Song Position via your DAW

[punkdSICO]

Hi all

Im still having a blast with my new Spark!!

Question:  Im using Ableton Live (PC) but can not work out how to control Spark's song position via Live..  Sure, the both play in tempo together but there is no communication regarding song position.  For example:

 - Starting playback in Live somewhere mid-song and Spark will not locate this position.  Rather, it just starts playing where abouts in the song it last stopped

- Looping a song section in Live but Spark just continues playing the song (without looping)

All this stuff works using Maschine without any changes in Live but perhaps Im missing something?

thanks for any replies..

Paul

[stuey]

Hey Paul

I'd wondered this also, both song and pattern mode behave in the same way as you have described. The only way to make it behave differently is to make sure you are at postion 1 when in song mode, not idea for song position when working with a DAW.

I'm running pro tools and have tried both modes to see if it follows song postion in either mode but no joy. Also to add, it doesn't 'record' pattern changes made on the fly whilst recording automation, which i guess is pretty much the same as 'follow song' does this happen in Ableton?

Cheers
Stuart 

[Kevin]

Hi,
you are right there is no song position sync in Spark.
You may implement this in the near future.
Concerning pattern change record, here is a way to do that (not possible in RTAS for the moment):

• assign MIDI notes to the pattern buttons
• set Send MIDI from Pads preference on
• set your DAW to enable MIDI record from Spark plugin

Kevin

[punkdSICO]

Thanks for the confirmation, Kevin.

Song sync will be nice once you implement it but in the meantime, I can just use Midi notes assign to patterns and then trigger the patterns with the Midi notes.

thanks again,

Paul
London
www.punkdisco.co.uk

[stuey]

Concerning pattern change record, here is a way to do that (not possible in RTAS for the moment):

• assign MIDI notes to the pattern buttons
• set Send MIDI from Pads preference on
• set your DAW to enable MIDI record from Spark plugin

Kevin

Hello Kevin

I have been able to achieve pattern change with RTAS bu mapping as you suggested, notes in my sequencer to patterns on Spark. You mention above that this isn't possible in RTAS. I am using the latest 1.4.1 version

Command click (Mac) gives you the learn function, click 'Learn', it then highlights blue saying 'Learning', hit a midi note on a midi contro keyboard, it then gives you the midi it has learned et voilá  

Then by drawing notes in your sequencer to relate back to the desired pattern and bank this almost replicates follow song  

In order to achieve 16 patterns using each 4 banks there is specific attention needed when setting up your sequence. For example, you cannot jump from A1 to B16, so therefore making sure that your 17th required pattern is saved to bank B pattern 16 then proceeding anti-clockwise to reach 1, the next pattern is then C1 and so forth until you reach the end.

Sequencer Pattern 1-16   = A1 - A16
Sequencer Pattern 17-32 = B16 - B1
Sequencer Pattern 33-48 = C1 - C16
Sequencer Pattern 49-64 = D16 - D1

Thanks

Stuart
  

[Kevin]

What is not possible in 1.4 on RTAS is to record it without another MIDI controller than Spark.
One question, I don't understand what you mean by "you cannot jump from A1 to B16".
Can you give some details?

Kevin

[stuey]

What is not possible in 1.4 on RTAS is to record it without another MIDI controller than Spark.

Ah ok, so as the Spark only has 'Learn' you need another midi controller in order to teach the Spark the midi numbers. But asume we have this, is there any difference in the way the RTAS plug in works compared to the VST, (Aside what we have discussed) they should both follow notes.  

One question, I don't understand what you mean by "you cannot jump from A1 to B16".
Can you give some details?

Ok, Sorry i didn't make that entirely clear. So I map my Spark pattern buttons starting at pattern 1 to C3 moving up the scale until i reach A16 which become E flat on my midi controller. I then map my 4 bank buttons starting at F4 = A, Fsharp 4 = B, G4 = C and A flat being D.

When you make a midi change you can only make that change to reference one note, I cannot 'jump from A1 to B16' so if i were on A16 and i wanted to change to a different bank, it would have to be B16, i could not make a change from A1 to B16 because that would involve two midi numbers to make that change, so therefore if i required more that 16 parts in my song, I would have to ensure my 17th pattern was on B16. SO by going through the patterns in my earlier post it would be possible to make 64 pattern changes in one song if desired.

