Stratosphere preset strum patterns

[drummer1]

How can I get more than six slots for customized strum patterns?

[drummer1]

Anyone? Greg, are you lurking about here?

For the time being, I'm running several instances of Stratosphere to get more slots. Six slots per instance, of course. I can live with that, but it's not the most elegant way to do things.

Strato sounds great and I like the strum engine. Even with the humanization feature, though, I find I still need more user preset slots to add a mute here and a sustain there, in addition to the basic pattern for a rhythm guitar track, to add those slight variations for realism that a real player would do (either intentionally or subconsciously).

A related question: Is it possible to trigger a pattern to start in its middle (or somewhere else beside the beginning)? That would sometimes "get at" the variation I have in, say, the second half of a pattern that I would like to throw into the BEGINNING of some other measure.

If I'm the only one with this "dilemma," maybe I'm missing a bigger picture, i.e., going about this all wrong in the first place. Someone let me know if I'm totally off base here.

[Gregjazz]

Sorry about the delay--been working hard to get a new library into beta as of today.

So is the need for more slots really based on needing more variation in the patterns? Like, rather than having completely unique patterns in each slot, you might have the same strumming pattern with a few smaller alterations--say an extra strum or effect?

[drummer1]

Hey Greg, glad to hear about a new library in the works!

Correct, I would like to get more variation on a basic pattern to approximate what a guitarist would do throughout a song.

Not to go all out with an essay here, but expanding on your question in the interest of clarity, say you have a basic pattern, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. A rhythm player would play along with this pattern, but would certainly throw in a "1-e-and-a" now and then, or a mute on the 3, or a couple hard downstrokes for emphasis, or "1(quarter note sustain) - 2(quarter note sustain) - 3(quarter note sustain) - mute-mute-mute-mute (sixteenths)," etc. Beside these more "major" variations, also "smaller alterations," as you say. Just an extra strum here and there, like drummers' ghost notes. They often just kind of happen, but add realism. Consequently, the slots fill up quickly.

But I wouldn't want these smaller alterations to occur at random, like leave it up to the strum engine. I would want to control where I place the alterations. Controlled randomness! Hence, the need for more slots.

The adjustable strum humanization is great, BTW -- really makes a difference! We're not talking about that here. I think you clearly understand that -- just making sure I haven't misguided my meaning.

So, to achieve the above variations, I've been wanting more slots. As it is, I accomplish this by adding more instances of Strato. And I can live with that (although a bit cumbersome), but it sounds like maybe you have something else planned. Something more "efficient" than piling up additional instances of Strato.

Thanks for bearing with this rather long "exposition." I hope I have not muddied up an understanding of what I am trying to accomplish.

The sound of Stratosphere is so good (along with your other stuff), it seems appropriate to want it to perform just as well in the context of song writing.

If I am the only one on the planet barking about this, then I would hate to put you through the trouble of fixing a "non-issue," but I would guess others would like this ability to add variation, too.

Ok, I'm done already!

[Gregjazz]

Yeah, I totally get what you mean about variance--not just random humanization, but occasionally having an extra strum, or difference in the "ghost notes" (good way of putting it, by the way).

I believe you should be able to mix the single strum keys with strum patterns, so you could incorporate those along with the patterns. We're also aiming to add more control over the strum keys themselves in a future update.

Let me also look into the possibility of additional strumming pattern slots, too.

[rrichard63]

+1 for more than six pattern slots. My reasons are very similar to drummer1's. In the meantime, my workaround is to edit the MIDI after recording it to get more variations.