Is the Arranger reliable?

Using Zynthian
1

First of all…Zynthian seems pretty amazing. I’ve been dabbling with it off and on for a few months, but this week I finally sat down to try to make a cover song. I loaded up 3 instruments, and plotted out 3 patterns each in ZynSeq. Launching from the pads worked fantastically. I was thinking of exploring how to trigger them over MIDI, but before that I figured I’d try the Arranger and just lay them out how I want.

When I switched to that view, the cursor (red outline selection box) was moving and pulling the timeline constantly right. Around the 400 time mark I finally got it to stop, but it was seriously messing up where my patterns were in time and they were scattered all over this new super long timeline. I don’t think I was playing when I got here, but I could have been.

I made an effort to try to clean things up, but it was a bit too much. I tried clearing the sequence, but it didn’t seem to have any effect.

I rebooted the device, and somehow things fell (mostly) back into place. But the numbered black cells (which I assume represent patterns) were skipping numbers. And I think the patterns just didn’t get assigned to the right tracks properly - the pads that formerly launched patterns in the pads view just launched empty clips.

At least I’m in a better place, and I thought I could just remove the clip/pattern/black cells and re-add other ones. By default, when I click to add a pattern, it uses “1”. So I went to try to change this pattern - and once in that mode, I’d press the arrow buttons and it would increment by 10. So I can’t choose 2, 3, 4, 5 etc such as what I think I have, but I’m only allowed to choose 1, 11, 21, etc.

I’m thoroughly confused. The arranger feels broken to me, but I completely empathize that I’m working on a tiny screen and its a challenge to adopt a user experience that makes sense coming from a traditional timeline with mouse and keyboard.

So I’m wondering if I’m missing something and I should stick it out - potentially redoing some work and trying again.

Anyway that’s my question - if I should stay away! Again, no judgement, this seems to be a rad project otherwise and I can appreciate less polished aspects that don’t really work. I’ve searched for the arranger on this board and not seeing much, so naturally I’m wondering if it’s being used. The wiki instructions are pretty short, so don’t really get into much of what I was having trouble with.

thanks!

1 Like
2

Hi @ben4real ! A warm welcome.

There is a dedicated document describing the sequencer on the wiki which, although may not be completely up to date, is a good read.

The arranger is flawed. It has had the least attention of the sequencer modules and is probably least used. We spent some time working on the launcher workflows and neglected the poor arranger. We need to find time to improve it but for now you can assume it is suboptimal and fairly rudimentary.

There have been a few people recently trying to use it so there may be some evidence that it is a desirable module / workflow - something that was not necessarily appreciated.

3 Likes
3

Thanks! The honest assessment is much appreciated! I’m a software dev myself, and can totally understand when one feature has been overlooked for a bit.

I’ll try to recover what I have and try to get back to a good state, and I’ll avoid the arranger for now.

Honestly, I think the only reason I wanted to use it was to test out what I had on my pads to see if it flowed well together without intervention.

But in the end, I’m feeling like what’s the point of using a project like this if you’re just going to play something linearly with no interaction and spontaneity (though I should say I’m really a beginner).

Anyway, again, I appreciate the response! I’ll explore triggering the pads instead!

1 Like
4

The sequencer is designed to have the features to support several workflows. The workflow that garnered most interest was the pad launcher and hence that is where we concentrated our effort but, as the core developer of the sequencer, one of my concepts was to emulate the step sequencers of the 1980’s of which I am most familiar. That is why the arranger view was created and it kinda worked quite well, with some flaws and limitations. Your experience suggests some regression which may have occured due to development of other aspects without sufficient attention to the arranger. I do not recognise the behaviour you described so it may be beneficial for you to provide a more detailed bug report in the issue tracker, e.g. were you using an official V3, V4, V5 kit? I experience stuck controllers in VNC sometimes, due to the OS/browser missing some key press/release events.

Linear playback, whether that be MIDI, audio or other automation provides the ability to expand your ability. Think of a one-man band who requires more hands to realise their masterpiece. I love the concept of building a song in a single box with just one player creating each part, either as a complete work or to support live playing over the top. The arranger view is supposed to provide a linear sequencer for such workflows. Live playback and interaction is provided by the pads… although a development in flight might find a way to combine these - to some extent.

2 Likes
5

Thanks for the response! I just figured out how to recover what I have. I think lots of my issues is that up until now, everything works pretty flawlessly with my custom built Zynthian. I’m on a RPI 4 with touchscreen, but also just VNC-ing in.

I found a thread where you talked about CTRL+“.” and CTRL+“,” for navigation. This helped me get the dial in the correct pattern numbers on the Arranger.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ll file a bug because the documentation explicitly mentions using the encoders to take action in this view. Not having the knobs on my device, I really wasn’t aware I was missing anything and thought I could just use the arrow buttons (and the arrow keys on my QWERTY keyboard).

I was able to get to a bad state once or twice when I feel like I temporarily lost control and it was pulling the timeline to the right like I said, but I’ve got some experience with UI dev, and its very reminiscent of the chaos that happens when a user clicks down in a traditional GUI, but the mouse up never registers, so they are stuck in a state of taking action and things just fall apart (and now re-reading your reply, it sounds like you’re saying the same thing)

Anyway, if the encoders are the expected way of interacting here, and I don’t have those, I think me trying to use the Arranger in the modality that I was might just be untested and unsupported.

2 Likes
6

Actually, you can do (almost) everything from the QWERTY keyboard and indeed, that is how I drive my zynthian most of the time during development. (I lazily lie on the sofa in another room whilst connecting to zynthian via ssh and VNC then listen out for sounds floating through the house… to the annoyance of the rest of the family!)

Zynthian has default keybinding for a standard (UK) QWERTY keyboard that maps logically to V4 encoders:

  • ‘<’ (actually ‘,’) represents counter-clockwise encoder rotation.
  • ‘>’ (actually ‘.’) represents clockwise encoder rotation.
  • Without any modifiers these operate on encoder 4 (bottom right on V4).
  • Adding ‘Ctrl’ modifier will operate on left encoders on V4.
  • Adding 'Shift will operate on the top encoders on V4.
  • The four keys (in a square) above these operate as the push switches:
  • ‘i’ is switch 1 (top left).
  • ‘k’ is switch 2 (bottom left).
  • ‘o’ is switch 3 (top right).
  • ‘l’ is switch 4 (bottom right).

Of course this mapping makes sense on keyboards that have those button grouped in the bottom right of the keyboard and for users familiar with V4 layout but they do work well, at least for me!

I do suffer stuck buttons, often when releasing the modifier buttons in the wrong order. I haven’t investigated whether this can be better captured in zynthian or whether it is an artifact of VNC or tkinter. If a button gets stuck, you have to reassert then release in the correct order, e.g.

  • Press and hold ‘Ctrl’.
  • Press and release ‘>’.
  • Release ‘Ctrl’.

There are very few things I can’t do from the QWERTY keyboard. In fact, I think I can do everything that a V4 can do.

Keybinding is configurable in webconf INTERFACE->UI Key Binding. The default also has binding for numeric keypad. I have a wireless keypad that I was using for a while but haven’t used it for some time.

2 Likes