their names, lengths and repeats, the lanes' names and glides, and every section's cue for every lane are edited on the timeline, and patches save them. So is Width. The jacks keep their rows at every width, and so do the lanes beside them.

Writing a song

The song runs left to right across the node. Each section is a block as wide as its share of the bars, though a short one keeps enough room to click. The blocks sit beside the song's own jacks: Section, Trig, Bar, Last and End. Each lane is drawn on the two rows its CV and Gate jacks hang from, so a lane reads straight across into its cables.

A lane is named for what its cable drives (a Mixer's Level 2, say) until you give it a name. The bar count at the top left shows where the song is, and the section playing is lit green, with its name in the header too.

• Click a section to pick it. The bar under the timeline shows it.
• Double-click a section to rename it. Press Enter to keep the name, or Escape to leave it.
• Drag a lane up or down inside a section to set the level that section takes it to. A section that held the lane now jumps it.
• Shift-drag a lane inside a section to set where its ramp starts. Any other cue becomes a ramp from there to its level, or for a Hold, to where the lane was.
• Right-click a lane inside a section for how it gets there (see Cues), its level, and a ramp's length, curve and start.
• Double-click a lane's name to rename it. Right-click it to set its Glide, or to clear it.
• Right-click a section for its length and repeats, to add, copy, move or delete it, and to split or merge its copies.

The bar under the timeline does the same for the section you picked. ◀ and ▶ step through the sections. The bars field sets its length, and the × field how many times it plays. + adds a blank section after it, and Copy adds a copy. ◀ Move and Move ▶ swap it with its neighbours, and Delete takes it out. Loop to follows the section it named when sections move.

A section's final bar is shaded, since that's where a fill goes. A repeated section has one shaded on each pass. Every edit is one step of undo, named for what it did ("Groove · Pad jumps to 48%").

Name…, at the left of the bar under the lanes' names, names the Arranger itself. The name shows in its header beside the section playing, and an Arranger that follows this one calls it by its name.

A name too long for its block is cut short with "…". Hover the block and the whole name shows on a tag just above it. Pick the section and the bar under the timeline shows it in full too.

Zooming in

A long song packs its short sections tight: in a 128-bar song a one-bar fill is a sliver. Zoom the timeline rather than the whole canvas:

• Ctrl+scroll over the timeline (or pinch, on a trackpad) zooms it about the pointer, in as far as two bars across.
• Scroll over the timeline, once it's zoomed in, moves along the song. While it shows the whole song, the scroll wheel zooms the canvas as usual.
• The thin strip over the ruler is the whole song in little, with the part in view framed. Drag along it to move the view, or click somewhere to go there. Double-click it to see the whole song again.

Zoomed in, the ruler numbers the bars inside each section, and each section's name stays in view as you move past its start. While the song plays, the view turns the page whenever the playhead nears its right edge, so the playhead stays in view. It waits a few seconds after you move the view yourself.

The zoom belongs to the editor, like the section you picked. It isn't saved with the patch and isn't a step of undo. For a song you want to read whole, set Width instead.

Repeats

Songs repeat themselves: a groove four times round, a verse that comes back. Give a section a × count, ×1 to ×16, and it plays that many times before the next. ×N plays exactly as N copies of it would, sample for sample:

• Every pass gives the section's cues again. A Jump jumps again, a Ramp runs again (from its own start if it has one, or from wherever the lane is), and a Hit fires again, so a crash on every pass of a 4-bar groove is one cue.
• Section Trig, Bar and Last Bar fire on every pass, so a fill on the last bar lands at the end of each one.
• A Ramp "over the section" takes one pass.
• Jump to a repeated section starts its first pass, and so does Loop to.

The section is one block on the timeline, as wide as all its passes, with ×N in its corner and faint dashes between the passes. While it plays, the pass playing is lit, the corner counts the passes off ("3/4"), and so do the bar count and the header: "Groove 3/4".

Since ×N means N copies, either can become the other. Right-click a section:

• Split into copies turns a section ×N into N sections, each ×1, named "Groove", "Groove 2" and so on. Do it when one pass needs to differ.
• Merge with copies after it folds the sections straight after this one that play the same (the same length and cues, whatever their names) into it, up to ×16. It stops at a section Loop to goes back to, which has to stay a section of its own.

Each is one step of undo, and neither changes what you hear. The one thing that does change is the sections' numbers after it, so a Jump To CV that picked a later section by number needs moving too. Loop to follows by itself.

More than eight lanes: Follow

A song can need more than eight lanes. Patch one Arranger's Section output into another's Follow input, and the second one follows the first. It has the first one's sections, the same number of them, as long, played as many times, with the same names, and the same Steps and Loop to. Its lanes are its own, and you edit them on its own face as before.

• Edit the sections on the leader. On the follower they can be picked but not changed, and its bar says Follows Desk (or whatever the leader is called). Its Steps knob and Loop to are the leader's too.
• The follower's cues move with their sections. Add, copy, move, delete, split or merge a section on the leader, and the follower does the same with its own cues. A merge folds only copies that play the same on every Arranger down the chain. Lengthening or renaming a section does too. The leader's edit and the follower's are one step of undo, so undo takes both back.
• The follower zooms with its leader. Zoom or scroll either one and both move, page turns included, so the two scores stay lined up section for section. A whole chain shares one view.
• Unpatch Follow and the follower keeps the sections it had, and you can edit them on it again. It keeps the view it had too, and zooms on its own from then on.
• Chains. A follower can lead another, so three Arrangers give 24 lanes. A chain can't come back round: an Arranger that would end up following itself refuses the cable and says why. Follow takes only an Arranger's Section.

