PERFORM

PERFORM is the stage view: a screen for playing a song live, built to be read in a dark room at arm's length. The keys become the performance surface: white keys mute tracks and trigger punch-in effects, black keys launch scenes, and the four knobs are throws that sweep the whole mix. While the music plays, PERFORM is locked against accidents.

On the FM-1 now

The screen

SELECT turns to PERFORM, the third view, right after MIX, so the mixer and the stage view are one detent apart while you play.

There is no hint line here: the screen is built so the keys and the knobs explain themselves. The keybed tag says MUTES.

The keys

The 16 white keys and 11 black keys are the surface. From the left, white keys count 1 to 16.

White keys 1 to 8: mutes

This is how you drop a whole group of parts in and out on the bar, not one at a time. Only as many keys act as you have tracks.

Pad mutes

A kit is one track, so muting it takes all the drums out. For the classic drop, the kick out and the hats on, mute the kit's pads instead: hold SEL and tap white keys 1 to 8. Each is a pad of the kit, pad 1 on key 1.

The kit is the selected track if it is a KIT, otherwise the first KIT track. With LAUNCH on BAR the pads land on the next bar, on BEAT the next beat; with LAUNCH OFF or the music stopped they land at once. A pad mute is the pad's own MUTE (the PAD menu's row): it stays when you leave PERFORM, and it is saved with the project.

Careful: every press of SEL on PERFORM is also a tempo tap. Two presses between 0.15 and 2 seconds apart set the tempo to that gap, so hold SEL once and tap all the pads you want in that one hold.

Pro tip: for a drop on the bar, hold SEL, tap the kick's key a beat before the line, and let go. Do the same on a later drop to bring the kick back in.

White keys 9 to 16: punch-ins

Punch-ins are effects you play. Hold the key to have it on; tap it to latch it on, and tap a latched one to let it go. Leaving PERFORM or stopping the music lets every latch go, so a stutter never follows you to another screen. While one is latched the header says PUNCH LATCHED.

They work on the sequencer's events, so there is no audio buffer to run out.

FILL

Hold FILL. Steps whose condition is FILL play, and steps marked !FILL rest; a KIT track that has no such steps plays a busier beat instead (sound tracks without them play on as they were). Nothing is stored: let go and the groove returns. Set the conditions in SEQ and KIT.

Black keys: scenes

A scene remembers what plays: which stored pattern (A to P) each track's SEQ is on, and which tracks are muted. There are eleven, A to K, one on each black key. When a scene lands, every track it caught with SEQ on switches to that pattern on the same bar line, as the mutes change. While the music is stopped it lands at once. A track whose SEQ was off when you captured keeps playing what it plays, and recordings and KIT tracks play on as they are.

Scenes build forward: set up a section, capture it into a key, set up the next, capture that, and then play from key to key. Scenes are saved with the project, with each track's pattern in them.

A scene remembers which slot, A to P, each track played, not a copy of it: store a different pattern into that slot later and the scene brings back the new one. It overrules a pattern switch you had queued on a track, and edits you had not stored go into the pattern the track was on, so nothing is lost. A scene captured in a song saved before 1.4.1 has no patterns in it yet: it keeps switching the mutes until you capture it again. How scenes sit with chains is in Stored patterns and chains.

Show it on the FM-1

The key lights

On this view the key lights are the stage display: lit means playing (a track, the scene, a punch-in), dark means muted, and blinking means queued. While you hold SEL, white keys 1 to 8 show the kit's pads instead. The lights are on or off only, so a muted track is simply dark.

The throws

K1 to K4 are four throws for the whole mix:

They move continuous values only, and they stay where you leave them, because encoders cannot feel your hand. The white tick on each bar is the project's own value. Press SHIFT+SEL and all four glide back to the project's values over one bar. A throw is never saved: the song is never changed by it.

Turning the same value somewhere else, such as the delay's LEVEL on MAIN FX or DRIVE's GAIN, takes over from the throw: the value goes on from where the throw left it, and that is the project's value from then on.

Careful: a throw only works on an effect that is switched on. See MAIN FX.

Tempo

SEL taps the tempo: tap along with the drummer, and it follows. Its press is the tap, also when you hold it for pad mutes. The second tap already sets it, and the average of the last three gaps keeps it steady.

The stage lock

PERFORM is the one view that guards itself while the music plays.

• No destructive gesture works. Holding SHIFT+REC says LOCKED: PERFORM, and nothing is cleared. Stopped, the lock is off: PERFORM answers like any other view (NOTHING TO DELETE HERE).
• A knocked SELECT does not leave the stage. While the transport plays or records (the count-in too), the first detent toward KEYS says TURN AGAIN TO LEAVE, and a second within a second leaves. Toward MIX, its neighbour, one detent goes straight there, playing or not, so you can reach the faders in one move. Stopped, PERFORM is a view like the others and one detent leaves either way.
• HOME stays. A tap of HOME does not leave PERFORM: you leave it with SELECT, on purpose.

Show it on the FM-1

Shift on PERFORM

Hold HOME and PERFORM keeps its stage and puts a band over the throws: white keys 1 to 8 stage mutes, the black keys capture a scene, SEL brings the throws back.

Show it on the FM-1

Recording on PERFORM

REC here is the ordinary record, an overdub: it records the notes you play. It does not record scene changes, mutes or throws.

Playing a set

PERFORM works for a whole set when you prepare it in the other views first:

1. Build each part on its own and store the patterns (SEQ).
2. For each section, mute what should not play, and capture it into a black key.
3. On stage, launch scenes on the bar, throw the filter into the chorus, punch in a fill.
4. Between songs, load the next project from PROJECT. Loading needs a short silence, because the FM-1 reads its flash and changes every sound.

Troubleshooting