quick song access Using Helix during live performances--Song Mode

[HonestOpinion]

1 hour ago, Gone2Gig said:

I think your analogy of the iPhone is very apropos. The iPhone revolutionized not only cell phones, but also the way we consume music, video, take and use photos, etc, etc.. It broke down many boundaries and opened the door for so many new uses for a person device... even recording music. Many manufacturers are riding on the back of those innovations today and competing head on with iPhone. Yet for all their success, lack of a user-based file management system has not only kept them from consideration for many consumers, but has also been a feature requested by their own user base since the beginning. Obviously this goes much deeper due to their closed architecture, but they finally got around to building one (and it's still not great!). 

 

Having an incredible modeler like Helix, even with all of its great features (that I am yet to skim the top on), for a musician where live performance is almost the entire reason for owning any gear, having limited support for accessing all of these great sounds and features quickly and easily live--without having to make all kinds of compromises (like one preset per song as a workaround appears to be from my reading without having hands on yet ), seems a bit like owning your favorite high dollar sports car and only ever sitting in the driveway listening to the stereo because when you want to drive it down the road and enjoy all that's been included in it, you can't find or get it into the right gears! They are in there but without the mechanisms in place to access them as you need. Sure you can drive around in first all day or find a way to get it down the road, but not in a very pretty way. Lol.

 

Before the iPhone, if a user was wanting to listen to music or take pictures, many cell users might have suggested 'if you want to do that, go buy a camera or an audio playback device.' Especially if the cell phone they had wouldn't roam correctly. First things first! Thank heaven that Apple had the vision for innovation that they had and refused to compromise! We are all reaping the rewards today whether using an iPhone or another device.

 

Guitarists have been creating workarounds since the beginnings of the electric guitar for live usage, and other applications. We are so used to doing it that it's simply become a way of life for almost all of us. I really want to use a lot of what Helix is offering. I just opened the box on my first one! But if I can't find a way to use it live in my application without having to use too many workarounds or not be able to access what I can create within it quickly in a live environment, what's the point of owning one for me unless I can justify its cost with some other use?

 

I realize it has MANY uses in many applications.. Mine just happens to be live and evolve around songs with extreme sound changes in many of  those songs. I'm trying to find a way to make it work for me. Probably no big deal to anyone else if I can't find that. I really appreciate all those that have pitched in with great suggestions and otherwise, especially those that are really trying to help, even in the workaround space. Great things come into existence because someone asked.. How can this be done or why can't it be?! 

 

I also realize that even playing live music with others musicians is not the end all it once was.  It's great that people can do more with music creation all by themselves in their home studio or even just on their iPhone! Lol. Helix appears to be trying to appeal to a very broad audience and being quite successful at it. It really seems to a spectacular platform.

 

I will stay tuned as I start to get my hands dirty now.

 

 

 

 

 

My focus was more on improving setlist/playlist management, editing, and storage.  I'm pretty satisfied with switching at this point.

 

On the whole I have no problems with switching between song parts. I think you will find that snapshots will take care of the changes required for most songs. They have spillover and instant switching. If you want to switch presets instantly for songs that require it(very few and far between for the stuff I play) there is now the global option that allows you to have instant switching between presets. It just halves your DSP so your block and routing options will be more limited.

 

From the manual:

1. In the Global Settings > Preferences menu, set Preset Spillover to "On." (SHORTCUT: Hold ACTION and press HOME.) A dialog appears, reading "Remove Path 2 to enable preset spillover?"
2. Press Knob 6 (OK).
3. Press HOME. Path 2 has disappeared! You may now switch presets to your heart's delight with true spillover but note that if Preset A is still spilling over into Preset B (say one of its delay blocks' feedback is making it self-oscillate), switching to Preset C will abruptly cut off Preset A.
4. To return to normal operation with two paths, turn Preset Spillover back to "Off". (SHORTCUT: Hold ACTION and press HOME again.) A dialog appears, reading "The preset must be reloaded. All unsaved changes will be lost!" So if you've made changes to the preset, be sure to save it before turning Spillover off.
5. Press Knob 6 (OK).

 

 

 

 

[Gone2Gig]

Thanks so much for the info. I'm just rolling through the presets now for the first time. After all I had read I expected them to be just terrible, but not as bad as imagined.

 

I need to get the firmware updated but after a half hour of looking through all the downloads and notes for each, am still uncertain if I need to to incremental updates or can jump directly to the most recent version. Although I admit to being distracted by wanting to just plug in and check it out.

 

I'm guessing by your comments that if you are using one preset per song, unless you have a static setlist, there is probably a way to pull up a list of presets within a setlist with your feet vs having to lean over and push the select on a setlist in order to see all the presets in a list? 

 

Thx for your post, direction, and encouragement!

[DunedinDragon]

You can jump directly to the most current release no problem.  However, you need to read the directions carefully and follow it exactly to avoid problems.  In essence, download, install, and run HX Edit 3.01.  HX Edit will install all necessary devices and will allow you to directly initiate the backup and installation of the appropriate firmware to your Helix.

