Patroneo

Swing (also called shuffle) can be adjusted by a slider in percent. The slider is located on the far right of the toolbar. The slider is only visible when the group (see above) is set to either 2 or 4. Swing is also only applied in these groupings.

The start value is 0% and means: no swing; in a pair of notes both are of equal length. By changing the value, you can lengthen the first note of each pair and shorten the second. Which amount you like should be decided by listening.

The swing value has a very different effect, depending on whether a grouping of 2 or 4 notes is selected. For example with a grouping of 2, 40% is a moderate value, as experienced in Jazz. With a grouping of 4 (same BPM/tempo) already 15% are clearly audible.

The following functions can be looked up in the Edit menu at any time, but cannot be invoked directly from there, but require the use of keyboard and mouse at the same time. Use the keys while hovering the mouse pointer over a measure in the track editor (upper half of the screen).

For each of the following four possibilities there is a separate key to increase a value (e.g. semitones) or, together with the shift key, to decrease the value.

In the measures themselves, there is a small lettering that shows the current values. There is graphically only space for 3 of 4 modifications, but this is not a limitation in practice.

The modifications always apply to an individual bar and are not visible in the pattern (lower part of the screen). If the bar is switched off (and on again), the modification is deleted.

Tracks can be grouped together. This is not to be confused with the rhythm groups of patters.

Groups have two functions: they improve the clarity of layout and group JACK midiports together. (All tracks in a group send via the same port).

Typically, groups are used to combine individual tracks into "logical instruments". It is highly recommended to use groups, that’s why the empty Patroneo project is already set up that way.

Double-clicking on the name of the group "opens" and "closes" it, which has no effect on the music, but is purely visual.

Groups can be moved by using their arrow symbol located on the far left (hold down the left mouse button and drag up or down), just like the individual tracks. The order of tracks within the group is also arbitrary.

Groups and individual tracks can be mixed in any order.

All options and functions for track groups can be accesesd via the context menu of a track (right mouse click):

At first, all measures of all tracks are of the same length in Patroneo, namely as you have set the steps per pattern (start value: 8).

To the left of the track name is a number field for the "measure multiplier". The start value is "1x". If you increase this value, one measure of this track will be x times longer from now on. The measure grid changes accordingly and a click now activates the longer measure.

The pattern in the lower part of the screen will be longer, so you have more space to compose. compose.

Placing a long measure follows the old grid. You can only switch on a bar every x bars (multiples of the set value) to place a measure.

A halving of the measure lengths or crooked multipliers (1,4) are not possible (only whole numbers).

The MIDI channel a track transmits on can be set via the context menu of a track (right click). The start value is Channel 1. Only one channel per track is possible at a time. For more demanding scenarios, external JACK programs must be used.

A right click on a step opens a context menu that provides the following exclusive functions. For all functions that reverse or invert ("On" becomes "Off" and vice versa), please note that all volume information (see below) is lost.

"Row" here refer to all steps of the same pitch. From left to right.

The function "Repeat to here to fill row" opens up many creative possibilities: All steps from the beginning of the row to the selected one (incl.) are taken as a "sub-pattern" which is used to fill the rest of the row. All existing steps will be deleted with their volumes.

For example, if you want a note every fourth step, activate the first step of the row, leave three empty and click on the fourth step as context menu and select the fill function. The whole row will now be a recurring pattern of "X o o o X o o o…​".

A Step is a grey or coloured box. Grey means pause, coloured means Sounding Tone. A click with the left mouse button switches the steps on and off. A right click opens the context menu. Here you can switch all (currently visible) steps on, off or invert all: Off On becomes Off and vice versa. All volume information (see below) will be lost.

All steps are equal length. Other Durations are also possible: If you hold down the left mouse button after activating a step, you can shorten or lengthen the tone by moving it to the left or right. It must be at least half the length. A tone is at most as long as the measure itself.

You can activate as many steps in a row or simultaneously as you like. Thus Chords can be built.

Steps can have different Volumes. For this Patroneo uses so-called MIDI Velocity. If you hold the mouse cursor over an activated step, you can make its sound softer or louder by turning the mouse wheel. The volumes are displayed as numbers between 0 and 127.

