Topic: Newbie question – sticks at 1 bar, and drum loops

Hi mikeparr

@mikeparr wrote:

I guess that these questions are simple for experienced users:

1. I’ve created a new project, and an arrangment.
One track is drums, created with a GM drum plugin in the drum editor, and is 1 bar long.
I’m not sure how to loop this to experiment with it.

There should be a loop button in the transport panel. Alternatively you can press l (L) and a green loop range should appear in the timeline of the arrangement editor. You can drag the loop range handles to fit your needs. Be aware that the handles take the current snap setting into account. If my memory is right, you can have different snap settings in the arrangement and in the midi editor. Take a look here http://www.zynewave.com/wiki/doku.php?id=guide:editors#timeline

@mikeparr wrote:

The other track is piano – I painted some notes in with the editor.
When I play it, it stops after the first bar, even though notes exist in bar 2.
(Bar 2 is shaded dark). As far as I can see, I’ve not set up any time constraints, but may have acicdentally done somethinhg.

This sounds a bit odd and I don’t really have an answer to that. AFAIK there is no option that would stop playback after one bar. Maybe you can provide a screenshot?

@mikeparr wrote:

2. The more general question is
-what is the best way to create a drum pattern with variations – for example 11 bars of a regular pattern, and then 1 bar different. Not sure how I duplicate bars in the arrangement editor.

I think the easiest way would be:
1. Assign a drum plugin to an empty track
2. Create a note sequence in the arrangement editor of the desired length (let’s say one bar). You can do this by recording the sequence or by painting it with the editor tools.
3. Create/edit/record the drum pattern.
4. Create phantom copies of that sequence in the arrangement editor with Ctrl + LeftClick + Drag.
5. You should have n copies of the sequence by now. If you edit one of them, all will be changed. If you like to have a variation in pattern 4, rightclick on it and convert it to a unique copy.
6. Now you can edit pattern 4 freely and add the desired variation.

1. Are you sure that the note sequence (in the arrangement editor – not the MIDI editor) is the right length? The problem is most likely that your MIDI sequence indeed has notes inside bar 2 and beyond, but they are not played back because the sequence is cut off in the arrangement editor.

Probably like this (notice the beat markings above the timeline):

In this case, you simply need to extend the sequence by grabbing its bottom-right edge. Be careful the first time, though, as there are two handles at each edge, and the top one is used for time-stretching! 😉 The bottom one is for resizing.

2. There are two types of sequences in Podium – phantom sequences (these are linked, meaning if you change something in one of them, if affects them all), and unique sequences. Assuming you already have 12 phantom sequences (each one bar long), you can right-click the last one, select ‘convert to unique copy’ and edit this sequence without changing any others.
Phantom sequences can be easily recognized by the + icon next to the sequence name.

Hope this helps!

That is very odd… Just to make sure, here’s an animated GIF of how you should go about resizing sequences:

Please let me know if this isn’t working for you.

There’s no way to lock tracks in Podium as of yet, so this should be all there is to it. By the way, Ctrl+click-dragging (or holding Ctrl while dragging) items is used to create copies, just like in Windows.

Some additional info to keep in mind is that the quantize snap setting (on the main toolbar) dictates the step size for all editing actions, meaning moving and resizing/time-stretching sequences, MIDI notes, and so on.
You can temporarily disable snapping by holding the Shift key while you’re dragging or resizing items (also shown in the GIF). If you’re not recording anything via MIDI keyboard or such, you’ll probably want to keep everything nicely quantized, though – depends on what kind of music you make. 😉