Block Map | Roland Musical Instrument guide

maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke

Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com

The Phrase generator menu offers new starting patterns at one of four levels of complexity on a press of the generate button. This creative assistant and some more Block output-modifying features in the main Melody Editor window are described in Part II.

1.11 The Block Map

You can create up to five different four-bar melodies in the manner described above, and you can build each on a different Phrase or on different combinations of patterns applied to copies of the same Phrase. While a Block is up to four bars long, you don't have to play any Block all the way through, or even have note data present in all bars of the Block. In fact, you can create a melody using a pattern consisting of portions read from the start of each of five Blocks. This versatility is possible because you can make a block map that lets you play any Block from its beginning (and only from its beginning), starting at any bar in the Werk.

A Block's number from 1 through 5 can be stored at each bar of the Map, which looks like yet another bar graph. When a set of Block values is stored and subsequently enabled, maxWerk triggers a new Block with every changed value, and silences Melody when there is a Block value 0, regardless of the lengths of the patterns stored in the Blocks. When the same Block number is entered for more than four bars in a row, that Block will repeat from the beginning; but when a Block's value changes after three bars, for example, you will hear only one of its combined direction and inversion patterns played and half of the next before new notes are read from a different Block. If part of a Block in play has no entered notes, there is silence while the empty steps pass.

Melody Blocks can be further embellished in the main Editor, Phrases, and Melody Sound windows. To preview information from Part II: velocities can randomly walk within a range you can set for each half-bar, and there are options for automatic modulation or aftertouch. The main Melody window has checkboxes for each Block that let you disable transposing or add various kinds of harmony lines. There are also settings for octave adjustments and for the delay of all harmony lines by 16th-note steps.