If you want to see all the volume levels at once, hover the mouse cursor over one of the two volume buttons in the menu in the middle of the screen. There is also a setting in the "View" menu to display the numbers permanently. Additionaly a step looks more transparent the quieter it is. If the step is switched on and off, the volume is set back to the normal value, derived from the average volume of all tones of this pattern.

You can use the Velocity buttons to make all tones of a pattern quieter or louder. If you click on it, the volume changes by 1 each, but if you hold the mouse cursor over a button and rotate your mouse wheel the velocity changes by 10 each. It doesn’t matter which velocity button (plus or minus) you hover over.

To make all tones of a row quieter or louder hold the Alt key (not AltGr) and use your mousewheel on a step of that row.

Click with the middle mouse button on a step to hear the sound it plays. This allows you to "pre-listen" before you decide to set a note. Tip: Hold down the middle mouse button and move the mouse up and down the steps.

Which actual pitch is played ("MIDI Key") is determined by the Scale. Usually these are common musical scales: seven different notes and the octave of the root note.

Such common Scales can be selected directly. For example, major, minor, various so-called "church modes" but also the blues scale or chromatic (e.g. to GM drum mapping).

If you select a scale from the list, it will be built upon the bottom row. As a rule of thumb this is also the lowest note. In the screenshot this is midi note 60 / C4, located bottom left. You must first select the root directly and then select a Scale.

There are four buttons to change the pitch of both the root note and the entire scale:

As already described in the scale transposition, it is also possible to directly input any value between 0 and 127 in the Fields of the Scale. The tones do not have to have musically meaningful intervals, nor do they have to be sorted in ascending or descending order.

In the toolbar in the center, next to the transposition and scale options, there is a a setting option to change the number of available pitches. The starting value is "8 notes". Possible values are 1 to 127, but these are extreme values. Normal, and tested, is 1 to about 24 (two chromatic octaves).

Changing the number applies only to the currently selected pattern. Different patterns can have different numbers of pitches.

The notes are added or taken away at the bottom. Already existing activated notes will remain, even if they become "invisible", because there is no more space for them.

Often you want to add more tones to an existing track in a different pattern. A second voice, question/answer technique etc. To help you, it is possible to display other tracks as Shadows. Just click with the middle mouse button on the track you want to see. This is only possible in the measure area, not on the track name or on the timeline.

You can display as many shadows as you want, until you lose track. All shadows disappear as soon as the active track changes.

Shadows are just a guidance and not litereal pitches: If you choose a shadow-track with a different scale than your current one the shadow-pitches will be technically wrong. Shadows are very simple in principle. They just show which steps are marked, nothing more.

In the Edit menu you will find the Global Rhythm Offset. In modular music production with several programs, synchronised by JACK transport, Patroneo can be shifted entirely backwards (or even forwards) on the timeline.

For example, a performance is conceivable and the Patroneo song should only start at 52:00. Or you want to make a bar- and rhythmless intro in another program, which lasts exactly XY miditicks.

This command is explicitly aimed at advanced users and is documented in detail in the application itself when you use the menu command.

The AKAI APCmini can be used as an input device. Patroneo has a JACK-Midi input and output port for this purpose: once for the actual input and then back to the unit to control its LEDs.

For an actual tutorial how to use the hardware please refer to the video in our series of video tutorials (see introduction of this manual).

It may seem strange that this is only offered for one specific device. You may even wonder if you should buy this device yourself now?

No, don’t buy it. Working on the computer itself is faster and more convenient.

The author tried it out as an experiment. The APCmini was the cheapest device of this kind (69€ as of 2021) with at least 8 by 8 buttons (standard layout of the Patroneo pattern). There are no plans to buy more devices of this kind, so there will be no software support.

In Patroneo, you can only do pattern input with the APCmini. Everything that has to do with tracks, as well as measure modifications (transposition etc.), the selection of the scale, time signature and grouping etc. must still be done on the computer. And even then, the handling of volume/velocity is inconvenient and tone lengths cannot be adjusted as finely.

Once the programming was done, however, it was not worth leaving the functionality out of the program. After all, it is Patroneo’s only remote control from the outside, which can perhaps be "abused" for other creative purposes at some point.