I would like to know which are the best tricks to transition between patterns when doing Ambient stuff (long drones and pads). I just watched a video showing the crossfader trick (looping internal audio in real time) and that seems a good idea but, since I am not working with short loops, I wonder if that is still a viable option. Otherwise I will perhaps need to work with a backing track across all the patterns (not retriggering, with a 1st condition) and lower and increasing volumes of the other tracks as I move to another patterns. Any ideas?
You can dedicate a static track with slices, where each slice holds a longer transition segment you can trigger by hand and use the fader to increase the volume (while decreasing the volume of the other tracks) with a scene. Then switch patterns and slowly fade the other way.
That’s what I was thinking too, but I’d have to be very careful to trigger it at the right time and fading it at the right time.
I guess I could create ad hoc manual triggers to trigger only for transitions where I automate the volumes of all the tracks. I could use a track just for that but I’d have to remember to move to another slice for the next transition to the next pattern (As my songs are made of four patterns usually)
Okay, in this case, the easiest solution I can think of is to program a trig on the sequencer of your transition track, p-locked to the correct slice in each pattern, using the fill-condition and a very long attack time to achieve the fade in effect.
Could you use a pickup machine as a persistent buffer (I think these persist across patterns) ? Ie. when you’ve got a pattern / set of tracks running that you want to transition from, use a pickup to capture and loop some or all of it (maybe via cue as pickup input src). Once pickup loop is recorded, use a scene to fade to the pickup loop and then switch patterns. Then you can fade back from the pickup loop to newly playing pattern.
Sorry if this doesn’t make any sense….I’m half asleep.