I'm not a native English speaker, so sorry if my posts weren't clear enough. I'm not saying "you don't need layers" I'm saying "it could be improved". Basically, what I mean is:parawave wrote:Not very far sighted. Of course you can build arps and lead sequences with one layer of Massive, Serum, Hive, Sylenth1 or whatever. But than don't wonder why it sounds powerless and thin, or sometimes just boring. If you watch some tutorials or track arrangements of professional musicians you see one common thing, a musical element within a track (lets say a background arp melody) is NEVER a single synth instance. It's mixture of 3-4 synth instances with slight differences in their mixing or fx-chain (layers). So let's say you have created a cool 4-synth sequences. Now you have to adjust a small thing, or want to reuse it in another project - bothersome. Very few DAWs have a good workflow in terms of storing internal chains in a quick and reusable way. With RAPID it's just one patch.recursive one wrote:Tl;dr: the layered structure is potentially a great thing but in its current state it is more useful for making presets of the kind "look, mom, I've pressed one key and it plays a song", but for making sounds for use in tracks - not so much.
When I read stuff like that it seems to me that you never really build and played a patch with 4 layers. I think, at leas 4 layers are necessary to create a good sounding and dynamic arp patch that really stands out. In terms of layer naming at least I would use the following:
1. Bass Arp | 2. Mid Arp | 3. High Arp |4. Mid Pad
use an additional shared fx-chain in Layer 8 and build some cool dry/wet macros. The thing is, after I invest 20 minutes on a really complex patch I can just save it as preset and reuse it everywhere. May swap and change a few things, but it's way more efficient for your production time, so you can invest more time in the creative process and composing. It's also alot easiert to play, and many people like to perform with complex patches. Same for splitted sequences.
It's absolutely not true that layers are an unnecessary thing. They give you so much.
In order to use the layer sturcture effectively you need a set of global controls, like envelopes, LFOs and step-sequencers able to affect ALL layers at once.
So please consider it a feature request
As for the cases where you build a "musical element", as you call it, of several interplaying parts within one instance of the plugin, you need separate outputs. Rapid isn't multiout plugin, or it is? I may be missing some things as there is no manual ATM.
As for my own music, I've made some uplifting and progressive trance tracks in the past, with up to 3/4 layers per a bass or a lead, so I know what you are talking about. I think it is more convenient to handle it when you have separate tracks in the DAW, it gives you more freedom in using external effects and different routing schemes.
