m8 – Aux Tables For Locked Effects

As I'm working on a set to perform in a few weeks I wanted to re-visit my idea of "Table Hops for Locked Effects". After getting a Phrase setup in a satisfactory state I wondered - could I improve on this idea? In the last few months I have become a big fan of Auxiliary Tables and I wanted to know if they could be applied to this concept and give the user much more flexibility in the effect programming. The answer is a resounding "yes" followed by "let me tell you about your m8 Lord and Savior, Auxiliary Tables."

For those who haven't yet drank the Kool Aid, let me rant a bit about Tables on the m8. Tables are a bit like a spreadsheet - sixteen rows in height, three columns wide. Each cell in the Table can be an instruction for the targeted Instrument (or master parameter, like Track Volume) to respond to. Each Instrument comes with a Table assigned to it but there are tables beyond the number of Instruments of the m8. Those are what I tend to use for programming. A cursor will progress through the rows in the table, top to bottom, when the Table is triggered.

• In the case of a Table assigned to an Instrument, the Table will begin playback when the Instrument is triggered.
• In the case of a Table triggered by an Auxiliary Table command (ie: in a Phrase or in an Instrument Table), playback will begin when the Auxiliary Table command is triggered.

The rate at which the cursor progresses through the table is set in a few ways:

• In the case of a Table assigned to an Instrument, the Instrument has a TBL. TIC setting.
  • This can be over-written in the Table by putting a TIC command on the final row of a column.
• In the case of a Table decoupled from an Instrument, this is set by the TIC command on the final row of a column.

So, with that out of the way - let's talk about how we turn a speech from Spiro Agnew, the disgraced former vice-president of disgraced former president Richard Nixon, into Max Headroom.

By using Auxiliary Tables instead of Table Hops to the Instrument Table, we gain whole tables of programmable commands to manipulate the current instrument - rather than just a few commands contained within an isolated region between HOP messages. And by leveraging the nature of the Instrument Table we can use the RNL command to randomly select an Auxiliary Table every time the Instrument is triggered.