Internal Mode – Pads: Panorama P Series
There are two ways to change the parameter assignments of the pads: through the Control Edit pages, and by pressing the Pads button.
Both methods do completely different things, so they deserve independent coverage. This article will cover only the features that are available when you press the Pads button.
Using the Pads internal features
First let’s get an overview of where the various parameters are located. If you haven’t already, press the Pads button (which you’ll find next to the lower-left pad, right between the transport buttons and the pads). The display should look like Image 1.
Let’s start from the bottom and work our way up as we describe the contents of the display.
- Menu buttons 1-3 (M1-3): The red highlight tells you M1 is currently selected (Pad-Map). M2 will access the Scale menus, and M3 activates Vel-Spread, or ‘velocity spread’. More about all of these later.
- Pad rows A, B and C: These correspond to the physical pads on the right side of Panorama’s front panel. Each displays its current MIDI note assignment and the word ‘OFF’, which tells you what the Pad Pressure will control (‘Off’ means ‘nothing at the moment’; see the Control Edit article).
- Information bar: each of the three sections has important information.
- The first red window (Pads) reminds you which section you are editing.
- The gray window in the middle displays the name of the current Pad Map (C1-B1), which is circled in this picture. A new Pad Map can be selected from here (we’ll get to that later).
- The red window on the right indicates which velocity curve has been selected for the pads. This is what the data encoder will change by default.
- The top line, as with most pages, tells you which controller was last used and what value it sent last.
There’s more to each of these sections than meets the eye. This is especially true of Menu buttons 1 and 2, which each allows access to additional menu items. So now let’s go into greater detail.
Menu button 1 (M1): Pad-Map
Press M1 and you will see additional editing options on each Menu button (image 2).
Here the first four Menu buttons adopt different labels. They’re nearly self-explanatory, but they’re fun to describe anyway:
- Note Learn (M1): This makes it a breeze to assign new MIDI notes to each pad. Just press M1 and hit a pad and it will turn red. That means it’s waiting for you to press a key on Panorama’s keyboard. Do so, and… …voila! The pad has been assigned to the MIDI note number you played on the keyboard (image 3). You can do this over and over again until each of the 12 pads is playing the exact note you want it to. To exit the Note Learn function, press M1 again.
- Octave +/- (M2): Press this button and you can use the data encoder to shift all 12 pads up or down one or more octaves at the same time (image 4). You can hit any pad you want to while you’re doing this to use it as a reference point for the amount of octave shift you need. To exit the Octave function, press M2 again.
- Transpose (M3): After you press M3 you can use the data encoder to shift all 12 pads up or down in single-step (chromatic) increments within the range of an octave in either direction (image 5). You can hit any pad you want to while you’re doing this to use it as a reference point for the transposition amount. To exit the Transpose function, press M3 again.
- Vel-Spread (M4): Have you ever wanted to program a marching snare cadence, or one of those snare rolls that increases gradually leading into the next section of a dance tune? Vel-Spread makes it easier to do this. Just select one of the pads, press M4, and instantly all 12 pads will be assigned to the MIDI note of the pad you selected (image 6). You can fine-tune the MIDI velocity of each pad, too, by selecting it and using the data encoder. That will help you take advantage of the velocity cross-switch points of a multi-sampled percussion instrument, for example. To exit the Vel-Spread function, press M4 again.
When you’re through with these features, press the Pads button to return to the main Pads page.
Menu button 2 (M2): Scale
Return to the main Pads page by pressing the Pads button, and then press Menu button 2 (M2), which is labeled Scale. Image 7 is what you should see in the Panorama display now.
We’d better start from the top of the display this time, because that’s where the magic begins. You’ll notice the words in the three sections of the Information bar have changed again:
- The first red window (Scale) reminds you which section you are editing.
- The gray window in the middle displays the name of the current Scale (Chromatic). A new Scale can be selected from here using the data encoder. There are 32 of them, and you may want to play with this for a while before going any further! It’s a lot of fun.
