Applications for Tables?

[megarat]

Hello folks.  I've been getting to know my NerdSEQ for several months now and I'm loving it.  I have a newbie question for anyone with the spare time:

I don't have any experience with traditional tracker sequences, so I'm probably overlooking something obvious, but I think I'm missing the point on tables.  What kinds of applications are they used for?  The manual highlighted one such use case:  run a table at a faster speed than its sequencer track, and then use the transpose feature to create chord-like arpeggios within each sequencer step.  I can envision different ways one could riff on this idea, but I'm having a hard time seeing other useful table applications.

I would love to hear about how you're using tables in ways that are different than the above, especially the FX column.  Thanks!

[colb]

The fast arpeggio thing was really useful back in the old days when you have maybe 4 channels max, so with bass drums and melody, there wasn't enough polyphony left to play chords - so they did this weird warbly fast arp effect to simulate chords, which didin't really work, but gave early tracker music it's own unique vibe.

I like to use the tables to play slower arpeggios - it's an easy way to get variations from slower sequences without writing arps out longhand - so you can experiment much more easily and quickly. speed of 6 seems good to keep synchronisation. You could maybe also use it as another way to transpose.

I guess think of it as another tool for generating variations on existing patterns, and a feature to play with for getting inspiration and the odd happy accident.

[megarat]

The fast arpeggio thing was really useful back in the old days when you have maybe 4 channels max, so with bass drums and melody, there wasn't enough polyphony left to play chords - so they did this weird warbly fast arp effect to simulate chords, which didin't really work, but gave early tracker music it's own unique vibe.

I like to use the tables to play slower arpeggios - it's an easy way to get variations from slower sequences without writing arps out longhand - so you can experiment much more easily and quickly.  speed of 6 seems good to keep synchronisation. You could maybe also use it as another way to transpose.

I guess think of it as another tool for generating variations on existing patterns, and a feature to play with for getting inspiration and the odd happy accident.

@colb, thanks for the background, I'll give your suggestion a try.

[the_cody]

Using Endless mode is my favorite way to use tables. Here's some ways I use endless mode in tables:

With a jump back to step 0, the table is no longer 16 steps long, giving you polymetric modulation.

Use it like a custom stepped LFOs by doing things like using the Mod command in the FX column. This is also really cool with setting the pitch or mod glide amount via the FX column in a table.

Use a slow speed that's a multiple of 6 (like 1E or 24 or even slower) and use the transpose column to do some slower transpositions of a pattern. This can be really easy to stay in key if you stick to pentatonic notes in the pattern and perfect intervals in the table.

You can create a few different tables that do different things (either small differences or even radically different things) and use the Table Probability FX to give a small percentage chance that tables later in the pattern will get used. This is particularly cool in endless mode because you can have a small enough percentage that a table might last more than a whole pattern and when the pattern loops, the endless table will still be doing the polymeteric thing.