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chapter 07
GROOVES PAGE part 3
auto-play, drum track and other ways of using grooves
7:1 Auto-Play mode
Auto-Play vs. MIDI triggering
MIDI Triggering
BFD2’s Grooves can be triggered with MIDI notes – by default playing while the note is held down. Optionally, you can enable
Latching mode in the Grooves preferences, which toggles playback of a Groove when its MIDI note is played.
As described in chapter 5, a Groove’s playback behaviour when it is started and when it ends are configurable.
Using these methods, it is possible to construct drum parts on the fly by playing MIDI notes. Start and end behaviours can be set
to keep certain Grooves playing or playback moving to other Grooves, firing off fills at opportune moments, and so on. You can
record these MIDI notes in your host sequencer when running BFD2 as a plugin, or simply use BFD as a live jamming tool – if
you’re a guitarist it’s a good idea to use a MIDI footswitch board to switch to fills and different sections.
It’s also possible to use Palette slots’ preview buttons to jam Grooves live, although this doesn’t allow as much ‘hands-on’ freedom
as using a dedicated MIDI controller.
See chapter 5, especially sections 5:4, 5:5 and 5:6, for more details on using Grooves in the above ways.
Auto-Play
BFD2’s Groove engine features several Auto-Play modes, which allow you to use BFD2 as more of a tradi-
tional drum machine or auto-accompaniment module.
When an Auto-Play mode is enabled, the Groove engine starts playing
automatically when you start your host sequencer transport, or when clicking the Play button on the
BFD2 transport when the host is stopped or when running BFD2 as a standalone application.
If Groove playback has been started simultaneously with the transport, playback behaviour is then
controlled by the Default and Slot Groove Actions, unless the Drum Track is being used, in which case the sequence of Grooves
in the Drum Track overrides individual Groove Actions.
Effectively it is similar to playing a MIDI Groove note of indefinite length (or just a single note-on in Latching Mode) whenever
starting playback in your host.
Auto-Play modes
Off
When Auto-Play is turned Off, Grooves are only heard when you play them via MIDI notes, or when you click the Preview buttons
on the Palette in order to start playback.
Palette
In this mode, BFD2 plays back Grooves in the Palette when the transport is started. There are three sub-modes for this auto-play
mode, which are configurable in the BFD2 Session preferences, using the Palette Auto-Play mode and Palette Auto-Play Groove
settings.
