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Clarify getting to a snapshot from stomp mode?


xmacvicar
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Alex Strabala who is a big helix user, mentions this on his site:

 

  • All of my presets are designed to be used in stomp mode on Snapshot 1. Some presets have an ambient volume swell pad sound on Snapshot 4. This allows you to quickly and seamlessly switch to ambient parts without sacrificing a footswitch in stomp mode. The rest of the Snapshots are unused by default. Feel free to modify the other snapshots to best fit your workflow. 

 

I am not understanding that flow on the helix. Can anyone explain that? In stomp mode if I am using all 10 stomps (which he is) you would have to press mode, switch to snapshot 4...which doesn't sound at all user friendly?

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Yes, it would appear to require 2 button presses. I think when he says "seamless" he means that in the context of the rest of his workflow and instructions - you're not loading a new preset, so there's no audio drop, and Snapshot Edits is set to RECALL, so the stomps remain in whatever state he's got them in between snapshots. He apparently feels that, for his purposes, it's more important to have his stomps available for other effects, and two button presses is NBD. There's no reason why you can't sacrifice one of the 10 stomps to toggling the ambient swell if that works better for you.

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I'm doing it a bit similar on one of my current main patches (which is using just one amp - something certainly making this approach easier to deal with). And I am in fact thinking about setting my Snapshot Edit preferences back to "Recall". Right now I have them at "Discard", which IMO makes sense if you do your main switchings via snapshots, simply because you don't confuse yourself too much (as you may not remember what kinda stuff you had switched on/off the last time you used the snapshot), but in case you only use snapshots for certain special sounds and use a stomp controlled "master" snapshot, "Recall" might be the better option (and it should be easy to keep track of - or remember - what you've used in that single snapshot).

 

Thing is, with stomps you have more choices, plain maths give that away easily. A single stomp = 2 sounds. 2 stomps = 4 sounds. 3 stomps = 8 sounds. So, at least theoretically, with just 3 stomps you can already get 8 different sounds, each further stomp doubling the amount.

Yes, I do know that this is just a mathematical example - not all combinations are making sense, then there's the good old pedal dance that most of us would likely love to leave behind, etc. But still, I often prefer it that way. And even utilizing "Snapshot Bypass" isn't offering the same amount of flexibility, let alone that you can't incorporate the snapshot-bypassed blocks in your snapshots anymore (obviously, that's the purpose of Snaphot Bypass - but sometimes it's getting in the way).

Anyway, using stomp mode gives me a kind of flexibility that I sometimes need and that snapshots can't offer. Snapshots however allow for very drastical changes, so it's probably wise to use them for just that. As usual, there's plenty of roads leading to Rome, but right now, this method has a lot of appeal to me.

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