Audio Damage Tattoo - Manual (Page 9)

9
Pattern Sequencer
The Sequencer section of Tattoo is the answer to Bootsy Collins' immortal question: "where the party at,
y'all?" at least in the context of this particular instrument. The Sequencer entire consists of the grid that
controls playback of the voices, which we have conveniently named "Sequencer," and the many Mod
Sequencers, which modulate the individual parameters of each voice, as well as controlling the velocity of
individual events.
The main grid should be a fairly obvious paradigm for anyone remotely familiar with electronic music
production, as it is one of the more common ways to create a linear pattern of music. As such, we won't dwell
on the basic tenets of grid (or "piano roll") sequencing. Tattoo's grid sequencer is both incredibly simple in
operation and quite deep in its feature set, and the following sections deal with its dedicated controls. The Mod
Sequencer is joined at the hip with the Sequencer, but has enough features of its own to warrant a separate
chapter.
If you’re really starting from scratch with grid-based composition: time moves from left to right on the grid.
Each horizontal position represents one step in the pattern. Each row represents one instrument; the names
of the instruments appear on the left. Click somewhere on the grid and a white square will appear. This means
that the instrument in that square’s row will play when the sequencer reaches the square’s horizontal position.
Click the square again to make it go away. You can drag horizontally to turn a number of squares on or off at
once.
Pattern Controls
The pattern controls let you switch between the 16 pattern memories present in Tattoo, copy and paste
patterns, and set the step and sequence length of the pattern.
Selector
The pattern selector is the row of 16 numbers beneath the words “Pattern Control” near the lower center of
Tattoo’s window. Tattoo can contain up to 16 independent patterns at a time. Clicking the pattern selector
chooses the current pattern, i.e. the one you hear when Tattoo is playing and the one you can change by
clicking notes on and off in the note grid and manipulating the current instrument’s Channel Controls.
An orange square is drawn on top of the number of the current pattern. If Tattoo is not playing, the pattern
changes immediately when you click on the pattern selector. If Tattoo is playing when you click the pattern
selector, Tattoo waits until it reaches the end of the current pattern before switching to the new pattern. This