Following happens in the editor, not in the sound. Two Arrangers that count the same Clock already change section on the same sample, so the cable only keeps their sections the same while you write. A patch plays the same with it or without it.

Cues

Each section gives each lane one of four cues as the section starts:

Ramps

A ramp takes one of four shapes, chosen in its right-click menu and drawn to shape on the lane:

Exp and Log are mirror images, so an Exp fade-out holds on and then drops away, and a Log one falls quickly and then lingers.

From sets where a ramp starts. Where it is carries on from the lane's level as the section starts. A level jumps the lane there on the downbeat, as a Jump would, gate dip and Glide included, and ramps from there. A part can then come in at one level and grow through the same section: a pad that enters at 28% and swells to 42% over twelve bars is one cue.

The gate

A lane's Gate is high while the lane is above zero. One lane can therefore be a part's level and its envelope's gate at once. A riser that jumps to 30% for a section and back to 0 is heard for that section and gated for exactly as long.

When a Jump or Hit lands while the gate is already high, the gate drops for one sample first, so an envelope starts again. So does a ramp that starts from a level of its own. A ramp up from zero opens the gate as it leaves zero.

Glide

A Jump moves on one sample, and a Mixer's Level adds its CV without smoothing, so a jump under a ringing note clicks. Glide smooths the lane's CV: it's how long the CV takes to move all the way from 0 to 1, so 1 s brings a half-way fader up in half a second, the same as a Sample & Hold's Slew. A second or so suits a pad, and 40 ms keeps a rhythmic part on the beat while still saving its tails. The gate follows the cue, not the glide.

Leave Glide at 0 on a lane that picks something: a Trigger Sequencer's, Step Sequencer's or Chord Sequencer's Pattern, say. The sequencer reads the CV on the downbeat, the same sample the lane jumps on, and a glide would still be on its way there.

Timing

The Arranger has no tempo of its own. It counts clock edges: a bar is Steps of them, and a section is its length in bars. It changes section on the clock edge that starts the section's first bar, the same edge the sequencers step on, so it can't drift from them, swing or not.

A ramp moves between clock edges too, smoothly. It measures each step from the clock, as the sequencers do, so on a swung clock it moves a little faster through the short steps. It still lands on the clock edge that ends it.

Before the Arranger has seen two clock pulses it can't measure a step. For the first triggers it assumes a sixteenth at the patch's tempo, or at 120 BPM if nothing sets one.

Looping, ending and jumping

After the last section, the song goes back to Loop to, and End fires. With Loop to off, End fires and the song stops where it is. The lanes keep their last levels, and the bars stop counting, until a Reset, a Jump or the next Play.

Jump waits for the next bar line, so a live change of section always lands on the beat. Patch a button, a Note In gate or a Logic decision into Jump, and a constant or a Sample & Hold into Jump To. While a Jump waits, the section it's going to is outlined green.

How patches store it

Every section's cue for every lane is one parameter, named for both: Section 03 Lane 2 is section 3's cue for lane 2. Its value reads as digits, move, ramp bars and level in tenths of a percent. The move is 0 Hold, 1 Jump, 2 Ramp and 3 Hit, and a ramp on another curve takes 4 Linear, 5 Exp or 6 Log:

A ramp's start is a second parameter, Section 03 Lane 2 From: the level in tenths of a percent (280 starts at 28%), or -1 to start from where the lane is. Patches saved before ramps had curves and starts have no From parameters and only 2 for ramps, so they play as they always did.

The sections' lengths are Length 01 to Length 32, their repeats Repeat 01 to Repeat 32 (a patch from before repeats plays every section ×1), the lanes' glides Glide 1 to Glide 8, and Sections is how many sections the song has. The names you give sections and lanes, and the Arranger's own name, are saved with the module as labels. A follower saves its own copy of its leader's sections, so it plays them even where Follow isn't known.

Tips

1. Faders at zero. On a Mixer, set a channel's Level knob to 0 and patch a lane into its Level input. The lane then is the fader.
2. Fills. Either give each phrase a one-bar Fill section that jumps the drum lane to the fill pattern, or patch Last Bar into something that plays a fill. With Last Bar, a 4-bar groove ×4 has a fill at the end of every pass.
3. Two Arrangers, one song. When eight lanes aren't enough, clock a second Arranger from the same Clock and patch the first one's Section into its Follow (see Follow). From One Sine splits its score into faders and cues this way, with a third Arranger for its tape and its tempo.
4. Pedals. Hit a Looper's Rec at the start of a section to record it, and its Clear at the top of the song so each pass starts fresh.
5. A brightness lane. Ramp a lane over a build and patch it through an Attenuverter into filter cutoffs or drive amounts: the whole build opens up together.
6. A shorter song. Set Loop to a later section, and the intro plays only once.
7. Ride the room. Patch a lane into a Mixer's Return with its knob at 0, and the lane is the reverb's fader: dry and close for the opening, the hall for the second verse. A lane into one channel's Send steps just that part into the room. Canopy does the first.

Related

• From One Sine – a whole song on three Arrangers: eight faders; the drums, crash, riser, brightness, Looper pedals and the melody's patterns; a lane that warps the master tape, and one that slows the Clock into the end
• Trigger Sequencer – patterns for an Arranger lane to pick
• Mixer – the faders, sends and return a lane rides
• Clock – tempo and swing
• Clock Divider – phrases without a timeline