Read the Quick Reference first so you'll be familiar with Gat'R's features. We'll use the main ones here to build a relatively simple gating patch. This example will be a "softer" gate (maybe something to be used on a chorded pad or drone), but the techniques would be the same for any patch.
SETUP
What you hear when you load the Tutorial bank is going to depend on what you feed into Gat'R. Pick a sound with a strong sustain (since that's what is going to be gated), and some harmonic content (since we're going to be using Gat'R's filters). Any fairly bright saw lead should let you hear what's going on in this patch.
Place Gat'R as an audio insert effect on your track. If it's a VSTi that you're gating, it might be easier to turn off Gat'R's transport-sync and just let it be automatically triggered by the audio each time you play a chord. (In the Setup panel, choose Threshold mode.) No matter what triggering mode you choose, Gat'R will always get it's tempo setting from your host. (For this patch I was using a tempo of 120 bpm.)
Gat'R has a lot of controls. To keep the interface reasonably small it uses switched panel displays. You have to become familiar with these to use Gat'R efficiently. There are two of them. The top-right panel switches between the Preset Manger, Setup, and the LFO's. (Remember that you can always go straight to the Preset Manager by clicking on the panel's titlebar. Another useful shortcut is right- and left-clicking on the "Select" text below the View selector, to step forward and back between the displays. This is handy for working on the LFOs.) The main L-shaped panel surrounding the sequencer window switches between the Amplitude/Delay controls, and the Filter controls. The Display switch in the center toggles between them and is very important.
START HERE
The first patch in the tutorial is a simple 1-bar pattern that is our starting point. No modulations are on, all the settings are at their defaults, no filter sequence is running—it's just "plain vanilla". We'll do our best to mess this up!
Get familiar with the basic idea of the two step types, impulse and tie, and how they affect the rhythm. A normal impulse step has an attack and release and an adjustable "width" (called gatetime). Click on a an impulse step to change it to a tie step. It now merges smoothly with any step that follows it without triggering a new attack phase.
If you are new to Gat'R and patterns, you might want to run through the "Ear Training" presets. These are very simple sequences that each highlight a single Gat'R control. By hearing them in isolation you will learn the sound of each building block.
There's a number of plain-vanilla patches to experiment with in the preset directory called Raw Patterns
RHYTHM TWEAK
Our rhythm is basically set by the pattern of on, off, and tie steps. But Gat'R has a lot of modulation possibilities that can used to adjust the feel. (Of course the LFOs can also be used for good old-fashioned sound mangling.)
"Rhythm Tweak" introduces just one change. One of the LFOs is used to do some volume accenting on the downbeats. Go to the LFO1 panel (top-right, use the View selector) and you'll see a pulse (or square really) waveform with a 1/4 tempo directed to V-OPN—the amplitude level of an "On" step.
Steps are not just on/off switches. That's why there's the Open/Close knobs—they set the volume level for each state. In fact, the Closed level can be set higher than the Open level, which gives a kind of "inverse" pattern.
The 1/4 tempo for the LFO causes it to be positive for the first eighth note (two steps) and negative for the second. If you want to accent the even-numbered eighths, change the LFO's phase setting to 180 degress, so it starts out on a down-cycle.
The only other change beside turning on the LFO is some backing off of the Open knob—from 100% to 75%. This is because the amount of LFO swing wanted is +/- 25%, and starting at 75% gives room to hear the full 50%-100% range.
It's OK to squash the tops of LFOs, but it can sound different when your waveforms are sines and triangles
MORE RHYTHM TWEAKS
Two more rhythm-related changes in "More Rhythm Tweaks", using swing and delay. Soon we'll have ourselves a polka!
Swing is easy: each of the sequencers has its own Swing knob (which slightly delays the upbeats—2 and 4, 6 and 8, etc.). We've dialed in some here, and we've also added an LFO driving the pattern Delay.
