How did you learn the SEQuencer?

[Jdoo]

It's a piece of my JD-XA that I have been putting off learning. Probably because I am such a nOOb with this thing, and sequencing in general.. it hadn't come easy. I've been spoiled by Logic Pro, and having the full power of a DAW. This is an area of the manual that (imo) falls short. I REALLY wish that Ed Diaz could put together something together for this section of the 'XA. Maybe he is.. Anyway, today I spent some quality time with the pattern sequencer section.

After some time, once again not making progress.. i remembered that Katsunori UJIIE San had a video clip with English subtitles where he went through the basics. After a couple of minutes searching, i found it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4JfEtZuFpU was the video I was looking for. At about the 26:00 minute mark he starts constructing a Program that has Analog Drums (kick / snare) and a 2 part analog Bass line. He couples that with a digital organ lead.. and then steps through putting these together into a sequence

UJIIE-San spends about five minutes setting up the drums/ baseline, and hooking up the digital organ lead. With these parts setup, it only takes 2-3 minutes to create the sequence.. but that's all it took to put things in order.. and make it easy for me to understand. 30 minutes later - I am cranking out my own sequences, (and I should say -- putting the analog drum bits that UJIIE-San demo'd to good use.)

Anyway - if anyone else has been struggling with sequencing their JD-XA, or even putting together decent analog Kick and Snare :) - highly recommend the vid.

[Jdoo]

I had completely forgot about RonF’s amazing post on the Sequencer… here-> viewtopic.php?f=57&t=50659

I have to admit that much of this went right past me, when reading (I am more of a visual / show-me kind of learner :) ). Anyway - re-reading Ron’s post now that I’ve gone through the video tutorial and have a little practical experience under my belt — it makes a world more sense to me. Just excellent stuff.

[Jdoo]

Well... with the sequencer a little more under my belt... I decided to pay attention to more of that video I linked above, by Ujiie-san. At around the 12 minute mark, he goes into creating a traditional Analog brass sound. Yikes... I am sure most of this stuff is old hat to many (most all?) of you - but it's one of the reasons I picked up my JD-XA in the first place. I want to be able to program sounds I hear, without resorting to other folks settings. I had a boatload of 'aha' moments - and I don't mean the 80's band.

I dove into watch Ujiie, and followed along. In a just a couple of minutes... I had a really great 'Spandau Ballet True' brass program. No effects.. just tweaking the analog bits and following the Ujiie demo. Really... from 12:00 through 14:00... is synth brass 101 using the JD-XA. I am sure there are many, who will look at this as basic stuff -- but dang. I hadnt spent enough time with the Filter section (and this brass stuff is all about the Filters) to really 'get' the balance & complimentary controls from filter, filter envelop settings, amp envelop, and the Filter Cutoff & Filter Resonance. Honestly.. I had always migrated to the cutoff and resonance controls... for just about everything?? (JDoo<- nOOb).

Bottom line though... Is traditional synth brass can be cranked out (without effects) in a few seconds. Sorry to act so excited - but this is what it's all about for me. :) Learning..

/Jdoo

[zombietactics]

... I hadnt spent enough time with the Filter section (and this brass stuff is all about the Filters) to really 'get' the balance & complimentary controls from filter, filter envelop settings, amp envelop, and the Filter Cutoff & Filter Resonance. Honestly.. I had always migrated to the cutoff and resonance controls... for just about everything?? (JDoo<- nOOb).

Bottom line though... Is traditional synth brass can be cranked out (without effects) in a few seconds. Sorry to act so excited - but this is what it's all about for me. :) Learning...

You'll find that the range of control on slider-based parameters is such that you need to do more "nudging", and not so much "moving" ... that's been true ever since ARP2600 days. This is how you find the sweet zones.