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Comments
The Xequence 2 manua is top-tier in terms of comprehensiveness.
Your videos playlist is great. You cover everything in chunks even I can manage to sit through. I usually have zero patience for instructional videos, so that is saying something. I'd still prefer to read a manual, but you pulled off the videos well.
Actually, in the midi realm, Art Kerns is probably king of the manual, as far as I'm concerned. Extremely thorough, massive attention to detail. Tons of pics. His manuals must take ages to make though, they maybe go into a bit more detail than required for anyone but absolute beginners. They're exemplary nevertheless
Look forward to your video tutorial lad!
@A_Mortal_Mage Ok, the cheat sheet does help. I missed it on the first load. When I did my first run through, some things were jumbled and I’m not sure entirely functional, so it may have gotten lost in the shuffle. But now I see it, and having it all in one place is good.
This thing is really idiosyncratic. It shows all the earmarks of a very personal workflow that you’ve been iterating to realize some internal vision. It’s raw and weird, and requires discovering your headspace.
Which is cool, actually. While I’m certainly going to keep going to Mididreams and Nodes just to get things up and working when I need to, I’m looking forward to exploring this and seeing what it inspires.
I watched most of the tutorial-videos and dabbled a bit. Not knowing the Elektron Machines, I'm probably more lost, than someone who does and the interface is putting up quite a fight:).
Still I fed it some chords and got some nice results with the fuse section without knowing what I'm doing. Looking forward to getting deeper into it and maybe understand a thing or two.
Where can I find that cheat sheet?
https://sites.google.com/view/prism-midi-sequencer/cheat-sheets
Thanks!
Thanks!
In addition to the cheat sheets, I’d highly recommend the tutorial and freeplay videos @A_Mortal_Mage posted on his YouTube channel .. they’re packed with info, demos and descriptions .. once you get your head around how Prism sequencer works, it’s an amazing instrument to play and to create with .
https://youtube.com/@a_mortal_mage?si=0-drnegz0NwQZLT4
Thanks, yes I watched a couple of them and will watch the ones I haven't yet. I'm sure it's awesome, just a bit of a steep learning curve:)
It’s a curve well worth riding
Nice…. 👍
Mine… Thanks for making..
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/prism-midi-sequencer/id6502302630
Yes, I'm making my way through the vids, which are very helpful. Clearly presented.
I too find the app a bit unintuitive when first opened, but I think that says more about me than the app...
I set my snare velocity to 0 on a drum track and now I can’t select its pad to turn it back up or edit its sequence. Is there a way to enable it again?
Yes, well done @A_Mortal_Mage on your release! I purchased this immediately for my own use and have had a blast experimenting with melodies and drums all from your plugin. I'm so used to using multiple sequencers and really enjoy the level of focus I experience using your app to do most of what I need when composing a piece.
I was so taken with how elegant and comprehensive it is for making a full track with intuitive but challenging step sequencing that I am hoping to get my school to buy some copies to use with some of our special needs students to incorporate music therapy into their disability related services. Being able to sequence melodies and drums from one app is a huge feature for kids who have focused attention challenges that make flipping between plugins and different UIs really hard. The fact that the app is deep is actually a bonus for kids who have cognitive aptitude but also have ADHD, kids who have a strong need to practice following multi-step directions.
I work with some kids who have very high spatial reasoning skills but low language skills and no music theory knowledge (so piano rolls are a frustration), but I can already see how with some basic support, kids could use this to make a full track without opening a piano roll, at first with adult partnership. The layout and contrast of the UI is also perfect for kids who have visual impairments (reaper is really hard for them to use well because of the cluttered and low contrast ui, and of course a touchpad is hard for any kids with fine motor challenges). I've even shown this to a couple of the younger music teachers in my building who use Logic on Mac for their own music and for teaching, and they were really impressed also. Hoping I got @A_Mortal_Mage a few customers among those teachers 😉. Very excited about your innovative design!
In case anybody is having trouble getting started, my experience with a very basic setup may help.
1) In AUM load prism as a midi audio unit midi processor. If you've already added prism to try it, remove it and add a new instance so we all start in the same place.
2) Add 3 audio units, a drum, a bass and a pad
3) Connect midi from prism to the three audio units. During each midi connection in AUM select channel filter NONE, then select 1 for drum, 2 for bass and 3 for pad. Prism outputs the midi channel according to it's track number so, in Prism we will be setting track 1 as drum, track 2 as bass, track 3 as pad.