- The red window on the right indicates which velocity curve has been selected for the pads. You’ll need to access the second page of menu options in order to do that from here, since the Scale feature is really the main feature here.
Now let’s talk about the new Menu button options. You will recognize some of the features in this sub-menu from the Pad-Map page; we placed them here as well for convenience while editing. But there are several new features that will open up a lot of options for the pads. So many, in fact, that there are actually two pages found down here. We’ll cover them both:
Root Learn (M1): This feature may seem similar to Note Learn at first, but instead of changing one pad at a time, it changes them all when you press a key on the keyboard. This will come in very handy once you start experimenting with different scales, as you won’t have to think about making sure they maintain the same relationship if you want to play in a different key; the Root Learn feature will do the work for you. Musical results will ensue!
This is also sort of like the Transpose feature on another button, except you can play any note on the keyboard (image 8). This can take the entire set of pads more than an octave away from the current set of note assignments, if you like, and do it in a hurry. To exit the Root Learn function, press M1 again.
- Octave +/- (M2): This has the same function as on the Pad-Maps page: Press M2 and you can use the data encoder to shift all 12 pads up or down one or more octaves at the same time. You can hit any pad you want while you’re doing this to use it as a reference point for the amount of octave shift you need. To exit the Octave function, press M2 again.
- Transpose (M3): This also has the same function as on the Pad-Maps page: After you press M3 you can use the data encoder to shift all 12 pads up or down in single-step (chromatic) increments within the range of an octave in either direction. You can hit any pad you want while you’re doing this to use it as a reference point for the transposition amount. To exit the Transpose function, press M3 again.
Note-Spread (M4): You’ll understand why we talked about how to select a new scale first after we take a look at this feature. It’ll be a little more obvious what’s happening if you set the pads up a certain way while we’re going through the details. So before you press M4, use the data encoder to select the Major (Ionian) scale and set the Octave, Transposition, and or Root Note (whichever you’ve been fiddling with) so the first pad says C1. The display should look like image 9.
Now press Menu button 4 (Note-Spread) and look at the top line of the display. The words provide the information that the Note-Spread Interval is currently set to 1. Here’s an important point, though: This does not mean ‘1’ as in a chromatic step from C to C#, but rather it means ‘1’ as in ‘the notes of the pads will be assigned according to adjacent notes of the selected scale’.
For example, if you look at the white keys on a piano keyboard, the keys that are next to each other (C, D, E, F, etc.) are ‘one note apart’ within the physical keyboard’s ‘chosen’ scale of C Major.
If you were to skip every other note on the white keys, you would play C, E, G, B, D, F, A, C, etc. This is the same thing that will happen on the pads when you select a Note-Spread Interval of 2. Try that and the display will look like image 10.
As you can see, the proper combination of the Scale and Note-Spread Interval features can be used to set up a harmonically-relevant environment on the pads, where you can feel free to experiment with tuned percussion or whatever without the fear of hitting a ‘wrong’ note. And they can also be used to extend the musical range of the pads well beyond an octave very quickly, eliminating the musical ‘boundaries’ you might otherwise encounter when the pads are constrained to adjacent MIDI notes.
To exit the Note-Spread function, press M4 again.- Next Page (M5): There’s another page with two more Menu button options (image 11).
Once you’ve pressed the Next Page button you’ll see two familiar options on M1 and M2 (image 12).
- Vel-Spread (M1): As described previously, Vel-Spread allows you to focus on controlling the dynamic performance of a single MIDI note. First select a pad you want to control; then when M1 is activated its LED graphic will lght red, and instantly all 12 pads will be assigned to the MIDI note of the pad you selected earlier. You can fine-tune the MIDI velocity of each pad, too, by selecting it and using the data encoder. Velocity values don’t have to progress in a linear fashion, either: you can set the values so every third pad has an accent, or have the first four pads decrease in velocity while the next eight increase in velocity, or whatever you can think of to try! To exit the Vel-Spread function, press M1 again.
