SPECTRALIS - First Steps
Setting Up the Spectralis
Place the Spectralis on a level, clean and sufficiently spacious surface, connect the power-plug with the current and connect the sum-
L and sum-R outputs with two instrument cables to a mixer, amplifier or an active monitor speaker system.
You also should connect a MIDI masterkeyboard to the MIDI-input of the Spectralis and change the MIDI send channel of this
keyboard to MIDI-channel 1. Adjust the mixer level or speaker-level to minimum setting and turn the Spectralis on. After a boot
procedure and sample loading, the Spectralis is ready for your first steps.
Listen to Demosongs
After the boot-procedure, the spectralis will start with song 1 preselected. Now push the green [Play]-button in the Spectralis
transport field, set the Spectralis master volume to maximum and adjust the level of your amplifier or mixer to the desired volume.
You can select another song directly by hitting one of the 16 number buttons and pressing [Play], the [Page-Up]- and [Page-down]-
buttons allow to increase or decrease the songstep-pointer. The songstep always changes at the end of the bar. After pressing [Stop]
two times, the Spectralis jumps back to the first songstep and stops.
Entering Pattern-Jam-Mode - Select the [Pattern]-button in the Num-Button Assignment section.
Jump into the Pattern-Jam mode whenever you want. The song chain will temporarily interrupted and you can now use the 16 Num-
Buttons to select other patterns. The pattern change always happens at the end of a full bar. After pushing the [Song]-button again
and pressing [Page-Up] one time, the songchain will be activated again to play the song from the last active songstep until the end.
Checking the Select, Solo, Mute and Play functions
At the left side of the panel-controls are buttons for [Select], [Mute], [Solo] and [Play]. These buttons change the assignment of
the 16 num-buttons.
[Select] - If this button is active, the 16 buttons assign the according part to the synth-edit controls and assign the selected part to
MIDI-Channel one - the masterkeyboard channel. Further functions like Realtime-Recording, Drum-Grid Editing etc. will always
affect this part.
[Mute] - Assigns the 16 buttons to a mute functionality. Num-button 16 "Drums" mutes the whole drum section with parts 1-11.
[Solo] - Assigns the 16 buttons to a solo functionality. Num-button 16 "Drums" sets the whole drum section with parts 1-11 to solo.
[Play] - Lets the 16 buttons act as a MINI Keyboard. The current selected part can be played with the buttons 1-13. Button 16
transpose one octave up and button 14 one octave down. Button 15 sets the note into a hold mode.
[Shift] - When pressing down the [Shift]-button while have been selected Solo or Mute, the 16 LED's of the num-buttons show the
part activity.
Using the Mixing Desk
At the right side of the control panel directly above the 16 encoders row you can locate the Mixing-Desk section.. If you select
[Volume], [FX1-Send], [FX2-Send] or [Panorama], the selected parameter can be controlled for all parts simultaneously with the
16 encoders. The part 16 encoder controls the selected parameter for the whole subgroup drums.
Trying and playing the preset sounds
Please stop the sequencer now with the [Stop]-button and press [Select]. Now select the desired part with the according num-
button.The selected part is now assigned to the attached MIDI keyboard. The sound can be selected in the display-menu. All sounds
of the spectralis are organized in categories and subcategories. The third encoder selects a sound from the selected subcategory. Dial
the desired sound and press the third encoder-button down to confirm the selection. The [page]-buttons work as soundselection
buttons as well. Now the sound can be played on the attached keyboard. The sounds do not memorize the FX-send level. So feel free
to use the mixer functionality to decrease or increase the FX-send level. The knobs of the synth editing section are assigned to the
sound-parameters.
Encoder functionality and spectralis integrated help system
Some edit sections of the spectralis may contain multiple edit pages. You can reach edit sections by simply pressing an encoder
button in the desired area of the control panel. Inside these edit sections you can choose additional edit pages with the [Page-Up] and
[Page-Down]-buttons. Wondering, what a display parameter exactly means? You always can get additional informations by holding
down the [Shift]-button and pushing the encoder button, that is assigned to the unknown parameter. Help texts with multiple text
lines can be browsed with the [Page]-buttons. Links, marked with brackets, can be visited by hitting a display-encoder button.
Entering notes into the Step-Sequencer
Press [Pattern] in the num-button assignment section. Press [Edit] in the display dialog and there [Page-Up] one time. The 4th
encoder button allows to [Init] the pattern. Now select part 12 Analog Synth by choosing [Select] and pushing encoder button [12].
Select a sequencer sound in the display dialog like described above and press the [Function]-button in the sequence-edit section.
Select Seq:L11 with the first encoder. Now you can enter trigger points with the num-buttons. The encoders above the num-buttons
control the pitch of the sequence.
Adding a Drum-Groove to your sequence
Press [Step/Accent] in the Groove-Edit section in the middle of the edit panel directly above the 16 encoders row. Select the part you
would like to add or remove some drum triggers with the encoder buttons 1-11. Enter steps with the num-buttons. The velocity of
the steps you enter can be selected in the display with encoder 3. Select other segments of the selected drum-motif with the [Tempo/
Shuttle]-Encoder. Change the grid resolution at the second menu page by hitting [Page-Up] and selecting the desired resolution with
the first display-encoder. Now it's time to look into the manual. (The Save pattern function is described at page 32;-)
Need help?
Do you have a question about the SPECTRALIS and is the answer not in the manual?