Saving & Loading Patches
With so many hallways inside a single Atrium session, a patch is not merely a 'preset sound' you like, but a complete configuration of the landscape. At its best, a patch invites further interaction, where loading it again will lead to many more sounds than found in your last foray.
To fully encourage this type of exploration, Atrium supports a total of five onboard patches. Each factory patch is a tiny world to explore, and each patch is editable and can be overwritten freely.
A patch is a snapshot of the entire state of Atrium. Control positions, scales, sequences, mappings — anything except gestures and volume. Accordingly, you can encode so much musical information into a single patch.
Template: Resetting State
While many synthesizers have an "init" patch (a blank slate to craft a new preset), Atrium has a patch template. This special patch is a collection of defaults that provide a straightforward musical layout without any of the complexities of mapping. This template is an ideal tool for initial explorations as it enables you to jump back to known state without any hidden modulations affecting your play.
When Atrium is powered on, it always loads the template patch. You can recall it at any time: hold load and press clear.
Loading the template patch will ensure:
- Maps are all cleared.
- Gestures are all cleared.
- All continuous controls are set to the current slider and knob positions.
- Touch plates are reset to their default values.
In contrast to Atrium's other patches, the template will always set Atrium to follow the current position of the knobs & sliders. This cancels any "pickup" state that arises when setting mappings or recording gestures. The important part is that after loading the template, every knob does what it says on the tin.
Loading
To load one of Atrium's five patches:
- Hold load. You'll see a steady L indicator in the extension window letting you know you're about to load a patch.
- The currently-loaded patch's light will be illuminated on the gesture keys.
- Press a gesture key to load the associated patch (1-5, from left to right).
If you've previously loaded a patch, Atrium will light the associated gesture-key, and display the number of the patch in the gesture window. If you see t in the window, the last patch loaded was the template.
Loading a patch is instantaneous, so you can quickly jump around your saved patches in a live context.
Loading a patch restores everything. Think of it as a snapshot in time while working on a patch. As such, anything you're working on will be overwritten including mappings, gestures, MIDI settings — the works!
Factory Patches
You've probably already jumped through these, so here's some context for what the factory patches are! There's lots of talk of mapping here, so feel free to jump back after you've read further and hopefully it will make some more sense!
1. Dialogue
(from dani derks)
"Designed to be a hand-played dialogue with the machine.
- sustain / strum opens contours (which are mapped to adjust timbre)
- Five clusters are stored for tonal exploration
- Two custom scales, similar voicings but usefully different — I like choosing a chord and tapping between the two options
- LFO is upward-modulating the voicing touchplate and downward-modulating the contour, a smidge in each case
- notes are inverse-mapped to spectre's cutoff frequencies, which makes for a compelling "woah" when changing notes, scales, chords, octaves and having low tones bring the spectrum frequencies high
Still a bunch of hands-on available — flip the notes slider up and down, make a few rapid timbral changes, spread the spectrum, etc."
2. Place
An exploration of parallel major 7th chords. spectre's frequencies control the notes spread, while the wrapping of lens advances through the sequence. The LFO drives the timing, including some subtle chorusing of time. Meanwhile that LFO is randomly stepping around, searching for it's right place.
3. Cyan
A delicate recreation of Bill Evan's opening chords on Blue in Green. While it's just beautiful on first glance, there's so much fun to be had just playing tempo and speed. This uses drone to pluck through the chord tones, while contour is used to animate each event. voicing is pulled all the way down, leading to a deep bassline (with upward contour stretch) and closely voiced chords atop.
4. Lovely
Music box from an ancient pipe organ that never was. Old world, churchy vibes. There's a lot of modulation happening that I'm grateful isn't a modular spaghetti patch. Highlighting the use of phase to spread the notes into 3 distinct groups, along with lens clamped to a cycle of six values. This started as an attempt to build a waltz preset, but it strayed pretty far!
5. Barry
Built on the "diminished sixth" scale. The rhythm has this fascinating gallop to it (and is in 11). The trick here is dialing chord to articulate every second note in the scale, mapping change to advance drone, which is configured to sound only every second pulse. The result is an alternation of major 6th chords, and diminished 7ths, whenever drone repeats. There's a couple other 8 note scales on-board to hear the same effect with different harmony. Play with length to find some other groovy zones.
Saving
Atrium's patches can be overwritten at any time. Use this to incrementally develop an existing patch by overwriting the same slot, or replace them with something totally different!
To save a patch:
- Hold alt, then press & hold load.
- With these keys held, you'll see a pulsating S indicator in the extension window letting you know you're about to save a patch.
- The currently-loaded patch's LED will also be lit, guiding you if you want to overwrite (or avoid) the current patch.
- Press a gesture slot to save into the pressed patch slot.