FXpansion Guru 1.5 User Manual

GURU 1.5

© 2007 FXpansion Audio UK Ltd

New features in GURU 1.5

Table of contents

Compatibility 2

Audio Export 3

Randomizer 4

Sample editing 5

Slicer 6

Browser 7

Keyboard support 8

Sequencer 9

MIDI implementation 10

Miscellaneous 10

New Options 11

Full list of new features 14

1

2

Compatibility

GURU v1.5 is 100% compatible with the latest hardware & software platforms including Dual,
Quad and 8-Core systems, Intel-based Macs, Windows Vista, Pro Tools 7.x, Digital Performer

5.x (including DAE mode).

Please note GURU 1.5’s updated system requirements are as follows:

• Mac OS X 10.4.x “Tiger”, or Windows 2000, XP or Vista.

• 512M RAM (768M recommended)

• 733MHz CPU with SSE1 or AltiVec instruction set

• 300MB free hard disk space (6GB for full library)

Audio Export

You can now render pads, tracks, engines or the full mix directly within GURU, and instantly
export it via drag + drop to your host or OS, or give the rendered loop a second pass through
GURU for further mangling. The audio exporter automatically tops and tails loops during render­ing so they’re ready to use straightaway in Live, Acid or other loop environment.

To use the audio exporter, hit the ARM button (the record symbol below the GURU logo) to arm
the exporter for recording. The upper combo box allows you to choose what will get exported

- a pad, track, group, engine, or the whole mix. The next time you hit PLAY, or next time you hit a
pad (PAD export mode only), the exporter will capture the output. Depending whether you have
the “Cross fade loops on export” option enabled, it may need to record for one cycle or two.

Once recording has been finished, the record light will go out and the newly recorded clip will be
added to the lower combo box in the audio recorder area. You can double click the name of any
recently recorded clip to rename it. To export the clip, select it in the combo box, then drag from
the “Export source” button to the right of the combo boxes to, well, wherever you want -- be that
a pad in Guru, a location in Guru’s browser, an Explorer/Finder folder, or of course your host.
The files it outputs are standard WAVs and can be read by any application.

NB: - The cycle length is determined by the length of the pattern, or for ‘ALL’ mode, the length of
the longest currently selected pattern across all engines. If you want to record a longer passage,
pick an unused engine (e.g. #8), set the page count to 4 and the step count to 128, and then set
its tempo multiplier to a low value (e.g. 1/8th). GURU’s audio recorder is RAM-based, so record­ing long passages will eat RAM - you have been warned.

3

4

Randomizer

A new creative inspiration factory, the randomize slider can operate on any of GURU’s main
screens – sequence, graphs, pad edit, effects, mixer – and allows you to apply a controllable
amount of randomization to either the current pad or various combinations. Click on the rand­omize slider to generate a new set of ‘seed’ values, then drag to the left or right to apply them
progressively to your patch. Hold down ALT or SHIFT while dragging the randomize slider to
apply the process over a wider area – if you don’t like what you hear, just hit the Undo button to
the right.

The Randomize slider’s behaviour depends on which page you’re on:

Pattern editor

In the Pattern Editor, it will add or remove random notes from the current pattern, either on the
current lane only, or, if you hold down ALT or SHIFT+ALT, to all lanes in the current group or all
lanes in the whole pattern. Moving it to the RIGHT will slowly add more notes; moving it to the
LEFT will remove notes.

Graph editor

In the Graph Editor, it will randomize the values of the graphs. Depending on which graph page
you’re on, its behaviour may be damped down for some of the others - for example, randomiza­tion of the Volume, Shift and Repeat graphs is partially suppressed unless one of those graphs
is selected.

ALT randomizes the current graph across all lanes; SHIFT randomizes all graphs in the current
lane; ALT+SHIFT randomizes all graphs in all lanes.

Pad editor

In the Pad Editor, it will randomize the values of the pad-parameters.

Holding down ALT will randomize all pads in the same group; holding down SHIFT will rand­omize all pads in the same column; holding down ALT+SHIFT will randomize all pads in the
engine.