- Pads-Vel (M2): You haven’t seen this label before, but you’ve seen what it controls on every Pads page: ‘Pads-Vel’ is how you select the velocity curve for the pads while editing the Scale settings. Just press M2 and the data encoder can be used to select a different velocity curve, if you like, instead of selecting a new scale like it normally does. To exit the Pads-Vel function, press M2 again.
When you’re through with these features, press the Pads button to return to the main Pads page.
Menu button 3 (M3): Vel-Spread
The Velocity Spread feature is available and described as a part of the Pad-Map (M1) and Scale (M2) feature sections above. But just in case you jumped straight to this section, here’s the information again.
Vel-Spread allows you to assign one MIDI note to all 12 pads with different MIDI velocity levels on each pad. This facilitates precise control over the dynamics of a given sound such as a tabla or whatever sound you have at your disposal. It doesn’t have to be a percussion instrument! Try other types of instruments like a nylon guitar (flamenco strums, anyone?), a plastic tube, or an FM synth. The possibilities are endless.
To set this up, first select a pad you want to control. When you activate M3 its LED graphic will light red, and instantly all 12 pads will be assigned to the MIDI note of the pad you selected previously. See above for examples of how the display will look when you do this.
You can fine-tune the MIDI velocity of each pad, too, by selecting it and using the data encoder. This allows you to dial in exactly the dynamics you want to achieve. Remember: the values can be set to whatever you want, so you could have every other pad be loud or soft, or have three rows that grow from soft to loud as you move left to right, or whatever you can dream up. The point is to allow you the freedom to think about music in a way you never have before, which can be priceless when you’re looking for new ideas.
Velocity Curves Two ways of changing the velocity curve for the pads have been described in this article. Here’s what the various settings represent:
- P-Vel: Soft: An average touch on the pads will result in generally lower MIDI velocity values. More force is required to reach the maximum velocity value of 127.
- P-Vel: Standard: An average touch on the pads will result in a relatively even response across the full range of MIDI velocity values.
- P-Vel: Hard: An average touch on the pads will result in generally higher MIDI velocity values. Less force is required to reach the maximum velocity value of 127.
- P-Vel: 4-Level: Four fixed stages of MIDI velocity values are available: 15, 64, 100, and 127.
- P-Vel: 3-Level: Three fixed stages of MIDI velocity values are available: 32, 84, and 127.
- P-Vel: 2-Level: Two fixed stages of MIDI velocity values are available: 64 and 127.
- P-Vel: Fixed: All pads will respond to any level of force with the same MIDI velocity value. This fixed value can be altered during performance, though, through the use of a different controller such as a Fader button or the sustain pedal. This process is described in the article ‘Pads: controlling the Fixed Velocity value with another controller’.
Controlling the fixed velocity value of the keyboard or pads
Accessing the velocity curves
There are multiple, independent velocity curves available for Panorama’s keyboard and pads. In order to control the fixed velocity of the keyboard or pads with another controller, first you’ll need to select the Fixed Velocity curve for one or the other. Here’s how:
Keyboard Velocity Curve selection
- Press both of the Global buttons at the same time.
- Use Menu button 1 or 2 to select the Velocity Curve field.
- Turn the data encoder knob fully clockwise until the Fixed curve is selected (Image 13).
Pad Velocity Curve selection
- Press the Pads button (between the Record button and the first pad).
- Turn the data encoder knob fully clockwise until the Fixed curve is selected (Image 14).
Fixed Velocity: a flat curve
Initially the Fixed Velocity setting will set all the keys or pads to the maximum velocity of 127. You can change that value for all the keys or pads at once with a fader, if you like, by entering the Control Edit page:
- Press the Internal button to put Panorama in Internal mode.
- Press Menu button 5 (M5), currently labeled ‘Setup’ Note: the ‘Setup’ menu can be accessed from any page where you see the word ‘Setup’ on M5. From this point onward the instructions would be the same for those pages.
- Use the data encoder to scroll through the pop-up menu and select ‘Control Edit’.
