Sagan Technology has announced the release of Metro 7.5, introducing Music Code and Polyrhythms drum view with auto generation.
Music Code was invented as a way of creating guitar type leads that may be hard to play, complete with intricate bends (including dual MIDI channel), harmony, full chords, trills, tremolo picking and much more. Pitches are specified as half steps from the scale root. It is similar to programming code in that you can call (as in subroutine) or goto a table entry. "Music code", and the accompanying editor, are a part of the lead generator. The lead generator is one of the algorithms used by the new multi-track Rhythm Explorer. With these new tools it is possible to create an online album where each song is recomputed every time it is played. You decide which tracks (or track parts) are static, which are generated and which sync to other tracks harmonically and rhythmically. For a demo of the end result, check out infinite player. All "music code" is stored in an artist preset file so it is possible to use completely different styles by loading different artist preset files. The factory artist preset file comes with over 8000 music code entries.
Polyrhythms drum view with auto generation is a powerful beat creation tool. More information can be found here.
Change Log:
- Lead Generator is almost 4 times faster.
- Improved synchronization between audio and MIDI when tempo changes occur.
- Improved handling of documents opened from a different computer.
- Improved parsing of version numbers.
- Improvements for handling Bluetooth audio.
- Improved plug-in support.
- Improved in-place MIDI file import via drag.
- Improved Rhythm Explorer's Lead Generator algorithms.
- Each track now has independent Rhythm Explorer data for generating multiple Rhythm Explorer concurrently. Each track will now be generated automatically upon playback if both the new 'auto' button is checked and playback starts at the beginning of the section. The Rhythm Explorer selection for each track is set automatically based on the last generation from the RE window. The auto generation will be applied only to the Rhythm Explorer selection. In addition a new Marker type, 'Lead Generator Track', specified from the markers dialog, can be used as a 'Master Marker' for any lead generation track. This 'Master Marker' applies only to single track and overrides all standard markers until another a 'Master Marker' for that track is encountered. Auto generated tracks can sync only to lower numbered auto generated tracks via marker or 'Master Marker'. This is because tracks are generated in order from low to high.
- Record directly from a VST MIDI track. This allows the exact output to be recorded. This is useful, for example, when recording mute/solo changes or the modifications of a poly-rhythm generated drum track in real time.
- In rare cases, was displaying the wrong plug-in presets in the tracks window.
- Stability improvements.
- In some cases the sections window would not redraw if initially off screen (PC only).
- The plug-in windows search string survives a plug-in re-scan.
- Holding the shift and command (ctrl on PC) keys down while opening a document prohibits plug-in edit windows from opening.
- The lead generation type can now be specified at any marker.
- Aux buss views are now saved and restored.
- Synthesized vibrato via pitch bend now also works with external MIDI devices.
- Improved support for rearranging drum names via drag, in all drum views.
- Improved tap tempo.
- Shift-click was broken in grid quantize mode.
- On some occasions a popup window could have appeared in the wrong place.
- Expand subsections could have hung when expanding an empty looped track.
- Support for right-click on track header in aux volume mode to 'add fadeout automation'.
- Support for automatically building a drum set if the VST supports 'effGetMidiKeyName'.
- Fix for MIDI timing when playing to a plug-in embedded in a subsection. Sometimes notes were errantly playing at the beginning of a looped subsection track.
- Pressing the '.' key from the numeric key pad works to change the current bar even during playback now.
- Lead Generator now supports key/velocity switching, strum up and down keys, and user defined continuous controllers.
- New default option for Mix or Render tracks causes the mix to continue until silence is detected.
- Demos have been expanded to allow a full 60 minutes before auto quitting.
- Transposing Markers was errantly skipping chords if they differed in upper or lower case only.
- On the fly recording was broken.
- The preferences location for the PC has changed from the user documents folder to the public user documents folder. Because of this it may be necessary to re-qualify. Alternatively, you could copy your old 'Sagan Technology' folder from the old location to the new one.
- Increased MIDI input buffer size makes input buffer overflow less likely.
- Improved Remote Control with new LED events for 'Cue', 'Play, 'Stop' and 'FF'.
- Remote Control window fixes: Sometimes the header in the Remote Control window would disappear. The Remote Control window was not freeing menu resources properly, on the PC this would use up all menu resources and cause other applications to unexpectedly quit. Dragging to rearrange events in the RC window would sometimes fail.
- Sometimes the mixer window would not reflect the true state of record and play automation.
- Section Window: a new timing option 'Overall Loop' causes playback to continue indefinitely if the play next section button is highlighted.
- The \ (backslash) key now brings up the punch-in dialog and the ' (single quote) key brings up the scale amplitude dialog.
