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The BeatPad Melodic View |
![]() Melodic Pattern View |
BeatPad will open in the melodic view. Across the top (to the right of the "BeatPad" title bar) are the letters and numbers representing the 32 patterns you can work with. Just below the title bar is the pattern "overview". In the overview you can see every aspect of a pattern. As we go through the following screens, watch how the overview mirrors the controls below. There are 16 steps in a pattern; both the overview and controls below are devided into 16 columns, one for each step. Dotted lines seperate the steps, and solid lines seperate the four beats. The top portion of the overview has dashes/lines for each step, representing the pitch (higher on the screen means a higher pitch), and the length of each line represents the duration. VERY short notes may show up as a single pixel, while a note that is tied to the next (longer than one step) will be a very long line touching the seperators between the steps. The bottom half of the overview has two parts for each step, on the left is a small solid bar graph representing the 'velocity' of each step. Velocity refers to how "hard" a note is struck, but you can think of it as volume. The taller the bar is, the louder the note will sound. On the right is a small 'octave' indicater. A pattern can cover a range of 5 octaves, and this open pointer will move up and down depending on what octave the step is set to (more on this below). |
![]() Tab 1 - Pitch Controls |
Beneath the overview are four tabs. Each tab contains different controls, and you can switch between them at any time by simply tapping on the tab name. All of BeatPad's controls can be changed WHILE it is playing (except the menu items), so feel free to tap on the play button in the lower right corner while you explore the controls. To the left you see a screen shot where the 'pitch' tab is selected. Here you can set the pitch and octave of each step. On the screen above, all of the pitch controls are set in the center. Later when we talk about transposing or changing the center pitch, it will be refering to this centered position of the pitch controls. You can move the controls up or down six half-steps (the smallest unit of pitch in the western diatonic or chromatic scales). Simply tap where you want the control to move, or you can tap on it and drag it to a new position, or you can drag right or left across the screen to position all of the controls with one stroke. Notice how the dashes in the overview reflect the pitch controls. Below the pitch controls are the octave controls (open rectangles). These also have a center position, and can be moved up to raise a note one or two octaves, or lower a note one or two octaves. Raising an octave will play the note at a much higher pitch, the equivalent of 12 half-steps (that's the entire range of the above pitch controls). See in this screen how the pointed octave indicators in the overview mirror these octave controls. Changing the octaves of a few steps to see how it sounds. |
![]() Tab 2 - Duration Controls |
Tap on the second tab to see the duration controls. Each note can be played very short and quickly, or for the full length of the step. This bar-graph shows the length of each step. Like the pitches, you can tap where you want a duration to be set to, or you can drag the pen to quickly adjust all sixteen durations. There are twelve levels at which you can set these, the shorter the bar, the shorter the note. Beneath the bar-graph are a row of circles. Tap on a circle to "tie" that note to the next. This means that even though BeatPad moves on to the next step, the first note will continue to play, and now the duration of the second note will decide when to stop the note. Any number of steps can be tied together, and you can turn many on or off by dragging the pen across the circles. On the screen shown to the left you can see that the first few steps have been tied together; notice how the pitch/duration lines in the overview are now joined together for those steps. They are now all based on the pitch of the first step.
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![]() Tab 3 - Velocity Controls |
Tap on the third tab to see the velocity controls. This bar-graph works much like the duration controls except that now you are changing the velocity, or volume, of each note. The term "velocity" is used because for some instruments a note that is struck harder (a higher velocity) may have a different sound quality rather than simply being louder. For example a piano has a harsher sound when the keys are hit hard and quickly than when the keys are played gently. BeatPad can control a wide range of MIDI instruments, and some may reflect this concept of velocity rather than simply volume. Notice that the overview has a smaller version of this graph under the pitch area. With the overview you can see information about pitch duration and velocity regardless of which tab is currently visible. Also notice the row of small boxes beneath the tabbed controls. These are the mutes for each step. Tap on one of these to mute, or silence, that step of the pattern. In the screen to the left there are three notes muted, and this is reflected in the overview by the note pitch/duration dashes being erased. The second note (in the center of the screen) is still drawn in the overview because it is tied to a previous step. |