work flow strategies

G

golfnut

Member
As I am brand new to the FM9 and nearly new to modelers in general, I'm trying to plan my board as far as work flow\functionality. Right now I've got it set up in a basic way just so I can use it at rehearsal and a couple gigs coming up in the next couple weeks.
Currently I have taken an empty bank. On the first switch I have a blackface rhythm, setting, second switch a black face solo setting and the third and fourth switch similar settings for plexi-50. I have another bank, I did the same thing with deluxe reverb. To each of these amp settings I added fx as needed.
How I would like to do it is to Have a few different amps set up in a bank and for each amp have some fx available that I can turn on and off for each amp like a traditional pedal board. I suspect this is done with scenes. But I have no idea how to use scenes. Is there a tutorial I could watch or read that would show me how to do this? I know I should really take the cooper master class and eventually that's my intention. Its probably going to be a month or 2 before I have the time to just sit down and focus on mastering the FM9.
 
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golfnut said:
Thank you. I'll look for that.

Would it actually be Rosh Roslin?
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That’s the guy! It’ll definitely get you started in a big way. It’s awesome, informative, and free. Cooper Carter’s class (if you choose to purchase it) goes much further in depth and into all of the things you probably have no idea that the unit can do. I started with Rosh and then did Cooper’s.
 
The manual has a nice write-up describing how Fractal’s environment works. See p. 15 for an overview of scenes and channels, then sections 5, 6 and 10 for more details.

Also, the Footswitch Functions Guide is a must read to understand the depth and flexibility of the foot switches.

Assigning one layout per song will quickly exhaust your available layouts and ignores the flexibility of the system which basically lets us define templates for different scenarios and modify them as we switch presets based on footswitch overrides stored in the presets. We typically use one layout to switch presets, another to switch scenes, maybe one that is static for toggling specific effects on/off or one that is dynamic and changes which effects are most important in a particular preset, or for a looper or set and songlists, or combinations of the above.

It can make your head swim then it’ll begin to click; It’s a learning curve and you will probably redo your layouts many times as you become more familiar and proficient with the system and zero-in on the perfect design for you.
 
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Greg Ferguson said:
The manual has a nice write-up describing how Fractal’s environment works. See p. 15 for an overview of scenes and channels, then sections 5, 6 and 10 for more details.

Also, the Footswitch Functions Guide is a must read to understand the depth and flexibility of the foot switches.

Assigning one layout per song will quickly exhaust your available layouts and ignores the flexibility of the system which basically lets us define templates for different scenarios and modify them as we switch presets based on footswitch overrides stored in the presets. We typically use one layout to switch presets, another to switch scenes, maybe one that is static for toggling specific effects on/off or one that is dynamic and changes which effects are most important in a particular preset, or for a looper or set and songlists, or combinations of the above.

It can make your head swim then it’ll begin to click; It’s a learning curve and you will probably redo your layouts many times as you become more familiar and proficient with the system and zero-in on the perfect design for you.
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I can definitely see that I'll be redoing layouts. I'm still learning the mechanics but I think at one point I will step away and spend some time putting on paper what I'm trying to accomplish.
I certainly don't need a different layout for each song. I play New country, traditional country and classic rock. I can see having 4 main amps with my fx needs in scenes. I'll need a separate set of settings for Fender guitars and my R8.
 
Fractal products are very flexible so there are MANY possible ways to do this.

As @Greg Ferguson mentions above you'll exhaust FM9 Layouts very quickly (there are 9 total) if you use one per Preset. However, Layout 6 in the FM9 factory default layouts is a "Per-preset" Layout which means it is customized for each Preset. This is a great Layout option if you expect that each Preset will have very few switch assignments in common. It does require more work because you need to program the switch functions for every Preset. In this Layout, every switch function (9 tap + 9 hold) will be mapped to a function defined in each Preset.

The more typical approach for Layouts (e.g. Scenes, Effects, Presets, etc.) is to have the switch functions programmed globally so they behave the same task for all Presets. The obvious advantage here is the consistency when using different Presets so that it can become very automatic to operate live (e.g. tapping Switch #4 always bypasses/engages your Tremolo block). The disadvantage is that you may have Presets which don't even have a Tremolo block so that switch is useless for those Presets. In this case you can use a Per-Preset override for these specific Presets to Override the function of the switches which don't make sense for them.

Of course, in typical Fractal fashion, it is possible to combine these approaches in a single Layout. So you can have (for example) 6 of the switches behave the same way for all Presets and have the other 3 behave differently for all Presets with the specific functionality depending on which Preset is currently loaded. This is accomplished with Per-Preset placeholders.

It is a lot to get your head around at first, but if you understand normal/global footswitch assignments, per-preset overrides and per-preset placeholders then you'll quickly be able to determine which is the best approach (or mix of approaches) for you.
 
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