Working with the playback options

So, one of the cool features about the Step Sequencer is its different pattern modes. So I am going to turn on the Step Sequencer. And remember from before, we have our Pattern menu here and this is where we can select all the different patterns. So if I am playing. (music playing) Select different pattern, but notice that there are notes listed by these patterns. See this says C-1, C #-1, D-1, so on and so forth. So the reason why they have these notes is because we can actually trigger these patterns from the keyboard. And of course, you can trigger the pattern that's listed by the particular note.

But in order to do that, we have to make sure that Pattern mode is on. So I am going to turn on Pattern mode, and then there's a couple of different ways it works, and we choose that from this menu here. So let's just start from the beginning of it. Let's set it to One-Shot Trigger. And so, if I play a C-1 on the keyboard, it starts the sequence, and it plays, and then it plays through the sequence, and it stops. So it just does it one time. And if I play a different note, it's going to trigger a different pattern.

And it's just going to play through it once. So the cool thing is that when I play different notes, I am triggering new patterns. Notice when I play a different note, it starts the pattern from the beginning. So you can see that happening. So then the other mode we have here is Sustain. What this means is as long as I'm holding the note for that pattern, so C-1, it's just going to continue the cycle through this pattern.

If I play a different note, it's going to start that pattern from the beginning and it will keep playing it as long as I am holding the note. The next mode we have is Toggle mode and this one is pretty interesting, because what it allows us to do is switch patterns in the middle and it picks up where the last one left off. So for example, I will start by playing C-1, so we've got this pattern and then I will play D-1. So I just picked up and I will switch patterns. So as I am playing, I can just keep switching patterns, but the progress of the pattern doesn't ever stop.

This is a really cool way to perform, because if you have all of your different patterns stored here, then you can just trigger them on the fly, and it does it all in time and it transitions between them, so it can be a pretty cool way of working. The other mode that we have is Toggle on Step 1. And so that's similar to toggle, but the difference is that it will wait till it gets to step 1 to switch patterns. So I've already pressed a different key, and it will take a moment and it switches only when it reaches the first step.

So those are the different pattern modes that we have in the Step Sequencer. And notice that next to that, we have this thing that's called Voice Mute mode, and this kind of, in some ways, it complements the pattern modes. And what this allows us to do, when it's on--so I am going to go ahead and turn it on--is to mute the voices in the Assignment section by playing the note associated with that voice on the keyboard. So for example, if I play C1, you'll see that the Mute button lights up on the first voice in the Assignment section.

So the way that I can use that in more of a musical manner is if I have my sequence playing--so I will start a sequence by playing C-1--and now I want to mute the kick, so I am going to just press C1 on the keyboard. So I have muted the kick, and if I want to unmute it, I press C1 again. So the Voice Mute mode is really good for tweaking things live, because it allows you to mute and unmute different voices on the fly. So I am going to go ahead and turn off this Voice Mute mode and the Pattern mode as well.

So let's say that we programmed one of these cool patterns in our Step Sequencer, but I want to do further tweaking in Logic's arrangement. Fortunately, there is an easy way to transfer. So what I am going to do is move the Ultrabeat window over a little bit. And down here, next to where it says pattern, notice when I hover over this, if I mouse, it says Drag to Arrange Window. So I am going to do that. I am going to click and drag. And so what it does is it creates a MIDI region with all of the sequence information from my drum pattern.

So if I hit Play now, then you can here that it's playing it. So what I am going to actually want to do is turn off the Step Sequencer, because now it's being triggered just by the MIDI information that's in the Arrangement window. So if I leave the Step Sequencer on, then there's a chance that I could accidentally double- trigger the voices if I hit Play. So you just want to make sure once you've transferred your pattern to just turn off the Step Sequencer and then everything is being controlled from Logic's arrangement. (music playing) So now that we've explored the Pattern mode and how to transfer our patterns from the Step Sequencer to the arrangement in Logic, in the next video, let's explore the Step Edit mode in Ultrabeat.