Sequencing Song States as Song Parts

[S9DD]

I must be missing something vital here.

I have a song divvied up into structural sections. Load, Intro, Verse1, Chorus, FreetimePause, Verse2, Chorus, Chorus, Coda.

Each has the usual suspects of plugins with sounds, some routings, and external MIDI FX PCH messages on load.

Where I am stuck is that the song should progress, after initial Start of Transport, through these sections. 8bars, 9bars, 8bars, Stop until I hit a key, 8bars, etc. The duty of drum loop is partly in Cantabile, partly in an external sequencer.

How do I tell Cantabile to move into the next song state when the MediaPlayer has exhausted its current State of Nbars? Currently it silently marches past the end point, or stops. If Cantabile is the boss timing, surely there must be a way to “block out” a song in terms of section lengths?

When I “cue up” the next section to play (by selecting the secton) it jumps immediately instead of waitng to the end of the section.

Feel I am fighting the app, not rolling with it. Newbie. Tread lightly!

[dave_dore]

Hi S9DD,

I posted on your other thread so this is a follow up on how to chain the states together. In the picture shown the states and the bindings are shown. each state is set to it’s own tempo. As you see the Measure numbers get larger as you add parts to the song. These transitions are seamless.

Looping is not do-able this way and as far as i remember only media files can be looped using ranges. This method can’t access the playback ranges therefore no looping is available. There may be a workaround but I’m not aware of one at this time. When editing these types of bindings lists it helps to temporarily disable the bindings group to prevent the transport firing while you set your tempos and markers up. Just remember to enable when done.

Dave

[S9DD]

Thank you for this Dave.

Song blocking with clips I am quite used to (in other sequencers - edit) - it was how to advance causing me some disconnect.

I can see the logic in Position based NextState(Now!) bindings, but won’t this cause trouble with loopable sections?

For example. Say: Section 1 = 8bars, Section 2 = 9bars, Mod = 2bars. Under normal circumstances, when you finish this section 1, start section 2, (unless I hit something that needs that 2bar mod (one assumes that being just another (loopable) section).

If I have a loopable section, then a Position based advance is going to be wrong if the mod plays around an unspecified number of times. Perhaps Position is too rigid for simply chaining blocks of audio together, to fall through it you will, into the next section.

I can avoid this scenario by delegating the sequencer out to hardware, and trigger the song states using incoming MIDI instead. Might be simplest if is difficult to do this in Cantabile.

I have absolutely no objection to wrapping a MIDI clip or silent audio file if that helps. I am just trying to get my head around the approach I should take.

Thanks!

[dave_dore]

@S9DD

but won’t this cause trouble with loopable sections?

Yes, I noted that in the post. Cantabile only has looping functions for media tracks.

@S9DD

For example. Say: Section 1 = 8bars, Section 2 = 9bars, Mod = 2bars. Under normal circumstances, when you finish this section 1, start section 2, (unless I hit something that needs that 2bar mod (one assumes that being just another (loopable) section).

Ok, this could be set up but would require that you had a MIDI track or audio track to set up the loops on. On Cantabile loops are set up using ranges that are set in the time line view. The drawback of the looping function is that it ends when it finishes the loop count. I found a way to do what you talked about by making some bindings that did the loop counting instead of the built in loop counter. This allowed the breaking of the loop and advancing it to the next range. It is a combination of position bindings and timeline ranges. See this thread

Can you start song at beginning, loop middle, continue to end

At the moment if I set a loop in a song I only seem to be able to play that loop. E.g. if I have a 4 bar intro, 16 bars to loop around several times then 4 bars out I can’t find a way to start playback from the start so it plays the intro then automatically loops x number of times round the 16 bars after the intro then continues to the end or continues looping until I press a button to make it stop looping and carry on to the end. Is there a way to do this in Cantabile3?

There is also another related thread with the looping rack I made. Read through it and I’d be happy to explain any questions.

Dave

[S9DD]

Thanks for trying Dave. Got to be honest, that’s all complexity for something I see as a simple need. I would struggle to get it working. Perhaps I am better off in hardware for now.

[dave_dore]

Agreed David,

For what you want to do Cantabile is not well equipped. It’s a more traditional Live host in that the looping capabilities are not at all like Abelton Live where that is a main stay of it’s operation. What’s easy in another host might not be easy with Cantabile but the flexibility does allow one to do a lot of things others can’t so it’s a trade off. I hope you find a good working solution!

Cheers,

Dave