Why would you turn a console into a sequencer?
The artist I currently work for has been known to publicly demonstrate his ability to create music out of anything. This has always been both entertaining to me and inspiring. I love getting to work in the music industry and be around people who create with intention. Since I work on the technical side, it can often feel like I am just a pass-through for the music that is being created. This is even more true as a monitor engineer. Hardly any people will actually ever hear what I do directly.
Despite it not being a glamorous job, I actually love monitor engineering so much. I love the ability to build relationships with the band and artist. I love being able to solve problems and troubleshoot. I love being able to set people up for success. Mixing is a lot of fun and I love doing it, but mixing is just a fraction of what goes through my brain when I am working. 9 times out of 10, I am constantly thinking about “how can I improve this or more efficient?”
Unfortunately, it is easy to fall into rhythms of audio that cause a form of complacency. The gear can generally be the same once you find a flow. The showfile can be converted and edited into oblivion, and you never start over. There is so much that can be put on autopilot in the digital age. This is not a bad thing, but I do find myself constantly asking if the way I am doing something is the best way to do it.
So why exactly did I turn the console into a sequencer?
To that, I say, “why not?”
It was a challenge for me to use the tools I am comfortable with differently. It forced me to open menus I haven’t ever opened. It caused me to think musically instead of sonically. It ignited a passion for a simple little project that would make me think outside the box.
That’s nice. But how did you do it?
The TL;DR is that I used snapshots to fire macros based on the melody and created a grid in the snapshot window of 16th notes wherein I could map the notes like you would in a DAW.
The long version is this:
- I first created as many channels as I thought I would need and assigned them a note.
- I routed the internal oscillator to every single channel that had a note name.
- Mute all the channels.
- Make a macro that mutes all the channels.
- Make a second macro that mutes all the channels except the first one, as well as changes the oscillator value to the frequency you want. i.e., 440 for an A note.
- Duplicate that macro for as many notes as you have, while adjusting the unmuted note and the frequency.
- Next, make a snapshot. Set the recall time to be in 1/100th of a second instead of frames for more granularity.
- Set the duration value to the length of whatever your note value will be. I chose to build a grid in 16th notes because the melody is in 8th notes, but I needed to trigger and OFF macro after a 16th note.
- Duplicate the snapshot as many times as you need to create the whole phrase. (I also labeled each snapshot with the note name for easy assigning later.
- As of v2025, you can fire macros from snapshots. Within the macro edit window, under the advanced tab, you can select which snapshots fire each macro. Assign each note macro to the respective snapshot.
- I also assigned the all OFF macro to every other 16th note to make sure the melody played as staccato.
- Finally, I bussed all the notes to one aux, routed that to a few effects, processed it to make it less of a sine wave, and out to the master it went.
This project was not about creating a technique to accomplish anything in a new way. It was about the joy of using a tool for something besides its intended purpose. I got to push the boundaries of what people know an audio console to be. Sure, I could have MIDI mapped it to an external VST, but I wanted to do everything in the console.
If you have any other cool console projects, please share them with me!
