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MANUAL.md

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MANUAL.md

Griode user manual

This is a very succint user manual. Its goal is to explain Griode's menu structure and some of the non-obvious features.

General concept

Griode separates the Launchpad controls in two categories.

  • There are 64 square pads arranged in a 8x8 grid. This is the main "play area". On the Launchpad Pro, they are pressure sensitive.
  • And then there are round buttons located around the pads. On the Launchpad Pro, there are 8 buttons on each side (32 in total), but in the Launchpad S, Mini, and Mk2, there are 8 buttons on top and 8 buttons on the right (so 16 total).

Griode has many different "gridgets". There is a gridget to play notes, a gridget to select an instrument, another to change the scale, etc. At any given time, only one gridget is shown on the pads, and you can switch to another gridget by using the buttons.

If this was confusing, you can think of the gridgets as different screens, or different apps, each with a different purpose.

Gridget is a porte-manteau between "grid" and "widget"; widget being here a GUI widget.

Buttons

Only the 8 buttons on the top row are used by Griode.

The first 4 buttons are UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT. On almost every Launchpad, there are arrows on these buttons so you can identify them easily; except on the Launchpad Mini. On the Launchpad Mini, the buttons are labeled 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8; so 1 2 3 4 are actually UP DOWN LEFT RIGHT.

The arrows have different purposes in each gridget; for instance, when playing notes, the arrows can be used to transpose the grid, but they have different roles in other gridgets.

The 4 next buttons have different labels on different Launchpad models:

  • SESSION NOTE DEVICE USER (Launchpad Pro)
  • SESSION USER1 USER2 MIXER (Launchpad Mk2 and Launchpad S)
  • 5 6 7 8 (Launchpad Mini)

These buttons are used to navigate the Griode menus, and switch between gridgets.

Internally, they are known as BUTTON_1 BUTTON_2 BUTTON_3 BUTTON_4; but we will refer to them as SESSION/5, NOTE/USER1/6, DEVICE/USER2/7, USER/MIXER/8.

They are mapped to the same functions; in other words, pressing DEVICE on the Launchpad Pro is like pressing USER2 on the Launchpad Mk2 and it's like pressing 7 on the Launchpad Mini.

Menus

The gridgets are organized in 4 menus. In other words, we have 4 menus, and in each menus, we have multiple gridgets. In each menu, there is one "active" or "current" gridget; and there is one "active" or "current" menu. At any given time, the gridget that you see on the grid (and that you can interact with) is the active gridget in the active menu.

The active menu is shown by a bright pink color. The other 3 menus are shown with a pale pink color. You can change the active menu by pushing the corresponding button.

For instance, when you start Griode, it defaults to the NOTE/USER1/6 menu, and you can play some notes. If you push DEVICE/USER2/7, you will then go to that menu (which should show you the instrument selector). Push again NOTE/USER1/6, and you're back where you started.

If you push again the button of the currently active menu, then you cycle through the different grigets in that menu.

That's all!

Structure

Here is the menu structure:

  • SESSION/5
    • loop recorder
    • scale selector
  • NOTE/USER1/6
    • chromatic keyboard
    • diatonic keyboard
    • tonnetz keyboard aka magic tone keyboard
  • DEVICE/USER2/7
    • instrument selector
    • arpeggiator
    • latch
  • USER/MIXER/8
    • rainbow palette
    • volume, chorus, and reverb faders
    • tempo

Instrument selector

When you go to the instrument selector, the grid will be divided in two zones. The five rows on top are used to select the instrment, and the three remaining row on the bottom let you play notes (so that you can test the instrument without having to continuously switch back and forth between the instrument selector and the keyboard).

The top five rows have the following roles.

  • The top row lets you select the SoundFont that you wish to use, and whether you want to pick a melodic patch or a drum kit. If you only have one SoundFont, you should see two buttons lit up: the first one to select a melodic patch, the second one to select a drum kit. Now, if you have two SoundFonts, you will see four buttons. They will let you choose (in this order) melodic instruments from the first file, melodic instruments from the second file, drums from the first file, drums from the second file. Each additional file adds two buttons here, one for melodic and the other for drum patches.
  • The second and third rows let you select the family of instrument (for melodic instruments only). The list of families is available in the GM specification. Of course, if you use a SoundFont that doesn't follow General MIDI conventions, this mapping will have a different meaning.
  • The fourth row lets you select the individual instrument within the family.
  • The fifth row lets you select the variation (when available) for a specific instrument. Most instruments will have only one version (and therefore, that fifth row will only have one active button) but some can have more.

Loading SoundFonts

Griode automatically loads sound fonts from soundfonts/?.sf2. The download script will automatically download a couple of sound fonts, and create symlinks named 0.sf2 and 1.sf2 pointing to these files.

The recommended way to select which sound fonts to use is to place them all in the soundfonts directory (or anywhere else) and then create symlinks in the soundfonts directory.

Example:

  • Download some super cool SF2 file named steinway.sf2
  • Copy steinway.sf2 to the soundfonts directory
  • cd soundfonts; ln -s steinway.sf2 2.sf2
  • And voilà, that SF2 file will be loaded next time you start Griode!