4) Open prism. Select NEW SONG. Click DRUM TRACK. Scroll the list (top item says DEFAULT) to find your drum app or leave it on default. Press SEQ button. You are now in the drum sequencer, each pad on the 4x4 grid now represents a drum with its own sequencer, shown in the 16 sequencer steps on the bottom left. The resolution and length can be easily configured but don't get sidetracked yet. Touch one of the pads and a drum should sound. (if it isn't the correct drum for your app don't worry they can be reconfigured). Click in the sequencer steps to lay down a beat for that drum. Pick another pad to lay down more beats. The transport is synced to AUM by default..
5) Now set up the bass. Either click the track name at the centre top of Prism window (DEFAULT if you didn't change it while setting up the drum) or the same name in the centre at the bottom of the window. The sequencer section will now show the 16 tracks with "1" highlighted (at any point you can return to the instrument sequencer for that track by pressing SEQ). With the 16 tracks showing in the sequencer slots, press 2. "TRACK 2" will now show top centre of the Prism Window. Click "TRACK 2" and select Tonal Track. Press the name "TRACK 2" top centre or bottom centre to get back to track select. Press 3. Click on the name "TRACK 3". This time, select TONE BLOCKS. Track setup is now complete. Still in track 3 you will see the 4X4 pads have changed . Ignore the top 8 for now, these are for editing the complex TONE BLOCKS represented in the bottom 2 rows. We are going to lay down a 4 bar track A G F A. TOUCH THE "A" PAD, IT WILL STAY SELECTED UNTIL YOU TOUCH ANOTHER ONE. Above the step sequencer there should now be 4 lines showing the notes of the chord and their length. HOLD DOWN the centre of the row of circles icon bottom left of window, the pads will change to NAVIGATOR. Press the bottom right arrow to change bars from 1 to 4. Let go of the row of circles icon. As long as you didn't change anything else the 16 steps in the sequencer now represent the four bars, 4 steps for each, starting top left. This means the DISPLAY resolution for the bars is 1 beat per step but the midi record resolution is more accurate than this. Touch the top left step to lay down the A chord. If you didn't alter any other settings the centre of the window should now show VELOCITY 100 LENGTH 1/4 CHANCE 100% and EVERY with a dot. We don't want the 1/4 length, we want one bar, there are several ways to change this. HOLD DOWN the A in the step sequencer. Press the padlock icon (or keep holding down the A step) EITHER touch the 4th step in the sequencer OR drag the solid line in the middle of the screen until LENGTH shows 1/1 OR slide up in the length field until it says 1/1. Let go of the A step or press SEQ if you pressed the padlock. Now enter G in step 5, F in step 9 and A in step 13. Set a tempo in AUM and press PLAY in AUM.
That's a big post so I'll post later how to set track 2 (bass) to follow the chords we've just recorded (FUSE) and play an ARP.
In my previous post I left us with a drum beat playing on track 1 and a 4 bar sequence of 4 chords (each entered with a single note selection) playing on track 3. Now we will start to show the speed and power of Prism.
Press on the title of the track , either in the centre top of the window or centre bottom. This takes us to track selection with the sequencer showing the 16 tracks. Tracks with notes in them will be highlighted in the track colour.
Press 2 in the sequencer to take you to track 2 then press FUSE. There are 3 options above the sequencer PEEK, ECHO and MELT. We want to use the notes and chords in track 3 so we select ECHO. We want to echo track 3 so we press and hold 3 in the sequencer until the 3 becomes a dot. We want these notes and chords to play as an ARP in track 2 so we press ARP. Across the top we have STYLE (the arp style) RATE the rate to play the arp, CHOKE and RANGE
Slide up the STYLE field and various pre-programmed arp styles are available. Slide to the top selection (PICK) which is the most powerful arp tool.
With the AUM transport running a white dot will move across the four boxes in the centre of the screen, these are the arp steps.
To get the full potential of the Prism arp, press and hold the ARP button until the top of the window momentarily shows ADV ARP EDIT ON and the 4x4 pad changes so that the top 2 rows show 5 6 7 8, 1 2 3 4. These represent the relative notes in the chord playing. Because we chose TONE BLOCKS as our mode in track 3, we have several notes in the chords playing , which gives us plenty of scope.