- Press M5 (Enter).
- Select the fader you want to use by moving it.
- Use the Menu buttons to move the highlighted cursor up to the Message Type field.
- Use the data encoder to scroll through the options and select ‘Fixed Velocity’.
- Move the cursor back down to the Target field and select either Keys or Pads. The rest of this article will assume you selected Keys. Note: in order for the keyboard’s velocity output to be controlled by the fader, it will need to have its velocity curve set to Fixed (see above).
At this point you may want to experiment with using the fader to control the keyboard velocity. While trying it out, pay attention to the lowest and highest velocity values that work for the passage you are playing. You can enter these values in the Max and Min fields to set the range of values the fader will select for the keyboard.
There are lots of other options for variable source controllers for Fixed Velocity: the wheels, knobs, encoders, expression pedal, and even the keyboard’s aftertouch feature. But what if you only want to use certain velocity values? That’s where the buttons come in.
Using the buttons as Fixed Velocity sources
It’s really easy to set up one or more buttons to control the Fixed Velocity value of the keyboard or pads. We’ll use the pads as the target in this example. Here’s what to do:
- Press the Internal button to put Panorama in Internal mode.
- Press Menu button 5 (M5), currently labeled ‘Setup’. Note: the ‘Setup’ menu can be accessed from any page where you see the word ‘Setup’ on M5. From this point onward the instructions would be the same for those pages.
- Use the data encoder to scroll through the pop-up menu and select ‘Control Edit’.
- Press M5 (Enter).
- Select the button you want to use by pressing it.
- Use the Menu buttons to move the highlighted cursor up to the Message Type field.
- Use the data encoder to scroll through the options and select ‘Fixed Velocity’.
- Move the cursor back down to the Target field and select either Keys or Pads. The rest of this article will assume you selected Pads. Note: in order for the pads’ velocity output to be controlled by the fader, they will need to have their velocity curve set to Fixed (see above).
If you already know the velocity value you want to use for the selected button, move the cursor to the Press parameter and dial it in with the data encoder.
To set up another button for a different velocity value, press it and follow the necessary instructions as described for the previous button. You can have as many buttons dedicated to this function as you like, and you can use F-Keys and the sustain pedal for Fixed Velocity controls as well.
Pad Maps: Quick select
There are two ways to select Pad Maps. The first is from the Load menu, which is found at the Internal mode home page on Menu button 4 (M4). This is fairly quick and easy, and may be the best route if you also plan to load a new Preset and other new Maps at the same time.
But if you only want to load a new Pad Map and nothing else, there’s an even quicker way to do it.
Getting to the Pad Map page is simple: just press the Pads button (wisely located next to the Pads!). You’ll see a screen that looks like Image 1.
Note: Following the process outlined below will replace the currently active Pad Map with another one from memory. If you have made changes to the current Pad Map that you do not want to lose, please save the active Pad Map to one of the 20 Pad Map memory locations before you proceed.
Now that you’ve done that, notice the circled name in the information line at the top of the display. This is the name of the Pad Map that is currently active (in this case, ‘C1-B1’).
If the first thing you do is turn the data encoder, you will see the names in the right-most box changing. This is how you select different velocity curves for the pads, which is not what we want to do right now. But we mention that to contrast the normal function of the data encoder on this page with the Pad Map selection process, which involves holding down a button as you turn the encoder. That’s a subtle distinction, but it makes all the difference!
So we already gave away the secret, but it bears repeating. To select a new Pad Map:
- Press and hold the Pads button.
- After about 2 seconds the name of the current Pad Map will begin to flash, but don’t let go of the Pads button just yet. As long as you are holding that button down, the name of the current Pad Map will continue to flash.
- Turn the data encoder and you will see the number and name of the Pad Map change. However, the Pad assignments will not change until you release the Pads button.
Once you see the name of the Pad Map you would like to select, release the Pads button. The Pad assignments will update to those of the new Pad Map, and you’re on your way (Image 16).