Aux FX

In the Aux FX Editor, it will randomize the values of all the aux effect parameters. Holding down
ALT randomizes all auxes in the current engine; SHIFT randomizes all auxes in the current slot
position (1, 2 or 3); ALT+SHIFT randomizes all auxes in all engines.

Mixer

In the Mixer, it will randomize the values of the master effect, as well as tune & pan for the cur­rent engine. ALT randomizes all engines.

Note:

Locked pads/patterns are not affected by the randomizer, so if you don’t want to randomize your
kicks, lock them up first!

To cancel the last randomize operation, click the ‘X’ next to the randomizer.

Sample editing

Reverse, gate, new layer modes, pre delay

Samples can now be played backwards, and layers can be stacked in Random and Round
Robin modes as well as the more conventional All Layers and Velocity Split. We’ve also added a
Pre Delay per layer (in both milliseconds and musical units) allowing you to shift individual parts
by a few ticks to get your groove ‘in the pocket’, or to create single-pad flams and ruffs out of
individual samples.

There is now a context menu on the Layer Select buttons allowing you to cut, copy, paste, mute
and solo individual layers. Right + click or Ctrl + click on the layer select buttons to access the
context menu.

Layer modes

To change the layer playback mode, use the drop down menu under the layer select buttons:-

• “All Layers” – all layers play at once

• “Velocity Split” – layers will play depending on the velocity of incoming notes

• “Round Robin” – each time the note is triggered, a different layer will play; the layers play in
sequential order.

• “Random” – each time the note is triggered, a different layer will play; the layers play in random
order.

Note that this setting can be overridden by the FORCE LAYER graph (see the Sequencer sec­tion for info).

Reverse

The “Reverse” button does as you’d expect – it makes the sample play backwards. Note that
sample reverse can also be automated via the Graphs, see the Sequencer section for info.

Gate

The “Gate” button causes the sample to respond to note-offs:- when a note-off is received, the
sample will go to its release phase.

Pre-delay

The Pre Delay section in the bottom right corner of the pad editor allows you to set up flams
and ruffs, or to shift individual tracks by a few ticks. The total delay is the sum of the millisecond
value and the musical value, which itself has two elements – a unit size, and the number of
those units to delay by.

To use pre delay to shift a given note, just set it to however much you’d like to shift the note by.
To create Flams and Ruffs, put the pad in All Layers mode, load up a few layers with samples,
and then delay them by different short amounts e.g. 20-80ms. To create wave sequences, set
the ‘Units’ parameter in the pre delay section to something fairly large, e.g. 16ths, load up a few
layers with waves, and then set their musical pre delay counts to different values such that one
sample plays after 1/16th, another plays after 2/16th etc.

5

6

Slicer

We’ve given GURU’s slicer a major overhaul – it is now much more accurate, and has a ‘Sensi­tivity’ control allowing you to adjust how it responds to possible hit points in your loops. In addi­tion, its slicing and score extraction process is now velocity-aware - slices and scores are now
generated in such a way that hit volumes are consistent when using the sounds from one loop
with the score from another, or the score from a loop with a kit, or the slices from a loop with a
pattern.

As well as the ‘Sensitivity’ control, there is also an ‘Accuracy’ control which specifies how much
CPU time GURU should give to analysing the slice points. Higher accuracy means more pre­cise, but slower, slicing.

The Slicer can now be toggled between SINGLE mode, in which one slice is loaded per pad,
and FULL mode, where up to 8 slices are loaded per pad, using the Layers. This allows Guru to
fit long loops (up to 128 slices) in a single engine; it also supports a Linear Scoring mode where
instead of smart-slicing by drum type, the slices are simply mapped to pads 1..16 in the order
they occur in the loop file, much like a conventional slicer.

When slicing loops and generating Scores, the slicer is now velocity aware – each score note is
assigned a velocity based on the loudness of the slice from which it was generated. This gives
much more useful playback when replacing the slices for a given score with a pre-made kit.

“Equal 16ths” has now been replaced by a “CHOP” mode controlled by the sensitivity slider,
allowing you to set a chop length from 1/4 note down to 1/64th note. Hold SHIFT to set the sen­sitivity control to non-power-of-2 values in this mode (by default it snaps 1/4, 8, 16, 32, 64).