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I have an ostenato bass pattern programmed in and would like to have an accompanying beat, using kick, snare, hihat. But you can't play the EDS-8i using the sequencer unless you stick to the root key (i.e. it will transpose the notes and they no longer fall on the kick, snare, etc.) Is there any way to prevent key tranposition by the sequencer, that I've missed?

Not sure what exactly is your problem, but you can assign any midi note number to any EDSi instrument.
Tho you can not assign a range to them, if that is what you mean

Ok, say I have a bass pattern like a simple blues run, if i hit the C key, it will go C, E, G, A, Bb, A, G, E, if I hit F, it will go F, A, C, D, Eb, D, C, A. So that part works.

If I try to add a kick on the first beat and a snare on the 5th, i run into problems because no matter what note number I set the EDSI instrument to respond on, you can only program a drumbeat starting on one key. Try the programmed sequences in a modern Yamaha, Korg, Roland workstation, they provide the bassline and also a drumbeat behind it. You can move the note around - the pitch of the bass and whatever rhythm instruments are programmed into it, change correctly. But the drumbeat remains static behind it. I guess it's just not possible to do this on the Noah - 'turn your noah into a beatbox' the advert says. Not likely - unless you want to stay in one key, and one key only.

I don't have a Noah, sorry for that part.
What I know is that the EDSi is a 'simple' drummodule, just responding to streight midi notes (CWA talks about 'the fun loaded' drummachine ).
I guess that the Noah doesn't offer the 'self accompagning' playing style of the Yamaha and Roland type of workstations.
Sorry, can't help you really, maybe other P members can shine a light about it

It's not exactly like the Yamaha PSR self-accompaniment, you actually build the sound (loop) up by creatively combining different elements, using effects in non-standard ways, etc. It's more of a techno-ish sound (especially because the drum beat never changes). I'm guessing the way to achieve it would be to make a sound program for one of the Noah synths that creates a drumbeat, always at the same tempo no matter what key you hit. This was just a weekend project to figure out the ins and outs of the Noah's arpeggiator and sequencer, something I never had the time to look at before.

I'm no fan of Yamaha auto-accompanying synths, especially after living in a house with people that were hehe. But if you captured the MIDI that they generated and brought it into a MIDI editor like Cubase, and tweaked it a bit, it might be a quick way to generate drums for a piece.

The fact is that a step sequencer works that way, it follows the notes you play. You should find the way to send one note to a dedicated MIDI channel for it and hold it (sustain pedal activates the hold button in step seq. without passing it to the controlled synth) while you play the bass on different keys. Multizone MIDI controllers can do that. It's also much better to have the rythm steady and not retriggered by hand each time.

On 2006-03-20 15:19, alfonso wrote:
The fact is that a step sequencer works that way, it follows the notes you play.

Well, take my Korg MS2000 (please). It manages to preserve a beat sync'd with basslines. The melodic elements follow the keys, the percussive do not. An interesting effect - admittedly it would be tiresome on more than 1 or 2 songs. I managed to accomplish what I wanted by using 2 minimaxes (q-kick and mini-snare) and a prodyssey (hp noise for hihat). I just thought there might be some trick or way to use the eds 8i instead, using only one slot instead of 3, and also getting better sounding drums.

Use key range in the midi manager to limit eds8i to 0-50, other synths above - works ok