So far, so good...

[Greeny]

I had my first 'proper' play with the micro last night, and I felt much more confident going in pre-armed with the tutorials and bits and pieces of advice I'd read on this forum.

So... thanks everyone!

I have one song in the bag waiting to be mastered 

My two main observations so far :

1. The built in Mic is great. It's a VAST improvement over the sound I got on my old Tascam. The vocals came out far more impressive than I expected, and it did pretty well with an acoustic guitar. I never expected to find a 4-track with an in-built mic THAT good. 

2. The rhythm arranging is a right pain for a new user. I'm sure it will be easy after a while, but right now, it's the one thing thats giving me worries. It's not intuitive at all, and I fell into the trap of the br not remembering the pattern and tempo (luckily I did...). I see this has been a common problem for forum members, so I should be able to fix it when I get into arrangement editing properly.

[SteveG]

The drums are real easy once you get the hang of them. Try recording something to a rhythm then go back over it adding intro, fills etc. Go over the top ... you have 50 changes to play with! Dont forget to try different kits too. Once you have messed with it a while it becomes pretty straightforward.

[Greeny]

It'll be second nature in a couple of weeks! 

I really like the different kit sounds - totally changes the feel of the rhythm and gives lots of variation possibilities. The '808' one made me chuckle - took me straight back to the 80's when I started all this nonsense!

[64Guitars]

2. The rhythm arranging is a right pain for a new user. I'm sure it will be easy after a while, but right now, it's the one thing thats giving me worries. It's not intuitive at all, and I fell into the trap of the br not remembering the pattern and tempo (luckily I did...). I see this has been a common problem for forum members, so I should be able to fix it when I get into arrangement editing properly.

Patterns are not meant to be used on their own in a recording. They are just the building blocks for creating an arrangement. So, it's not too surprising that pattern tempos are not saved independently, as the tempo will be saved in each step of the arrangement. The mistake that beginners often make is to record a song with the drum machine in Pattern Mode rather than Arrangement Mode. You should always create an arrangement for your songs and specify the tempo there. Arrangements needn't be complicated. They can be as simple as a single pattern if that's all you want.

Arrangements are not difficult to understand. They are merely a series of steps in which you tell the drum machine what to play. For each step, you specify the pattern to be played, the measure of the song in which the pattern should start playing, and the tempo. Each step repeats until the starting measure of the next step. For example, here's a simple 3-step arrangement:

	Starting
Step	Measure	Pattern	Tempo
1	1	P314:Metro	120.0
2	3	P158:BLUS1-V1	120.0
3	51	P327:BREAK	120.0

This arrangement will play the metronome pattern for the first two measures of the song (as a count-in). Then it will play a blues pattern for 48 measures (from measure 3 to measure 50). Finally, it will play the BREAK pattern starting at measure 51. The BREAK pattern doesn't make any sound. The last step of an arrangement repeats indefinitely (until you press the [STOP] button), so we normally set the last step to pattern P327:BREAK to provide a clean ending to the song. The tempo for each step is 120 bpm. In a simple arrangement like this, the tempo will usually be the same for each step. But, in more complicated arrangements, you might want to specify a different tempo for certain steps where the song speeds up or slows down.

You should start each song with a simple arrangement like this. Even a 1-step arrangement will do. This allows you to specify the tempo of the song. The arrangement is saved with the song so, the next time you load that song, the tempo will be exactly where you set it in the arrangement. Later, as your song develops, you can add more steps to the arrangement to make it more interesting.

Read section 4 of the manual ("Using rhythm"), then dive in and create a simple arrangement. You'll soon see that it's not very difficult.

You might also find these tutorials helpful:

https://songcrafters.org/64guitars/BR/Tutorials/Rhythm_Guide_Intro.html

https://songcrafters.org/64guitars/BR/Tutorials/Arrangement_Example.html

https://songcrafters.org/articles/create_a_simple_drum_sequence.html

[Greeny]

Thanks 64Guitars - I'm already getting the hang of it! I just need to overcome my inherent laziness in rhythm editing - it's just not as much fun as playing guitar!!!!

[guitarron]

Thanks 64Guitars - I'm already getting the hang of it! I just need to overcome my inherent laziness in rhythm editing - it's just not as much fun as playing guitar!!!!

aint that the truth