You can load or build presets in any way you want and manage them from the Helix or through HX Edit to avoid bending over.  I personally reserve one setlist for all of my presets relating to a given performance or show.  My presets are all exported on my laptop to  a single directory so it's very easy to scroll through and import them in the order I want in my setlist with HX Edit.  You can also move them around within a setlist if you want in HX Edit.  I follow a simple naming convention for my presets of naming them with the name of the song in HX Edit, but when I save them to my hard drive I can add short reminders to the end of the name such as which guitar this particular version of the preset is optimized for, but the reminders are only visible on the hard drive.  Within the Helix, they only have the song name.  That's because Helix uses the internal name that's stored with the preset rather than the name used by the computer directory.

[Gone2Gig]

12 hours ago, DunedinDragon said:

You can jump directly to the most current release no problem.  However, you need to read the directions carefully and follow it exactly to avoid problems.  In essence, download, install, and run HX Edit 3.01.  HX Edit will install all necessary devices and will allow you to directly initiate the backup and installation of the appropriate firmware to your Helix.

You can load or build presets in any way you want and manage them from the Helix or through HX Edit to avoid bending over.  I personally reserve one setlist for all of my presets relating to a given performance or show.  My presets are all exported on my laptop to  a single directory so it's very easy to scroll through and import them in the order I want in my setlist with HX Edit.  You can also move them around within a setlist if you want in HX Edit.  I follow a simple naming convention for my presets of naming them with the name of the song in HX Edit, but when I save them to my hard drive I can add short reminders to the end of the name such as which guitar this particular version of the preset is optimized for, but the reminders are only visible on the hard drive.  Within the Helix, they only have the song name.  That's because Helix uses the internal name that's stored with the preset rather than the name used by the computer directory.

 

Thanks for the info. I was able to get it updated fairly fast. It hung updating the firmware for some reason it didn't recognize my built-in keyboard on my MacBook Pro (go figure) and just hung for a couple of hours. In short I was worried I had bricked the damned thing as HX Edit stopped responding and couldn't see the Helix via USB, yet was most of the way through the update. But fortunately was able to download and use the L6 updater, it immediately found the Helix and updated the firmware to the latest version no problem.

 

So here's a question for you, or someone, regarding preset numbering in the global settings...

What is the advantage of using the default preset numbering scheme of 01A-32D vs 0-127? I'm guessing it might have to do with which footswitch setup one chooses to use or perhaps this was L6' first swing at creating some type of ordering presets for use in a single song (or other application requiring groups of presets together in a single view) before snapshots came along due to users being unhappy about switching delay between presets and not having tails (?) , but am not quite sure. Are there other uses for having an ABCD version of each preset number?

 

Thx in advance!

[rd2rk]

1 hour ago, Gone2Gig said:

o here's a question for you, or someone, regarding preset numbering in the global settings...

What is the advantage of using the default preset numbering scheme of 01A-32D vs 0-127? I'm guessing it might have to do with which footswitch setup one chooses to use or perhaps this was L6' first swing at creating some type of ordering presets for use in a single song (or other application requiring groups of presets together in a single view) before snapshots came along due to users being unhappy about switching delay between presets and not having tails (?) , but am not quite sure. Are there other uses for having an ABCD version of each preset number?

 

Some people like to think of Preset ordering in "banks", so 01A-01B-01C is Bank 1, 02A-02B-02C is Bank 2, etc. The majority of users have no clue about MIDI PC numbers, and could be confused by 000-001-002 as presets 1,2,3; 003-004-005 as presets 4-5-6. I'm so used to thinking in MIDI that I had to go into Globals and set it back to the default banks configuration to remind myself how that works before I typed this! The only advantage to using the MIDI PC#s (besides familiarity) is if you're using the MIDI PC TX function to correlate and call presets on an external device.

[zappazapper]

2 hours ago, Gone2Gig said:

I'm guessing it might have to do with which footswitch setup one chooses to use...

It might be a little more obvious if you look at the LT. The 8 "middle" footswitches are for selecting Presets in Preset Footswitch Mode, 4 on top and 4 on the bottom. So the Banks are based around the number of footswitches on each row that can be used to select Presets, and you have access to two Banks at a time. 

 

3 hours ago, Gone2Gig said:

Are there other uses for having an ABCD version of each preset number?

Just so that you're using the same terminology as everyone else, the number is the Bank, not the Preset, and the letter is the Preset, although if you said "Preset 17C" everyone would know that you're talking about Bank 17, Preset C. It's just that nobody ever says "Preset 17, version C". The two footswitches to the left of the "middle" 8 are the Bank Up and Bank Down switches, not Preset Up and Preset Down, although they can be configured as such by pressing and holding both switches simultaneously, which cycles through a few different configurations (Bank Up/Down, Preset Up/Down, Snapshot Up/Down).

 

3 hours ago, Gone2Gig said:

...perhaps this was L6' first swing at creating some type of ordering presets for use in a single song...

Well, the Helix certainly isn't the first multi-fx to have footswitches for selecting presets and navigating banks, not even L6's first. But I think the Pod XT Live might have been the first to use lettered presets and numbered banks. I don't know if it had anything to do with organizing presets around songs. I think it had more to do with making it easier to find a preset. My first multi-fx was a Digitech RP2000, which had 4 footswitches for selecting presets and a single switch for navigating banks, and the presets were numbered 1-64. So if you wanted to find, say, Preset 57, you had to do some quick math in your head. With lettered Presets and numbered Banks, if you know you want, say, Preset 17C, you have a clear map of how to get there.