At the moment the 4 blocks in the centre all have "1" in them so the track 2 bass will just keep playing note 1 at the rate set in RATE., Use the arrow keys to move the highlighted block to the second block and press "3" on the 4x4 pad. Now move the cursor to the third block and press 2 on the 4x4 pad. Now set the rate to 1/8th by sliding the field up or down. Now hold your finger on the 4 blocks and slide up until there are 8. Change the blocks until you like the pattern, try including 4 and 5 to get more variation. If you want to miss a note (a silent step) either press the empty 4x4 pad below the 1 or get "1" in the block you want to miss and touch the number 1 under the STYLE (PICK) field. Try different rates. If the bass is playing the wrong octave, press FUSE and drag the OCTAVE field up or down.
Lastly, try adding a fourth track with a piano or lead and FUSE it to track 3 and set a faster arp with even more steps and silent steps.
And then there's Harmonizer and HUE and .....
Hope this helped somebody
This looks awesome! Definitely want to dive into this… seems like a great work with a lot of thought and innovation!
How long is the into sale?
Oh, and you really should check out the cheat sheets and videos because, if you managed to get through my 2 previous posts, they will now explain everything.
https://sites.google.com/view/prism-midi-sequencer/cheat-sheets
https://youtube.com/@a_mortal_mage?si=0-drnegz0NwQZLT4
Whoops, that seems like a bug on my end. I'll get that fixed and posted in the next update, which should be available in the next day or two.
@garden, @tyslothrop1, @Kashi
Hey guys, thanks for taking the time to work up the learning curve. I'm glad that people are saying it's worth the climb but I'd also love to make it as clean as possible from the get go. If you volunteer your input on what's the most challenging so far I promise it'll fall on attentive ears.
In terms of advice for learning - I think @garden's mention of idiosyncratic is a good starting point. But, flip the logic. Instead of thinking of this as a device decisively tailored around a workflow think of it as decisively disconnected from an inherent workflow. There are purposeful redundancies, a dozen ways to start, and every piece interacts with every other piece in some kind of unique way. It's one of the reasons I didn't immediately post workflow style "here's how I make a song" videos. I may have a workflow through Prism, but I don't want to lock people into the idea that that's the designed approach.
Prism is a sequencer with hundreds of features. It's meant to take a lot of time and experimentation with the device to absorb them all. But don't let that make you think it isn't really powerful while only playing with a corner of it. I rarely walk through the whole house while i'm playing. Once you wrap your head around the main SEQ page, namely the interaction of the multikeypad, the "graphics screen", and the sequence trigs you'll have a much simpler time branching out into the other areas.
It's the kind of thing where you can think how do I want to achieve "X sonically", and I'm happy to give my two cents on those questions as well.
Oh, also it can be helpful to think of as being read from left to right and bottom up. For example the left navigation buttons (SEQ, FUSE,...) dictate everything to the right, including the keypad matrix. For up/down the midi flow starts at the SEQ then moves up through FUSE then up through ARP and finally HUE (which is pink, representing that it's a global state that interacts with multiple tracks) before being sent to the intended device.
Damn!!! This is absolutely beautiful. Thank you so much for laying this all out!
Can't say for sure. I'm kind of using it to get a feel of the market. And to provide an incentive for early adopters when there's bound to be hidden bugs and grime. Once it's all polished and shiny in the real world I won't feel bad charging full price. Most likely a few weeks
I think the only thing that’s made more confused in the first couple of hours of experiment is congburn’s Strokes. Though this is a lot more (accidentally, so far) musical.
Trying to find midi cc recording\playback in the immense list of impressive features😆
Some Dials that send cc out.
Haha I'll take the win! I'm working on a more rooted "Getting started" jumpstart page now. I'll drop it here when the rough draft is done.
Not yet. But I'm like a foaming lunatic rattling at his bars to get to the dear CC code. I've got huge plans for it that will really take Prism into it's own world of immediacy and creation.
Firstly, @A_Mortal_Mage congrats and kudos on the release. Loving the possibilities here and it sounds like it's only going to get more interesting in further iterations. One question for now - when used within a DAW (tried Cubabsis and Logic) it seems I have to have the playhead running in the DAW in order to hear my instrument triggered from the Prism key pads? Am I doing something daft?
EDIT: interesting I just tried this in Nanostudio and the above behaviour does not occur (ie I can play the AU instrument without the DAW playhead running).
One other question - when sequencing a drum pattern, is it possible to see the notes/hits of the all the drum instruments? For instance when creating a h-hat rhythm, I would like to see the closed hi hats so I can place the open hats straight after. This may be Prism 101 so excuse the possibly dumb question!