Mackie C4 Commander User Guide - Page 15

C4 Commander SINGLE Left and Right: These buttons scroll individual parameters left and right. If there are multiple pages in a layout, the adjacent page scrolls across the banks. A vertical dotted line indicates the division between pages. BANK/PAGE Navigation Buttons BANK UP/DOWN: Use these buttons to scroll banks of parameters up and down. If there are multiple pages in a layout, the adjacent page scrolls up from the bottom or down from the top. A horizontal dotted line indicates the division between pages. PAGE L/R: These buttons scroll through the pages in a layout. The right button scrolls in ascending order (1, 2, 3, etc.) and the left button scrolls in descending order (3, 2, 1). Navigating the C4 Commander The C4 has four rows of eight V-Pots, for a total of 32 controls. For many MIDI controlled instruments, that is enough to handle all the parameters for the C4 to control. But some instruments have more than 32 parameters to control. The Emu Planet Phatt, for example, has 224 parameters to control. This would require seven C4's (224/32=7) to control all the parameters required. The beauty of a digital MIDI controller is that you can assign any parameter to any V-Pot, and change it on the fly. With the push of a button, you can reassign all of the V-Pots to another set of parameters. This is where the concept of "pages" comes in. The obvious analogy to changing pages in the C4 Commander is turning the pages of a book. We can create seven pages in the C4 Commander to control all 224 param- eters on the Emu Planet Phatt. You simply push the PAGE L and PAGE R buttons at the bottom of the C4 to scroll among the pages and gain access to the various controls. In addition, you can use the BANK UP and BANK DOWN buttons to scroll up and down, bank by bank, as if the pages were aligned vertically. A horizontal dotted line indicates the division between the pages. The SINGLE left and right buttons scroll the parameters across the banks, one by one, as if the pages were aligned horizontally, side by side. A vertical dotted line indicates the division between the pages. You can also use the LAYOUT left and right buttons to scroll between open layouts in the Layout list. If you have two or more instruments you want to control with the C4, this makes it easy to quickly change the V-Pot assignments to control different instruments. But wait...there's more! What if you want to have access to a few (or many) frequently-used controls on two different instruments at the same time? Use the SPLIT function to divide the C4 so that some of the banks control one instrument (Layout 1) and the other banks controls another instrument (Layout 2). You can still use the PAGE L/R, BANK UP/DOWN, SINGLE L/R, and LAYOUT L/R buttons while in split mode. The best way to understand and get used to these navigation controls is to just start using them and see what happens on your own. So go ahead and create a few sample layouts and start experimenting with the navigation buttons. You'll have it figured out in no time! PARAMETER, BANK/PAGE User's Guide 15