After a month of use, Percussion Factory has some utility to be sure but also is a let down considering what is amiss.
The bug with Cantabile has still not been resolved but there are workarounds which I've posted on the Cantabile forum.
Dropping in your own samples is fun and you can get experimental by using pitched samples, such as a scale of notes of the same voice, and you can come up with some melodies that way. This is nothing new of course but the decimate feature does make for quick variations. I find short samples that are edited before hand with the tails either quick or long as desired is easier to work with.
You can have a single note or a rhythm pattern hold by adjusting the amp envelope with the sound parameters for an infinite sustain - you only need the first note of a sequence for that. This way you can take an existing drum loop, place it on one sequence track and have it loop perfectly while you develop other percussion instruments to go along with it.
Unfortunately you cannot save a custom sound setting, you can only save all sounds with sequences or sequences by themselves. The ability to copy and paste sound settings between instruments would be very useful.
MIDI output is a letdown. UVI apparently cannot output MIDI directly from UVI Workstation. This is a big plus for UJAM products - mind you, I have lots of UVI libraries and lots of UJAM libraries, with little buyers' remorse.
Percussion Factory will generate a two bar MIDI sequence that you can drag onto your daw... but guess what - it doesn't include any of the skip/chance settings. Here is a big missed opportunity. With the skip settings, you can stumble upon some very cool generative type stuff, particularly when using pitched samples and experimenting with the decimate control. But the MIDI generate doesn't record any of that. And being that there is no MIDI output, you can't record the output either!
This is a real shame. But hey - no buyers remorse here because I got it on sale and it's got it's place in my arsenal.
One more technique I'll throw out... sorry for the long post.
I'm going to try this later today or this weekend with my pseudo generative technique: create some very clean pitched samples, drop them on the slots for 8 different instruments, set up all the sequences with a note on every beat and with skip at 87% on all beats. Then I'll record the audio output in Ableton and once I stumble on something cool, use audio to MIDI to convert that section of the sequence to MIDI. OK enuf. My apologies...
