Alesis K2661 specifications Tutorial Arrangements, Creating an Arrangement, 12-12

Song Mode

Tutorial: Arrangements

Tutorial: Arrangements

The Arrangement Editor gives you a variety of ways to record and play songs. The following tutorial is designed to walk you through the steps of creating songs using the Arrangement Editor. Here are some typical tasks:

•Record two or more songs, then string them together in any order, as steps in an arrangement.

•Record additional tracks over the steps in an existing arrangement, saving the new tracks in the arrangement song.

•Use up to 32 tracks for recording and playback.

•Trigger songs or arrangements by striking keys (or triggering notes from any MIDI controller)—an excellent feature for live situations.

Creating an Arrangement

This involves recording and saving each section of your final piece of music as a separate song, then using an arrangement to string together the sections in any order you choose. There are a couple reasons you might want to do this.

First of all, many pieces of music tend to be composed in sections. If your music tends to feature various sections repeated in varying order, using the Arrangement Editor can be easier than copying those sections and pasting them into a single song.

The second reason has to do with memory requirements. No objects (aside from samples) can be larger than 64k (10,000 to 16,000 notes, depending on the amount of controller information you record). You may need to use arrangements to accommodate the size of long musical pieces.

When you’re recording songs that you intend to combine into arrangements, it can be helpful to name the songs Part 1, Part 2… or Chorus, Verse… That way, when you are putting together the arrangement, you can quickly identify each section. You might also want to organize the IDs of the songs. For example, you could start numbering the songs at the second ID in a memory bank (301, 302…), then save the arrangement song at the first ID in the bank (300, in this example).

That way, you can create a file containing the arrangement song and its constituent songs, and when you load it into the K2661, the arrangement (the one you’re likely to want to play) will be the first song in the bank.

Once you have your songs, you’re ready to create another song to use as the arrangement.

1.In Song mode, select 1 NewSong as the value for the CurSong parameter. This is important, because the arrangement song should not contain any note or controller information.

2.Press Edit, and set the Tempo parameter to match the tempos of the songs you’ll be adding to the arrangement. (This assumes they are all the same tempo. We’ll cover how to deal with different tempos later on.)

3.Press either more soft button, then press Save. The save dialog gives you the opportunity to rename the song and give it the ID of your choice. Press Save again when you’ve made the changes you want.

4.Press the ARRANG button (you’re still in the Song Editor). The top line of the display tells you that you’re looking at Step 1 of a song that contains one step. Cursor down to the Song parameter and select the song you want to use for the first step in the arrangement.

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