Nuances of working with block channels...kind of confusing?

sick pickle

sick pickle

Inspired
Hey fractal heads,

Last night was the first night I really sat down trying to make patches, following Leon's videos, and copying factory presets into my own for tweaking. One area that I felt a bit clunky with was...understand the impacts of channels through various scenes. For example, I copied the AC20 preset into my own to make a Foo Fighters type rock preset. I then added a second amp (rectifier type model). But as I was building scenes, and modifying parameters, I was constantly struggling with:

"Wait now, if I update this reverb on this scene, is it impacting my other scenes? What other reverb channels am I using in that other scene vs. what I am tweaking right now?" - combine this with multiple blocks and you can see how the confusion would grow as I built the preset.

Hopefully this makes sense. Is there an easier way to get through this part of the workflow?
 
There will always be a learning curve, but I have found the scenes / channels design to be quite intuitive and effective after having used the unit for quite a while. All my patches use 4 scenes: clean, rhythm, lead, fx, and, almost universally, I set all my fx blocks to A for scene1, B for scene2, C for scene3, D for scene4 so that each scene has it's own private settings across all blocks, thus allowing for a totally different set of amp/cab/fx settings to suit what I want in a given scene. I set my on/offs as desired for each scene and add foot switches to the blocks that I may want to change on the fly to something different than what I've defaulted in the scene. That's it - sticking close to the intended design yields a hugely powerful setup - with real pedals one could only approach this using all midi controlled pedals with the ability to switch presets on each to suit an overall patch (and even then, I don't know of any pedals that have the kind of parameter control that Axefx does).
 
Scenes and Channels give to the user freedom without being a "must use". People used with analog gears find channel the closest situation to start from. Players used to have a controller to switch on/off their gear find Scenes the perfect "digital replica" and finally who want to have the complete freedom can mix and match both of them.
 
sprint said:
There will always be a learning curve, but I have found the scenes / channels design to be quite intuitive and effective after having used the unit for quite a while. All my patches use 4 scenes: clean, rhythm, lead, fx, and, almost universally, I set all my fx blocks to A for scene1, B for scene2, C for scene3, D for scene4 so that each scene has it's own private settings across all blocks, thus allowing for a totally different set of amp/cab/fx settings to suit what I want in a given scene. I set my on/offs as desired for each scene and add foot switches to the blocks that I may want to change on the fly to something different than what I've defaulted in the scene. That's it - sticking close to the intended design yields a hugely powerful setup - with real pedals one could only approach this using all midi controlled pedals with the ability to switch presets on each to suit an overall patch (and even then, I don't know of any pedals that have the kind of parameter control that Axefx does).
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But what if you want 8 scenes? This is where I think it could get confusing. I say could because I'm awaiting delivery of my FM9 so haven't yet experimented with this myself but it seems like the 4 channels lend themselves nicely to 4 scenes, exactly what you're doing (in this setup, I agree it's very intuitive) but we've got 8 scenes available and that's where it seems things could get confusing, like the OP describes. Coming from Helix, this is going to be a learning curve with, I'm sure, some growing pains for me. I find the way it's done with snapshots on the Helix very intuitive. I think with the FM9 I'm going to have even greater flexibility to build more complex presets and even combine some compared to my setup with the Helix.
 
Scenes are a "snapshot" of on/off state of blocks in the preset: lead scene delay on, crucnh scene, delay off
Channels are different type and parameters inside a block in the preset: Channels A in the AMP block Marshall XXX, Channel B in the same AMP block Fender XXX.
 
Diego said:
Scenes are a "snapshot" of on/off state of blocks in the preset: lead scene delay on, crucnh scene, delay off
Channels are different type and/or parameters inside a block in the preset: Channels A in the AMP block Marshall XXX, Channel B in the same AMP block Fender XXX, or even Marshall XXX with only altered parameters.
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Minor clarification.
 
JN99 said:
But what if you want 8 scenes? This is where I think it could get confusing. I say could because I'm awaiting delivery of my FM9 so haven't yet experimented with this myself but it seems like the 4 channels lend themselves nicely to 4 scenes, exactly what you're doing (in this setup, I agree it's very intuitive) but we've got 8 scenes available and that's where it seems things could get confusing, like the OP describes.
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agreed - tho I never use scene 5-8, I use modifiers heavily (35 IA midi switches and 8 Expression pedals) so I feel like I have huge range available within a scene and never felt the need to venture into more than 4 scenes.
 
This is all great, and I understand what scenes are, and what channels are. However, sometimes if I am now in scene 6 and about to adjust the reverb block for that scene, I have to jump back through all my previous 5 scenes to be sure I am not messing with the reverb channel that would affect those other scenes (possibly).
 
The only suggestion I can give is: stop thinking in helix terms.
See channels as presets of a single fx block, you have 4 of them and for each scene you just choose which one of the 4 you need.
 
peepeepoopoo said:
This is all great, and I understand what scenes are, and what channels are. However, sometimes if I am now in scene 6 and about to adjust the reverb block for that scene, I have to jump back through all my previous 5 scenes to be sure I am not messing with the reverb channel that would affect those other scenes (possibly).
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Use the 'Scene Mgr' above the grid in FM9 Edit to quickly see the channel assignment in all scenes for any block in the preset.
 
Scene Manager is your friend.

Suggestion.. Unless you are using the same model with small changes, try to avoid changing channels on Delays and Reverbs. The tails can have artifacts. Use a second instance (at no CPU% cost on the FM9) and switch between them via scenes.

Also, Scene Controllers can be very useful for seamless adjustments of several parameters from scene to scene, without the need of switching channels.
 
peepeepoopoo said:
This is all great, and I understand what scenes are, and what channels are. However, sometimes if I am now in scene 6 and about to adjust the reverb block for that scene, I have to jump back through all my previous 5 scenes to be sure I am not messing with the reverb channel that would affect those other scenes (possibly).
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If you're about to alter a block's parameters that will affect the same settings in a different scene that you don't want to change, you need to put it on an unused channel. May seem obvious, but I don't know much more to say, other than make sure you know what's going on in your other scenes, as you continue to tweak things.
 
Do you need different reverbs for all scenes? If so, you have 4 different choices available per preset (the 4 channels).

If not, you can use the same reverb/channel on multiple scenes.
 
You can also hold the Alt key in the Editor program to quickly make the blocks show their channel in the grid.
 
peepeepoopoo said:
This is all great, and I understand what scenes are, and what channels are. However, sometimes if I am now in scene 6 and about to adjust the reverb block for that scene, I have to jump back through all my previous 5 scenes to be sure I am not messing with the reverb channel that would affect those other scenes (possibly).
Click to expand...
That's a common problem, and it's just what the Scene Manager in Axe-Edit is for. It provides an overview of the state of a block across all of your scenes. Here's an example showing the Reverb 1 block across all 8 scenes.

1663781142766.png
 
Just a thought in addition to all the great advice above...

If specifically talking about reverb, with the FM9 you can have 8 reverb channels--4 each from Reverb 1 and Reverb 2.
 
I've caught myself out and caused problems before from this exact point of confusion. It's always been my fault.

The scene manager (as an overview) helps a lot. What also help's...creating a backup of the preset in another slot before you start any real editing. You can always at least get back to where it was working and then step back through your changes.
 
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