The pattern Delay knobs (one for each of the sequencers) shift the timing of the whole pattern by up to one full step. Don't confuse them with the audio delay unit.
Just delaying the start time of the pattern isn't very interesting by itself, but when modulated by an LFO it adds interesting swing-like effects. LFO 2 is being used here, with a 1/4 sync.
Go back and re-listen to "Start Here" for a second to see just how powerful Gat'R's rhythm tools are.
ADD A FILTER
Now to add some pattern-based filtering. Gat'R has two completely independent sequencers. The first controls amplitude at each step, the second controls a filter's cutoff frequency (and/or its Q) at each step.
"Normally" the amplitude gating is done first and then sent for filter gating. But Gat'R's modules can be configured any way you want them by useing the Routing option in the Setup panel. For now we'll be staying with V>F>D.
Experiment with the different filter types and settings by turning the filter on but leaving the filter sequencer off. In this patch a band-reject filter is used to create just a subtle difference between the on and off steps. In "Add a Filter" the frequency and bandwidth (Q) are dialled in, and a little overdrive added. But for now the filter sequencer is still Off.
This is the sound you will hear for an "On" step when the Open setting is 50%. It is also the sound you will hear during an "Off" step if the Close setting is 50%. In other words, the Open and Close settings are relative to the filter's cutoff setting, with 50% meaning "no change". Think of it as two decisions: you pick the filter's basic cutoff frequency and then decide how far above and below this you want the on and off steps to swing. If the Open and Close settings are the same, the filter sequence will have no audible effect. We don't want too dramatic an effect in this patch, so we will be setting Open to just a little above 50% and Close to slightly below.
Remember that "Q" takes on a different meaning according to the filter type chosen. For a lowpass filter, it is resonance; for a band-reject it is bandwidth. (This means the bandwidth is wider as the Q knob is turned up.)
SEQUENCE THE FILTER
In this patch the filter sequencer is mainly just adding some stereo interest. Since our amplitude sequence is the same in both the left and right channels, everything up to now has been "mono". By turning the filter up and down at different steps for each channel we can introduce some stereo effects, as well as provide a little counter-rhythm.
In "Sequence the Filter" we've added a not-too-interesting filter seq pattern (and turned it on with the button to its left), set its swing to 50%, and chosen the important Open and Close values for the desired effect. Then the filter seq's gatetime was lengthened to 100% to soften it a little.
The Open/Close values of our steps now are just modulating the filter's frequency. But we could also have them drive its "Q". That's what the Qmod knob is for. By default it is at 0%, but we could set it to 100% to have both frequency and bandwidth modulation. (The Fmod and Qmod controls make interesting LFO targets, by the way.)
BALANCE LEVELS
There are just two changes in "Balance Levels". The filter seq Mix has been turned down from 0:100 to 25:75, which reduces the contribution of the filter sequence.
Gat'R has a Wet/Dry control for the whole program, which is usually left at 100% wet. But there are also separate wet/dry controls for the individual modules. These are the Mix knobs, and they make it easy to balance the relative "strength" of the two sequencers. They also make good LFO targets.
Also the amplitude sequence Close value was raised from 0% to 35%. This lets through some of the dry input signal and softens the choppiness.
ADD VARIATION
That's basically it, but these drone patterns can get very tiring (as you've probably noticed). What you can do in Gat'R is make a set of variations and use Midi to switch to a different patch every few bars. (You configure this in the Setup panel.) Here in "Add Variation" we've just used the extra 16 steps available to make a two-bar sequence, and placed an example of this kind of variation in the second half.
For some more variations, see the "Mystery LFO" patches. Each one has a single new LFO target added. They use LFO 6 for this; turn it off and on to better hear the effect.
LFOs are turned off by setting their target to NONE.
That's the end of this lesson. There's a lot of fun to be had in Gat'R from just "happy accidents". Hopefully this will help you have those occasions even more often. But there's still more to explore—we've barely scratched the surface of Gat'R.
Have a Gat'R day!