Hello, I usually write down percussion pattern with MS-Excel. The notation is quite simple but sufficient enough to keep the pattern in mind. So I had the idea to export the Excel sheet music to SP-404SX pattern file.

I have written some MS Excel VBA code lines to edit and export SP-404SX pattern files. Tested with SP firmware 1.08, Windows 7 and MS-Excel 2007 & 2010

I call it "SheetMusic2Pattern". The project is still under development. Release V5 (2014-11-16) is available now. The following diagram shows the place where SheeMusic2Pattern can work for you:

Check it out: http://denken24.de/?p=188

Any feedback is appreciated! Many thanks to other similar projects..

Over 300 visits but no feedback What have I done wrong

Hi, sorry about no replies. I don't think I have viewed this before. I'm pretty new to the machine, so I've focused my attention of working in the box, rather than looking at Daw/midi-applications. Your editor looks impressive on your site. Well done! The most creative use of Excel I've ever seen. All programming etc is like latin to me, so it's a bit hard to digest. But I get the main idea is to write my patterns in an Excel spreadsheet and then export back into the SP, right?

I could see this speeding up some things. On the other hand,for me personally the idea of making stuff in the SP is to get away from working in a computer. And I'm on a mac. But I guess there might be workarounds for that.

Hopefully others will chime in with more feedback!

I haven't tried this for many reasons:

1.) No access to actual Microsoft Office (running linux)
2.) No access to any SP at all right now

It's possible to be curious about something that you won't comment on for reasons due to obvious access.

If I had one or the other, I could try my best to find something to say that'd be useful, but without either, I can only curiously read the post then move one.

Good luck, my friend, on getting feedback.

Gotta say I didn't understand what this is or what it does the first couple of times I checked your page. I knew it does something cool, but the value isn't obvious so I really underestimated your work. Thought this was a way of visually writing a beat only, didn't quite understand the whole exporting-a-pattern-with-sounds-to-the-SX feature. That is really clever and if I used the SX differently def I'd use your work.

That said you've given me a bit of inspiration to get a spreadsheet like OpenOffice or whatever for composing on my Europa sequencer. The Europa only plays 1 bar at a time when composing which kinda kills my inspiration for writing synth melodies. Which is annoying because it's perfect for the synth I run it with (SH-32). Using a spreadsheet will help a lot with keeping notes relative to the rhythm & be a great way of backing up songs I can't be arsed to SysEx. Hopefully. Anyway, you've helped improve my workflow so thank you!

Thank you for your feedback.

I have identified an issue on the SP when double-triggering the same sample at different velocity values in a short sequence. I hear a click noise when the second trigger (at lower velocity) is played. I assume that this happens if the double-trigger sequence is shorter than the sample/wav length.

Example: Example: Play 1/16 notes on a surdo. The complete surdo sample/wav takes 1.5 seconds to complete. The surdo is triggered a second time after 0.2 seconds at a lower velocity.



See Hacking the 404SX in this forum.

I tried to use it but seems so complicated, i'am usig mac and i dont know if it works.
but i liked the idea to make patterns and export to sp, if it was simple as make music on sp it would be amazing, cuz people like the simplicity of sp404, i think most are people like me that do not like to make music in front of a computer.

sorry about my bad english.