I'm trying to use the 404 as a glorified WAV file player for a live show. Most songs exceed 99 bars. I want to use patterns so an external MIDI controller (in this case an Adrenalinn III) can start/stop them.

My strategy was to bounce the WAVs out of my DAW -- one for the first half of the song and one for the second. Each one is triggered once in a pattern. I queue the first pattern up for MIDI start (HOLD+Pattern). When it's started (there's a bar of silence at the top) then I queue the second pattern, which starts right after the first pattern is finished. There's again silence at the end of the second pattern to give me time to stop it from looping around.

The problem is there's a slight glitch in the sounds when switching from pattern one to pattern two. Any ideas to avoid this? Can the 404 be hacked or tricked to go beyond 99 bars in a pattern?

I read the 404 hack thread and I didn't see where it specifically covered this.

Thanks for any ideas.

cut the tempo in half ?

this should give you double of 99 bars

Yeah, I thought of that. Sorry I didn't mention it. Thanks for the suggestion.

But the tempo is coming from the Adrenalinn III and its beat-synced effects. Cutting the tempo in half there would halve the beat-sync effects as well. Hmmm... I'd hate to have to edit the Adrenalinn effects to have 2x rate, but maybe it's possible.

i'm not totally sure what your trying to achieve, but why would you put pre-recorded songs on the sp to then put them into patterns?? why not just use the midi controller to trigger individual pads that these tracks are on?? they can play for as long as they are.......unless you have more than 99 bars that you want to loop back to the beginning??

I think I mispoke in saying the Adrenalinn III is a MIDI controller. It's not, or at least it's very limited. There's a footswitch that can generate start/stop messages and it puts out a MIDI beat clock. That's it though.

The beat clock is kind of the important thing. It makes sure the tempo of the track is sync-ed with the Adrenalinn effects (both in time and phase).

You've got me thinking, though. I wonder if I have something else lying around that could assist...

is it possible for you to set the adrenalinn to give out start/stop messages but not midi clock? if it can, and i understand you right, you can then set the 404 to play on command but at whatever bpm and then the adrenalinn will be at what bpm you need for effects and be in sync with the actual audio

That's a hella interesting idea dman5000. I may not be able to try this until next week (when I'm next scheduled to practice with my guitarist / Adrenalinn owner). The manual says it does have a mode that neither sends nor receives MIDI beat clock. I would assume the start/stop commands are separate from that.

Thanks to all for the ideas. I'll report my findings when I can.

so, if you are sending midi notes to trigger the samples on your 404 by playing patterns on the adrenalinn, is it also possible to change patterns on the adrenalinn via midi messages? basically i want to do the same thing as you (playing one songpart by firing up one midi note at the begining of a pattern) but i also would like to control the sequencer (i.e. adrenalin) by my behringer fcb 1010 footcontroller that can send midi pcs, ccs, or note messages.
is this possible with the adrenalinn?

sorry for hijacking, but i'm searching like crazy for the right midi sequencer to control my 404, and maybe the adrenalinn is the solution. during my research it didn't seem like there is any drum machine out there that would be capable of this.

the 404 doesn't recognize pattern change informations... no pattern switching via midi! you only can start samples, so find a workaround for that. ...and yo bass bert... you could program the qy and use the 404 as a sound modul...

The Adrenalinn isn't sending MIDI notes, just the start/stop message and the beat clock. And I agree that the 404 can't pattern-change via MIDI.

I'm about halfway to verifying dman5000's suggestion. I was indeed able to put an entire song in a single sample (actually, I put multi-track files in) and then make it part of a 99 bar pattern at 40 bpm. That should allow the song to be over 9 minutes if necessary (yikes!). What I haven't done yet is hook it up to the Adrenalinn again. Might see my buddy with it this weekend.

Truth be told I'd rather cascade two patterns to give me a little more flexibility with song endings. Still not sure how objectionable the pattern switching glitch would be live. I'm just taking things slow and simple here.

About glitching, I'm sure the 404 can't do anything clever like auto xfade. I can suggest you make sure the samples are already edited to fade in and out from and to zero level - it can be a very fast fade (less than a beat) and won't be heard, but it ensures there isn't any transient glitch at the ends of the samples.

You really need to ensure that every time the first sample ends the next sample takes over right away. But here you're relying on 2 things being in sync - the 404 audio playback speed (the sample-rate) and the midi clock (external). The 404 audio rate can change and drift a little over time (any digital playback can), meaning the sample may take a little more or less time to finish and for long samples that could be some beats difference. Meantime, the external midi clock will be a little different every time and over 99 bars that too could amount to several beats difference in running time compared to the sample.

If it were me, I'd arrange to play the samples manually OR split the samples into shorter "loop" sections, that way the error from clock drift is minimal and hopefully not noticeable.

Jim

Yeah, Jim is right, smaller loops and a combination of manual pad play is the solution here.

Remember though that a certain kind of lag glitch-ing can also be caused by batteries that are dying. ( Or issues with the adapter if you're unlucky. )

More interesting info. Thanks all.

The problem then is I'll have my hands on a bass for the entire song, making pattern changes difficult.

If a single sample is 3 minutes long (an entire pre-recorded backing for a 'song'), you could just trigger it once and play along with your bass.

I don't think the SP-404 is too unreliable to do that at all!

I've used my SP-404 for a house-warming party and had a couple of full songs on there, one under each pad. Using the [hold] button, I could still continue to trigger some DJ-style samples (and MFX) in between and I used the mic to spice up the show a bit (and announce songs) as well.

This was done with commercial music, not my own, but it worked just fine. Most of the time I had my hands free entirely.

Of course this is only one way of doing such a show, I barely really 'performed'. I could have made remixes or perform more pad play in there for sure, but I think it's easier to start with a very simple performance flow and make it a bit more sophisticated from there, instead of thinking about it the other way around.

I'm not sure what you exactly want to achieve. The threads going on long enough to get confused about the original need!

I think you're not content with the 404 just providing a single backing track and instead want the freedom to jam on a bit until you decide to end, but the thing with the tempo FX of the Adrenalinn puzzles a bit because the tempo of that won't affect the tempo of the backing apart from getting a sync start with the 404 pattern sequencer. You'll only get reliable results if your backing is from a midi sequencer that recreates your backing track but broken down into patterns or that you can pick from anytime. Since you already have your hands full, changing pattern needs to be done by a foot-controller.

I'm really interested in this problem, because I've a plan to do something similar, but I also don't want to be in the "playing along to a backing track and stuck with that" zone. I've got an FCB1010 pedal controller and already done some note trigger presets for it but other stuff's got in the way of working up some kind of set for now.
The problem I see is there's no way to change 404 patterns externally - sending it a midi note will play a sample pad, not a pattern, so I'd try using small loops instead - but that places a lot of work down with the feet and probably mean playing sitting down, which I'd rather not do.

Jim