Micro BR - About Patterns And Arrangements

Patterns are not meant to be used on their own in a recording. They are just the building blocks for creating an arrangement. So, it's not too surprising that pattern tempos are not saved independently, as the tempo will be saved in each step of the arrangement. The mistake that beginners often make is to record a song with the drum machine in Pattern Mode rather than Arrangement Mode. You should always create an arrangement for your songs and specify the tempo there. Arrangements needn't be complicated. They can be as simple as a single pattern if that's all you want.

Arrangements are not difficult to understand. They are merely a series of steps in which you tell the drum machine what to play. For each step, you specify the pattern to be played, the measure of the song in which the pattern should start playing, and the tempo. Each step repeats until the starting measure of the next step. For example, here's a simple 3-step arrangement:

	Starting
Step	Measure	Pattern	Tempo
1	1	P314:Metro	120.0
2	3	P158:BLUS1-V1	120.0
3	51	P327:BREAK	120.0

This arrangement will play the metronome pattern for the first two measures of the song (as a count-in). Then it will play a blues pattern for 48 measures (from measure 3 to measure 50). Finally, it will play the BREAK pattern starting at measure 51. The BREAK pattern doesn't make any sound. The last step of an arrangement repeats indefinitely (until you press the [STOP] button), so we normally set the last step to pattern P327:BREAK to provide a clean ending to the song. The tempo for each step is 120 bpm. In a simple arrangement like this, the tempo will usually be the same for each step. But, in more complicated arrangements, you might want to specify a different tempo for certain steps where the song speeds up or slows down.

You should start each song with a simple arrangement like this. Even a 1-step arrangement will do. This allows you to specify the tempo of the song. The arrangement is saved with the song so, the next time you load that song, the tempo will be exactly where you set it in the arrangement. Later, as your song develops, you can add more steps to the arrangement to make it more interesting.

Read section 4 of the manual ("Using rhythm"), then dive in and create a simple arrangement. You'll soon see that it's not very difficult.

You might also find these tutorials helpful:

http://www.geocities.com/sixtyfourguitars/BossBr/Tutorials/Rhythm_Guide_Intro.html

http://www.geocities.com/sixtyfourguitars/BossBr/Tutorials/Arrangement_Example.html

http://microrecorders.org/articles/create_a_simple_drum_sequence.html


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