Does project restore/load freeze the machine?

Hi there,

still a title-question, does project restore/load freeze the machine ?

It will stop playback and even might leave a note hanging until it’s done loading. So… yes.

@maximee thanks.
I have to figure out how much variations I can put in only one project, so.
7000 events seem huge. I have to confess that I didn’t count how much events I have in usual projects (in Live, or so)
64 tracks are very enough.
but 32 patterns per tracks make me a bit afraid.

@julien since you use Ableton Live and the hierarchy of Live is quite comparable with the one on the Pyramid
you can have a quick idea easily
in your Ableton projects, do you use more than 64 tracks, 32 (different) scenes, with a different midiclip on each track/each scene?
You have the answer : )

by cons,
7000 events is actually quite low imo…
but it depends on your music style, if your music is rather dense or not (you can forget “black MIDI” :D)

with 10 tracks, it is 700 events per track (notes+automation data points)
for a 64-bars length song (about 2 minutes at 120BPM TS:4/4) it is about 10 events per measure

I don’t, because especially, I use something like (at least) 64 to 80 clips per tracks. usually.

I know that I could workaround it by using “groups” of 8 tracks too. I mean, I progress in my live performance by switching progressively patterns in track N, and when I reach a particular one, I switch to work with the N+8th track etc. Just have to figure out if that’s not a mess. Naming can save me.
I mean, something like grids 8tracks x 16 patterns = 1 “song”
It means the whole project can have 16 songs (= 8X8 for 64 tracks and 32 patterns per track)
That’s basically enough playgroundn knowing that “some” song wouldn’t have 16 patterns at all (but less)

Just trying to explore, reasonably, the whole limits, in order to see the room in between.

Naming… I’ll check what element I can name or not name tracks, patterns etc)

thanks again.

well…16 songs per project seems ambitious… :slight_smile:

in fact, you won’t do this because if you do a quick test you can see these specs are more “theorical”…

example: just create a pattern with only TWO (!) notes on it
copy/paste this pattern x32 on the same track
copy/paste this track as much as possible then you will see that you will not even reach the 64 tracks …

and of course it is even worst if you use automation events…

believe me…this events limit is an issue…
I hope that Squarp will implement the ability to chain projects, so I could use a project for a PART of my song (one project for the intro, one project for the verse etc.)
it is the only way to push the boundaries of this sequencer away

…or
in the meantime, you can do what I do, that is to say to use the Pyramid to make some “minimal” stuff
Fortunately I love all music styles :wink:

edit: 64 to 80 clips per track in Ableton? really??
wow…:hushed:

This is not really a question style or so
Many minimalists are producing minimalistic sorted art pieces using a lot of tools. Results is minimal but not the process etc.

I don’t think pattern per track limit is theoretical,is it?

In my case, I have alt of elements triggering my visuals, sometimes lights too. Mary events that are not sounding, actually.
So yeah I need to be sure that I wouldn’t be limited.

So I’ll stick to features announced and trust this

in fact, you can have “up to 32 patterns per track” but you can’t have 2048 (32x64) patterns per project

do you already have the Pyramid or do you plan to have one?
because if you have one on hand it’s easy to do a quick crash-test like the one that I described above

and as I said, you will be much more quickly confronted with the events limit I think …(the test that I described above only uses 2 events per pattern)

in fact the problem comes mainly from the fact that you want to put a lot of songs in a single project
in my opinion a Pyramid project is more conceived as one project = one song
(and for one song, I think that 7000events is decent for the majority of users)

I hear (read) you here.

Actually, I don’t know how a CC automation is interpolated. Basically, I don’t need high res on that, but indeed, if a CC curve got already 100 dots, are there… 100 events?

I’d be happy to read @squarpadmin here :smiley:

no interpolation
so…100 dots = 100 events I’m afraid…

however, maybe this is “only” a question of details and better explanations required.

Indeed, if we read there: http://squarp.net/pyramid, we can read that number of notes per step is unlimited (it doesn’t mean infinite as MIDI standard provides 128 notes but…) so I guess we misunderstand something as unlimited (~ very big number as infinite doesn’t mean anything for digital memories ) doesn’t fit the limitation of 7000.

anyway, I think I need to be clearer with all of that.

that’s why I say that we have to read these specs from a “theoretical” point of view : )

you can have a lot of notes per step, indeed.
128 if you want…
but you don’t gonna fill a lot of patterns this way… :slight_smile:

the Pyramid is not really limited in terms of tracks, number of bars per pattern, number of notes per step etc.
the only “real” limit is the event limit

in fact, the Pyramid should not even be considered as a 64-track sequencer
I don’t even talk about the fact that there is not “64 midi channels” on the Pyramid
but, actually, it would be very difficult to make a song with all the 64 tracks I think …
because it means somewhat above 100events per track …
at this level, “tracks” look more like “patterns”…

on the other hand, the 64 tracks make sense in the original workflow (still available) of the Pyramid (before the patterns implementation) with just a chain of “track mute states” to build a song
but like I said, at this level, “tracks” are more like “patterns”

therefore, with this workflow (pattern mode disabled)
you have 64 ““tracks”” with about 100 events each for one project (but of course you can have for example a track with 300 events and another with 3 events…)