Rapture: Step Generator Frustration

1). Hmm. Zoom in on the display itself? For example, to target a single step in a larger group of steps? No.

2). Not really, but here's why. A Step level is a relative portion of whatever value that you have set in the StepGen's Depth, and each StepGen type has a different real-world unit of measure. There's some help, though. In the right-click context menu, you can Snap to divisions of 10, 12, or 24 (or No Snap).

If you use the MIDI Note Entry process, that can help to snap you to discrete, repeatable levels. While it 'works' via the Pitch StepGen, the results can be copied to any other StepGen type. Pressing "P" will also snap the whole display to logical levels by an interpretation algorithm.

3). Not directly. The first Step is a fixed point, and up to 127 more can be 'revealed'. There's a way to phase it indirectly, though. If your StepGen's overall 'shape' aligns with that of an LFO, right-click and choose Copy Shape from LFO. The LFO waveform can be 'phased' by dragging on the display, or clicking for focus, then using the arrow or Shift+Arrow keys. (That's in one degree or 10 degree increments).

If no provided LFO shape is appropriate, you can store a user-defined LFO. It gets dropped in the LfoWaveform folder before launch, and named something like LfoWaveformxxx.wav. Then it can be shifted in phase. If your intended shape is closer to any audio-level waveform, right-click and use Extract Shape from Sample File instead.

These answers don't give you direct routes to what you're after. But you'll find quite a few tricks to help you along the way as you get deeper into the Step Generators.

Good points; all.

1). It is rather fussy, isn't it? I've tried all of the common shortcuts to gain finer controls. They're all dedicated to other functions, and Mac compatibility surely contributes to that. The closest I've come is in toggling between a Snap to 10 or 12 Levels to get myself in the general area, then fine-tune from there.

With the Step mode (in the Pitch StepGen), it's possible to hold a (external input) MIDI note, and make tuning adjustments 'by ear' with the mouse. Like the other workarounds here, the difficulty level increases with the number of Steps to adjust.

2). That's a great feature request. I'm unsure what the overhead would be, but the currently selected Step already does have the 'focus', so a division into the Depth value is required. I'm afraid that 0-100% would be confusing on those parameters that use cents or dB. I would think that some thought would have to be given to a conversion into currently used real-world values.

3). I may have some ideas that will help on point 3. Again, these are workarounds for a once-only phasing shift, but they could be of some use to you. The difficulties will go up with the complexities of the expected results.

a). With the MIDI Note Entry tactic mentioned above, it'd be easy enough to shift the source clip that you use for conversion into a Pitch StepGen sequence. For example, if you're targeting beat 2 in the project, you can chop off a few MIDI Notes from the tail, shift-select the note pattern forward, and tack those notes on at the head of the clip.

This assumes a final Sync setting in the StepGen. It's harder to explain than it is to see. Here's some additional information.

b). If you switch from a Sync setting to Freq, the StepGen sequence is triggered starting from the Note On itself. It's almost an envelope-type of behavior. You'll need to do some calculations between BPM and Hertz to make this work, though. For example, consider a StepGen at a Sync setting of 4 (beats).

If your host is set to 120 BPM, that's effectively 2 beats per second (120 beats/60 seconds). For Frequency, you'll need a figure based on one second of time, so that would be .50. 'Sync' is now based on when the Note On starts. Of course, there's all manner of calculators on the 'net for conversions of more involved situations.