To continue with my goal of providing at least a SMALL amount of non-partisan, helpful general arranger tips, here's another re-task you may find useful...

Ever get a song with a pause in the middle? New York, New York comes to mind,, or maybe '5 O'clock Somewhere', things like that. Quite a pain to pull off live. You find yourself pushing buttons like crazy, when you really ought to be playing!

Well... Once again, I rarely have a need for more than one Ending in a style, if that (I usually put the Fill/Rit on, play a fill, and as it slows to the 'one', stop on the 'one').

So, how about re-tasking those unused Endings as the mid-song pause..?

This one can get a hair trickier than the Break/Fill idea, so bear with me. This one usually needs a sequencer. Make a short sequence in your arranger of the section with the pause, but don't slow down, don't stop, just plow through. Now import this SMF into your computer sequencer. I use Cubase, but most good sequencers can do this trick.

OK, your pause sequence is imported... now either play, or edit the SMF so that it makes the break. Don't worry about the slow down yet. Got it all the way you want? OK. The next bit depends on your arranger.

Some arrangers, if you program a tempo change in the Ending, the arranger will perform it. Some, they don't. If your arranger handles tempo changes as part of the Ending, simply draw (in the Tempo editor) a line that slows the tempo over the length you need it. Your sequence should now slow down just right up to the point of the pause.

But, if you have an arranger that wants to keep a constant tempo through the ending (or won't reset the tempo to the Performance tempo afterwards - we'll get to that), you have one more step. Most good sequencers allow for a 'Tempo Lock' to be put on a track. This locks the MIDI notes to their position in time, rather than their position in the bar (so if the tempo changes, the notes don't move).

Here's the clever part. Lock ALL the sequence's tracks to the tempo lock. Now, go back to the tempo editor, and erase that ritardando you did. When you return to the main arranger page, you will now see that all the notes in the rit got moved, and now the sequence pays the rit, but the tempo remains constant. It's a tricky edit, but really useful, as you will see.

OK, so now you have this all programmed the way you want it. Re-import into the Ending4 slot (or whatever). You now, when you hit that ending, have the mid-song pause. It will play it, then the arranger will stop, ready to go (if Auto start on) as soon as you start playing again.

Here's what you need to look for, to decide if you need to use the 'tempo lock' trick in the DAW...

If, at the end of the pause, the arranger's tempo springs back to the Performance's initial tempo, you are good to go. Some of them, if the tempo winds down in the Ending, on stop, it stays there. If the latter, you really don't want to go through the hassle of loading the Performance again to get the tempo back (it may come up with an Intro ready to go and the wrong variation for you). If this is the case, you need to go through those extra steps, and get a steady tempo ritardando (sounds wrong, doesn't it?!), so that when the Ending finishes, the tempo remains the same.

Yes, I know this is a fair bit more complicated than the Intros as Break/Fills tip, but sometimes, if you are determined to stay in arranger mode, and not use an SMF or even a karaoke MP3 (the horror!), this is how to pull off something that gives most arrangers fits getting it right!

OK... so that's it.

Maybe some of you guys have got tips along the same lines, to radically increase the capabilities of our arrangers, to make them more flexible, musical, and responsive to OUR wishes..?

This forum doesn't have to ALL be 'mine is better than yours'!
_________________________
An arranger is just a tool. What matters is what you build with it..!