ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC
BEAT SHIFTING
Where things get interesting are with the five small sliders along the bottom of each track,
which are labelled
SHIFT, STEP
,
DIR
ection,
RANDOM
, and
CHANCE
. These introduce
changes that evolve the pattern while it’s repeating.
SHIFT
controls the likelihood of the hits in that track moving shifting to the left or right
(earlier or later) in time. When it’s at zero, all the way left, the pattern hits stay exactly as
you drew it, and no shifting will happen. The further right the slider the higher the
chance of a SHIFT, the more likely it is that the hits will shift on each repeat. When the
pattern SHIFTS, it moves your programmed beat to other positions on the grid, thus
altering and evolving the beat based on what you started with.
STEP
size tells the generator how far to shift, if a shift is to happen. If STEP is set to 1,
then a note can only shift one grid position at a time. If it’s set to 2, then if a note shifts, it
will shift two grid positions, etc. Note that if you set STEP to even numbers your beat will
evolve in more naturally rhythmic ways than if you set STEP to odd numbers.
DIRECTION
tells the generator in which direction to shift the beats, if a beat is to be
shifted. When it’s in the middle (default), the chance of a hit moving to the left or to the
right (i.e. earlier or later in the bar) is equal, so beats can move in either direction. If the
DIRECTION is set all the way to the right, then beats will ONLY move to the right (later),
and if set all the way to the left, beats will only move to the left. Note that hits will
“wrap” from the end of the bar to the beginning, or from the beginning to the end, if
moved beyond the beat LENGTH.
RANDOM
slider introduces small amounts of randomicity to the velocity of the played
notes if you want to introduce some more human feel.
CHANCE
slider sets the percentage chance of a hit happening. If CHANCE is at 100%,
the beat will play as you see it, if CHANCE is at 50% then about half of the hits won’t play
at all.
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Summary of Contents for ELECTRO ACOUSTIC
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