With Time Designer, you can change the time signature of any groove in the RMX library in real-time, using the Meter function on the Time Designer page.
View the Time Designer tutorial.
There may still be times and applications where you might want to manually edit grooves into new time signatures, and although Time Designer offers a faster way to do it, it can be done in other ways. What follows are a few ways that you can create alternative time signatures manually, using grooves from the RMX library.
GROOVE MODIFICATION
• Edit MIDI Files in your host
While this is not an instant or real-time process, it is quite easy in Slice Menu mode to edit a groove’s MIDI notes in your host application. This allows you to change the time signature and pattern of the original groove to match the music you are working on.
GROOVE CREATION
• Play or build parts in Slice Menu mode
You can think of every Groove Element not only as a pre-made audio loop, but also as a set of sounds that can be played or triggered manually to build your own custom patterns from scratch in any time signature. The slices you manually trigger in each groove element can easily combine together in a musical way, since they come from the same audio loop.
The idea is that instead of “deconstructing” a groove, you are “reconstructing” a brand new one from the slices. This can be done by simply playing the slices manually from your MIDI controller, or by programming a new MIDI file using the sequencing capabilities of your host. In this technique, the groove element is acting simply as a sound source for your own rhythm performance or programming.
• Play or build parts with the Sound Menus
Something many users overlook is that the RMX Core Library contains a truly massive library of over 10,0000 unique single shot sounds in the Sound Menus part of the library. Check them out with your MIDI Controller and have fun sequencing any patterns in any time signatures you want!
• Play or build parts in Kit mode
In Kit Mode, RMX is a very powerful drum module and adheres to the General-MIDI specification. Building and performing your own grooves in RMX allows you to fully customize every aspect of a groove, including the time signature.
• Play or build parts in Groove Menu mode
Using a combination of Trigger Modes and Groove Menu MIDI Mode lets you start and stop the playback of groove elements from MIDI notes. Many interesting time signature variations can be created in real-time using this simple method of shortening or lengthening a groove. This method of “groove performance” works especially well with percussion grooves.
GROOVE EXPANSION
• Import audio files of other time signature loops via the REX File Import feature of the Standalone.
This allows you to import other non-4/4 ReCycle REX files or any of your own custom audio loop material you may have created outside of RMX.
• SAGE Xpanders
Several of the SAGE Xpanders from Spectrasonics and ILIO contain some non-4/4 grooves, including: Liquid Grooves, Burning Grooves, Metamorphosis, and Ethno Techno.
