#  | ### The Pattern Editor

After assembling our instruments we are now ready to start composing. The first place to go to is the pattern editor. To go to the pattern editor you can click on the 'Patterned' button or you can doubleclick on one of the patterns in the songgrid. A song consists of repeating patterns. Upto 16 patterns can be played at the same time but in the pattern editor you can only hear and edit one at a time.

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Building the BuildingBlocks

On the right hand side you can select which pattern you want to edit from a list of available patterns. By clicking one time on the name of a pattern you select it and it will appear in the display. If you double click on the name of pattern you can rename it. If you want to make a new pattern you can press the 'New' button, this will add a blank new pattern at the end of the list. If you are not happy with a pattern you can remove it too, you do this with the 'Delete' button. If the pattern is being used in the song you will get a warning message. If you decide to delete the pattern anyway, any references to it in the song are replaced by references to an empty pattern. If you are really happy with a pattern and you want to store it for other projects you can save it to harddisk by pressing the 'Save' button. By pressing the 'Load' button you can reload your pattern. Note that the loaded pattern is added to the list of available patterns and doesn't replace the one which is currently selected. The 'Play Pattern' button plays the pattern and the 'Stop' button stops it. The 'Play Song' button plays the entire song from the specified location in the song editor. This can be usefull if you want to hear your pattern in the 'grand totale'. If you click the 'Edit' button you can alter (edit) the pattern. Just like the in the instrument editor the computer keyboard acts like the keys of a piano keyboard and the function keys switch the octave. Ofcourse, editing with a MIDI compaint device is also possible. If the 'Edit' button is pressed the notes you play are directly entered into the pattern at the place of the cursor. If the 'Edit' button isn't pressed the notes aren't entered but you can hear the current instrument. This way you can try a little bit first if you aren't to sure. The quantize option let's you specify how much off you can be with your sense of rythm. The higher the quantize setting you specify, the more the computer will correct any rythmic mistakes. To change the instrument with which you are playing you can click on the instrument drop-down list. The name of the pattern you are currently editing is displayed at the top of the screen. If you click on the name you can change it. The pattern consists of 64 rows. Every row can basically have one note on it and some specification with which instrument it is played. Additionally you can specify extra scripting data which enables you to alter any parameter of the current playing instrument. Let us now look at one row more specifically. The first entry is reserved for the main note to be played at that time. If you move the cursor to that position and the 'Edit' button is pressed you can enter another note there. By pressing the Del-key you erase the note. The place right to the note is a number which specifies with which instrument the note will be played. To know which number corresponds to which instrument you can check the instrument dropdown box, as you will see every instrumentname has a number before it. If you enter a note however, the current instrument is filled in automatically. By selecting instrument number 0 (an instrument which doesn't exist) the previous used instrument is played, but with a slight difference: Various internal counters aren't reset so that you can have slight variations in the sound. The 2 numbers right to the instrumentnumber are called 'Destination'. In the left of the 2 you can type a note. When the 'Pitchbend'-script is active (more about scripting further on) the playing note will be bend (The frequency will gradually go higher or lower) untill it reaches the destination note. With this feature it is easy to make guitar solos a professional guitarist has difficulty to play live. The number next to the destination note is used in conjunction with the other scripts. It is the value used to change parameters of the current playing instrument for instance. The value to the right (so this is the 5'th value from the left) is called 'Spd' and it defines the speed with which the 'Pitchbend'-script is executed. Note that if the destination note is lower in frequency than the start note that you must enter a negative spd. Last but not least the number on the righthand-side is the number of the script used. If you enter a zero here there is no script used. The scripts enable you to have unparalled control over every conceivable parameter of the playback. This includes changing the songspd dynamically or altering any of the instrument parameters. Let's give an example to illuminate this: Script number 4 is called: 'Chng Master Vol'. If you put this script somewhere in the pattern, the 'Master Volume' of the current playing instrument is changed into the value denoted by the 'Destination' value (the fourth value from the left). Note that the parameter is changed for good. You can rechange the parameter by adding another script which changes it back. Of course you can also go to the instrument editor and change the parameters by hand. The example in the picture will play instrument 1 starting from note C on octave 8 and heighten it until it reaches the note D flat on octave 8 with speed 3. One final thing to remember is that if you change the paramters of an instrument with the scripting options, they are changed permanently and have to be restored either by hand, or by resetting them elsewhere in your patterns (or by reloading the tune of course)

### Sculpting Tools

To help with the more tedious and cumbersome tasks while creating patterns we have come up with a little toolbox to help out. First of all there is the 'Copy' button which copies the pattern to a temporarily buffer, easy when you quickly want to be able to undo something while you are trying something new. The 'Paste' button does the opposite and copies the contents of the internal buffer back to the pattern. The 'Clear' button clears the patterns for you so you can start all over. The 'Clear Even' button clears every second note from a pattern and the 'Clear Odd' does this as well but starts with the first note. These functions are particularly usefull when you have a pattern with notes but the sounds don't sustain too long and are continually cut-off by the next instrument. By copying the pattern in question to another pattern and then 'Clear 'Even' the first and 'Clear Odd' the other you have split the pattern into 2 patterns. If you now play these patterns simultaneously from the songedit menu, you will hear the same melody but with a richer sound since 2 soundchannels are used. The 'Transpose +1' button will increase all the notes by 1 (transposing) which will result in the melody of the patterns being played 1 note higher. Note that a C-4 note will become a C#4 and not a D-4 note. If you are not sure why this is please, reread the chapter about musical theory. The 'Transpose -1' button decreases all the notes by 1 resulting in the melody being played 1 note lower. Note that these are easy functions to play a musical piece in a different key. The 'Octave up' function transposes the pattern by 12 notes (or 1 octave). This means that the music is still played in the same key but it is one octave higher. The 'Octave Down' is the opposite and lowers the pattern by one octave. The 'Change instr' button changes all the used instruments in the pattern to the currently selected instrument. The notes which use instrument 0 aren't changed.

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