Stinger Asset

Stingers are one-shot sounds that play in a musical context and can start in sync with an Arrangement.

For example, they can be used to play alongside a looping arrangement to highlight events, help in segue transitions or play motifs. They can also be used for intros/starts, outros/endings, or seamlessly bridge two arrangements in sync with the beat. Stingers don't need to play in the context of an arrangement and not follow a beat, and instead are triggered at any point.

Stinger Variation Slots

• Stinger audio files are pre-produced Audio assets ingested as regular audio assets to an Elias Project and then dragged and dropped to the stinger Variation Slots.
• Add a new stinger variation slot by clicking the “+” icon below the last slot in the stinger variation slot. There is no limit to the number of variations.
• Pickup sets the amount of time the stinger should play before the agility sync point. E.g., If the stinger is a drum fill and the fill should start ahead of the first beat in the first bar, set the pickup to the desired value. The behavior of the stinger in combination with pickups and arrangement segue is controlled by the “If Arrangement Does a Segue setting found at the bottom of the inspector.
  • If using the Free Tempo (Fallback Settings), the pickup is set in milliseconds.
  • If an arrangement is selected, the pickup is set in beats. (Coming soon)

Stinger Settings

Stinger settings are found in the inspector on the right side of the stinger arrangement view.

Free Tempo vs Arrangement Specific Settings (Currently, Free Tempo is the only option)

Change if the stinger should use free tempo and set the pickup time in milliseconds, or follow the tempo of an arrangement. A stinger Asset will be able to hold settings for one or more arrangements, as well as free tempo which settings to use can be specified when the stinger is triggered to play.

Segue settings

Agility

• Decides when a stinger can play, by itself or in combination with an arrangement. If the stinger is not played together with an arrangement, it will play as soon as it is triggered.
  • Agility- 4 different options:
  • Bar - Add agility points following bars
  • Beat - Add agility points following beats
  • Anytime - Use no agility points and will do a transition fast, but not considering the musical beat.
  • Custom - Add specific bars and beats where segues are allowed to happen.
    • Select a Bar and a Beat and click the “Add” button to add that agility point to the custom list.
• Every - Used for Agilities Bar and Beat, and decides at what bars/beats are allowed. E.g,. If you selected Bar and then set Every to 2 segue is allowed to happen for every second bar.

Tonal Stingers

Using Custom agility opens up the possibility to create tonal stingers that can play in harmony with the looping arrangements. Creating tonal variations to a stinger and then selecting when each one is allowed to play will always make sure to keep the stinger in harmony.

Allow Playback

This setting decides if a stinger should be able to play on all states together with an arrangement or only at specific states.

• Allow Playback
• “During all states” - Disables State setting and allows stinger to play at any state.
  • “When states <“ - Stinger is allowed to play if the currently playing state is below the specified state in the state field.
  • “When states >” - Stinger is allowed to play if the currently playing state is above the specified state in the state field.
  • “When states =” - Stinger is allowed to play if the currently playing state is equal to the specified state in the state field.
• State
  • Set the state that the “Allow playback” statement should respond to.

Silence Arrangement (Upcoming feature)

Stay tuned.

Selection Strategy Variation

This option is only available when no stinger variation is selected, since this needs to be set on a stinger asset level.

• Variation order (Selection Strategy: Variation dropdown menu):
  • Random - Will randomly pick one of the available variations.
  • Sequential - This will play the variations in order and always start with the first in the list. Next time the state is played, the second variation will be picked, and so on. After all variations have been cycled, though, it will start with the first one again and go through the list again.
  • Shuffle - Will also randomly pick one of the available variations, but will not repeat any of the variations until they all have been picked. After cycling through all variations, the list will be scrambled again, and the variations will be picked in a new order. Note that if the arrangement instance has been destroyed and then created again, the shuffle tracker has been cleared, and they are not aware of what files had been played in the previous life cycle, so a variation could be repeated.

General Asset Settings

If Arrangement does a segue

• Segue together (Stinger Master) - If a stinger is played during an arrangement segue the agility of the stinger will force the arrangement to segue at the same time.
• Segue Together (Arrangement Master) - If a stinger is played during an arrangement segue, the agility of the arrangement will force the stinger to follow its agility settings.
• Ignore Arrangement Segue - If a stinger is played during an arrangement segue, it will follow its agility settings, and the arrangement will follow its agility settings. This can be used when the stinger should follow the tempo and beat of an arrangement, and when the stinger and segue don’t need to happen simultaneously.

Stinger Timeline

• The timeline will display either an endless range if Free tempo is selected or the structure of the currently selected Arrangement.
• The agility points for each stinger variation will be displayed on the timeline.
• This means that each stinger variation can have unique settings for each arrangement, as well as having the Free tempo fallback settings.
  • Tip! If there is an issue with the timing of stingers while playing them with an Arrangement, it could be that there are no specific settings made for that arrangement, and it is following the free tempo settings that don't have a matched tempo with the currently playing arrangement.