Why are song parts limited to 6?

Tremonti

Tremonti

Fractal Fanatic
There are 8 scenes and just wondered why 6 was set for songs? I was hoping to use this as a "scenes" with my favorite 8 scenes from multiple patches. Be fun to choose 8 for whatever song.
 
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Tremonti said:
There are 8 scenes and just wondered why 6 was set for songs?
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The available memory for the feature was very tight.
Tremonti said:
I was hoping to use this as a "scenes" with my favorite 8 scenes from multiple patches. Be fun to choose 8 for whatever song.
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That’s not really the use that Setlists and Songs were targeting.

Here’s how I look at it: If we break songs into sections, the average in western music needs A-C, such as Genesis’ “ABACAB”, or ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man” which is “ABABCB”. That’s three sections. Very rarely would we need five, so having six is liberal.

Wanting to use the individual songs as you do breaks that software design choice but nothing says you can’t have groups of songs in a Setlist, where each song only has a single section where each section is a single scene in a preset. At that point you could step from song to song or jump directly and accomplish what you want. You probably would have to figure out how to adjust your foot switches to make it possible to jump between the different songs in a convenient-for-you manner and that might turn out to be a dead end.

If I wanted what you are trying to do, I would probably make a custom layout using either the FM9 or an FC12, and define banks of eight single-scene presets, one bank per style or sound, then the existing system and design would accomplish the same task. IIRC, Fractal designed presets around the idea of each preset being a song, or a particular pedalboard+amp+cab+studio effects if you want the kitchen sink approach, but hardware limitations forced some constraints. @Burgs gets a lot of different sounds from the eight scenes in one preset so dig through his various offerings and videos and see if those help.
 
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I would have liked to hop from one section to the next with a section + 1 switch function. That way I don't have to remember which section to go to next. I my view Sharp Dressed Man has 6 sections and I play songs / pieces with more than 6 different sections. However: what's not possible is not possible, is it? There is a limit to memory space (even in real life 😉).
 
mr_fender said:
Regardless of how many sections a given song might have, when do you realistically ever need more than 6 different tones for a single song?
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it's not about tones it's about sequence. in a music score there could be 15 or even more sections. maybe not every section is a different tone but to rember section 7 is Axe section 4 and section 9 and 14 are Axe section 3 is a pain. a little extreme example perhaps but that's what sections mean to me: music score sections. Axe scenes are tone.
 
True, but this is not a scoring feature. Despite the name, it's intended for managing tones used in a given song. It's not really designed to be used linearly in a song that way. It would be nice if that were possible, but there was limited resources for the feature and they added what they could fit in.
 
mr_fender said:
True, but this is not a scoring feature. Despite the name, it's intended for managing tones used in a given song. It's not really designed to be used linearly in a song that way. It would be nice if that were possible, but there was limited resources for the feature and they added what they could fit in.
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Fair point, but I do agree it would be nice to have a song include a "map" or "sequence" so that something simple like a Section Increment could be used.

Imagine a song of this structure where a different tone is needed for each section:

Intro -> Verse -> Chorus -> Verse -> Chorus -> Bridge -> Solo -> Chorus

With the current model, you cannot simply increment through sections.

If the total number of sections, which in my mind is the cleanest and simplest approach to stepping through a song.

You could easily select each section in turn with switches for each, but you need a switch for each section.

For a song that only moves thru 6 or less sections that increment would work... But not otherwise.

If there were a sequence or map, then the example above could be defined with only 5 sections but a sequence of 8.

In any case, I don't think any of this is going to change...
 
unix-guy said:
Fair point, but I do agree it would be nice to have a song include a "map" or "sequence" so that something simple like a Section Increment could be used.

Imagine a song of this structure where a different tone is needed for each section:

Intro -> Verse -> Chorus -> Verse -> Chorus -> Bridge -> Solo -> Chorus

With the current model, you cannot simply increment through sections.

If the total number of sections, which in my mind is the cleanest and simplest approach to stepping through a song.

You could easily select each section in turn with switches for each, but you need a switch for each section.

For a song that only moves thru 6 or less sections that increment would work... But not otherwise.

If there were a sequence or map, then the example above could be defined with only 5 sections but a sequence of 8.

In any case, I don't think any of this is going to change...
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If one really needed this, they could use a preset per section. Then use increase preset foot switch to move to the next section. Not really practical, but doable if required.
 
Joe.Buerger said:
If one really needed this, they could use a preset per section. Then use increase preset foot switch to move to the next section. Not really practical, but doable if required.
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But that's not using setlists.

Of course, there are ways around it - they existed before we had a setlist feature.

My point was really that I could see that being extremely useful to someone using setlists. You could probably run your whole gig with 2 switches: Next Song and Next Section :)
 
unix-guy said:
But that's not using setlists.

Of course, there are ways around it - they existed before we had a setlist feature.

My point was really that I could see that being extremely useful to someone using setlists. You could probably run your whole gig with 2 switches: Next Song and Next Section :)
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exactly
 
Tremonti said:
There are 8 scenes and just wondered why 6 was set for songs? I was hoping to use this as a "scenes" with my favorite 8 scenes from multiple patches. Be fun to choose 8 for whatever song.
Click to expand...
It might have to do with the current gen FM and FC having switches that are in sets of 3/6. When they launched I thought that was odd because scenes are sets of 8.
 
yeah.
Besides its 'shortcomings' (if one can call it that) still darn pleased with the set / song list feature and even more with the awesome FC12 & AF3 integration. So no need for a RJM; although those are awesome too.
 
rickboot said:
It might have to do with the current gen FM and FC having switches that are in sets of 3/6. When they launched I thought that was odd because scenes are sets of 8.
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It's because there were limited system resources with which to implement the setlists feature. They fit in what they had room for. It was likely a trade off with the number of songs available.

The setlist feature stores 128 songs with 6 sections each. That's 768 sections total. If you had 8 sections per song, you'd get only 96 songs total. 12 sections per song would give only 64 songs total. Then people would be pissing and moaning about there only being 96 or 64 songs and their band plays more songs than that. You can't please everyone and compromises must be made.
 
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