'Caveat'  

When going back to the start of the song, you would have to ensure Spark was on A1 before starting your song again.

I think you also posted earlier about saving 'blank' patterns in order to have breaks in songs

Does that make sense?

Stuart

[punkdSICO]

Hi Stuart

I just tried this and it works in Ableton Live on a PC.  To confirm, I can just from A1 to B16 by sending two notes simultaneously (a chord), one note for Pattern 16 and another for Bank B.

This works for both intant pattern changes and changing at the end of the current pattern.

Hope your issues get resolved soon..

ta

Paul
London
www.punkdisco.co.uk
Text SLUT to: 29 7 29 7
Here’s the video:  www.youtu.be/Zl0PTZKy7fg

[stuey]

Hey Paul.

Ahh, yeah I didn't try that. I'll give it a go and see if that sorts it out.

I'll let you know

Stuart

[stuey]

Hi Paul

Take a look at the below pics, easier to explain.
So the first one describes what I was trying to explain earlier, but my sequencer only wants to make one change. (ignore top notes, these are the bank changes I added from your advise)

So in pic 2 all I have done is nudged the pattern change forward a 32nd, in order for pro tools to make the bank change first. Seems to work, although if i have a beat with a sound dead on the first beat (mostly all of them ) I have to pencil that in.

It's an easier workflow but does means lots of redrawing kicks and snares in.

With my earlier explanation this would get round this issue, but then means a confusing set up to get it right.  

Cheers
Stuart

[moley]

I'm new to Spark, is this still the only way to sync song position to DAW?

If yes, rather than:

Quote stuey: So in pic 2 all I have done is nudged the pattern change forward a 32nd, in order for pro tools to make the bank change first. Seems to work, although if i have a beat with a sound dead on the first beat (mostly all of them ) I have to pencil that in.

Would it be better to nudge the BANK change back a 32nd? Then you wouldn't have to re-draw the kicks, snares etc.

[dancetech]

i been trying this notes triggering patterns/banks (as a new user) and it's true. Because the bank-change note must come before the pattern-change note inside a region on your daw, it means the pattern-trigger note is always off the first beat of the bar, meaning dropped out notes for any instrument which falls on beat-1 of the pattern.

i am not so concerned about song-position pointers because ideally to really work on your spark-song in your daw you need to export the patterns to the host daw spark track

So what i want is a 'song export as midi' drag/drop just as for patterns, and when you drag/drop or export the song-midi it exports as one long song-file which i can then chop up into sections once it is on my host daw spark track.

Can we PLEASE have that? then we can quickly export the entire song as a midi-file from spark onto our host daw spark track, and then really get into editing and arranging other items around our spark song.

please? pretty please? it'd be far more useful than song-position pointers (although both would be excellent.)

[dancetech]

I'm new to Spark, is this still the only way to sync song position to DAW?

If yes, rather than:

Quote stuey: So in pic 2 all I have done is nudged the pattern change forward a 32nd, in order for pro tools to make the bank change first. Seems to work, although if i have a beat with a sound dead on the first beat (mostly all of them ) I have to pencil that in.

Would it be better to nudge the BANK change back a 32nd? Then you wouldn't have to re-draw the kicks, snares etc.

yeah but if you boot the note BACK in time then it must live in the previous region. That then means you cannot have seperate individual daw midi regions, each one playing a given spark pattern. the whole point of note-triggering of patterns is that the commands live inside a single midi region which can be moved around anywhere as a single pattern/region.

If arturia had implemented this like apple have done with ultrabeat it'd work

why cant we have it so in plugin mode spark simply can assign 64 ascending notes to patterns 1-64? why do we need bank-change commands when spark is working as a plugin?

[samkgold@gmail.com]

Can anyone help me PLEASE ! I just got spark and when jumping to certain positions in a session (pro tools), spark will not locate this position ? it just starts playing where abouts in the song it last stopped ? Can spark not do this ?? It seems like a standard simple function ??

[stuey]

It doesn't follow the song position. jumping around a timeline in a PT session will just play whatever beat you have programmed in. The way round it is to either use song mode, drag midi info into a instrument or midi track, or map pattern numbers to midi to change the beat via a instrument or midi track

Stuart