Como, I am trying the demo, and want to play my midi keyboard to trigger the notes I play against a pattern ( like kontakt ) so if I play c3 with keyboard, I want to hear c3, and design a pattern, maybe its a half step up down etc…can this be done? ? So far i can only use the note step sequencer to make patterns - to much work - make sense ?
I’m not sure I follow.
If you are asking if you can use your keyboard to record in a pattern in the grid … at this time you cannot. The developer has been kicking that idea around.
Every thing with the keyboard input to Vortex is about triggering sequences or triggering variations like stutter, change tempo or repitch sequence. Vortex was conceived as a performance instrument.
Of course, instead of using your keyboard to trigger sequences, you can record your midi key strokes (or draw them in in a midi file) to trigger the sequence patterns … and then jam along with the sequencer arrangement by making sure there is no keyboard input to the midi track with Vortex as output, and set up your instrument for jamming on a different midi track.
Make sure you don’t have the midi track with Vortex set to "all inputs’ on the midi input selector in the inspector for that track.
If you are asking how can you play in a specific key and scale in a pattern, the 3 white bars in the grid are, from bottom to top, C1, C2 and C3. If you don’t use any scale adjustment in the ‘Squash2Scale’ keyboard on the lower right (so only the C note shows the little red light), then what you draw in for a sequence will be exactly the notes you’d play on the keyboard, i.e., the middle white bar across the grids is C2, the light grey bar to jumps up is D2, the black bar 3 up from the C2 is D#, etc.
Vortex is very deep … and is continuing to evolve as it goes through the beta. The best way to come to grips is to read the manual, read the Vortex Beta thread at KVR under Home Grown Sounds and keep checking for newest beta … there have sometimes been 3 a week. The present version is beta30.
Hope this answers your question. If not, ask again.
Como
“If you are asking if you can use your keyboard to record in a pattern in the grid … at this time you cannot. The developer has been kicking that idea around.”
Yes I was, that would be great for speed of workflow -
"If you don’t use any scale adjustment in the ‘Squash2Scale’ keyboard on the lower right (so only the C note shows the little red light), then what you draw in for a sequence will be exactly the notes you’d play on the keyboard, i.e., the middle white bar across the grids is C2, the light grey bar to jumps up is D2, the black bar 3 up from the C2 is D#, etc
This is close to what I was asking, I dont want scales to play, I want to hold a c3 note with the keyboard and because I created 8th note patterns in Vortex with a velocity accent increase on 1 & 5 , I want to hear when I press c3 DA da da da DA da da da ( via midi out to my string library) …if I press d3 then I hear d3 in the same pattern…If I understand you right, this can NOT be done in vortex…
You don’t hear me right about the second part.
Understand that the sequence has nothing directly to do with the note you play on your keyboard … but you could configure it to do that if you want. The basic sequence pages are two octaves from C1 to C3 … that’s the range for what you can place in the grid. As I said, and you appear to understand, what you see in the sequence page reflects a normal keyboard with white/ light bars set to white keys and black bars set to you black keys.
Which ever sequence you use (12 in total, one triggered by C, one by C#, one by D, etc.) if you put in the “DA da da da DA da da da,” it will play it at C3 if the notes are on C3 (the highest bar/ top of the two octaves) from the sequencer in the C2-B2 octave … but if you press the same trigger key in the C3-B3 octave, it will play it an octave higher at C4. Which octave a note is played in depends on which octave note trigger is used, i.e., C2, C3, etc.
Lets step back a minute to understand the triggering scheme before I tell you how to play what you want at D3 … besides the obvious of placing those notes on the D2 bar (there is no D3, since the two octaves run from C1 to C3 on the sequence pages) and triggering the sequence from the key tied to that sequence in the C3-B3 octave.
C1-B3 octave has special triggers for effects, e.g., stutter, reverse, change tempo, etc.
C2-B2 and C3-B3 octaves are always available for triggering.
There is a movable octave, which can start at C4-B4 … but can be moved to higher octaves if you have a larger keyboard or for whatever reason you choose. In this ‘Repitch’ octave, whatever sequence is triggering … let’s say your C3 Da da … can be transposed by a programmable amount. By default C4 = 0 semitones, C#4 = 1 semi, D4 = 2 semis, etc. The reason C4 = 0 is because there is a global ‘Hold Repitch,’ which continues the pitch at the new interval until you retrigger another key in the Repitch octave. However, any of the keys in the Repitch octave can be programmed to trigger a pitch change of +/- 24 semitones.
So, the simple way to go from C3 to D3 with your sequence is to continue holding down the trigger key and also depress the D4 key to transpose up the C3 note in the sequence 2 semitones.
Finally, all the available octaves above the C4-B4 Repitch octave … provided you haven’t set it to a higher octave, remain to simply trigger the original sequence at a higher pitch just like would happen in the C2 to B2 and C3 to B3 octaves.
Now, if to make things simple for yourself to play at C3 your “Da da … ,” just use he sequence tied to the C2 key as the place to write that sequence.
Happy now?
Como
now I have a headache 
Como, thanks for explaining, however I didn’t articulate as good as I could have, do you have spectrasonics trillian or omnisphere ? Thats the basic funtionality I am seeking, Those step sequencers simply allow you to draw a velocity pattern over steps ( 4/4 or 3/4 for X bars …etc)…and then when you play your keyboard, the velocity pattern runs and you hear only the note or notes you play in real time with the velocity performance so Da da Da da in E1 or if you play a chord Em7 you will hear an arpegio play Em7 with the velocity performance of Da da DA da you created…all in real time, no other tweeking required - so you see then, I could use this to write fast moving spic patterns for strings and what I play is what i get ( subject to velocity curves on each step ) …I think you are saying this can not be done with current version, right ? I tried to do this with the demo and could not.
I guess I spent a lot of time answering a question you did not ask. You can communicate with the developer on KVR, but I have no idea whether he would be interested to develop a feature as you describe. Actually, I doubt it … since yours is a different concept.
Vortex is a complete multitimbral performance and compositional instrument. Key input is for triggering, not for filtering midi input.
You are wanting essentially a midi filter that affects, in this case velocity, note input in a rhythmic fashion.
If I wanted to do this I’d be looking at LFO Tools or Cableguy’s Midishaper, both of which are sequencers designed to manipulate CC values.
Como
Finally a usefull thread. 
I’m trying out Thesis and Vortex, I’ll come back in the future them. Thanks!
Ok, so I tried them out. I have to say I liked Thesis very much although I couldn’t get it to work with Midi Sync. I had to do some workarounds I found using google.
Vortex is nice and worked very quickly, but the less standard interface just confused me.
@Como Baila: do you know how to better sync Thesis? If it wasn’t for that I think this would be my perfect step designer. =D
It would be AWESOME as a midi plugin to be put anywhere, with export midi to track and stuff like that!
It’s been quite a while since I took a serious look at any of the Sugarbyte sequencer plugins. I agree that the interface is a bit more intuitive, but if you took a little time to learn those basic windows, Vortex is pretty straightforward.
At the top of Vortex is a horizonal blue section with global parameters. Read the manual for the description of the global parameters and the function of the row of knobs in the global section sitting just below the ‘visual feedback’ keyboard. When you select the submenus below …
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‘Step Sequencers:’ On this page are the 12 sequencers, each one reached by clicking the note at the top of the sequence page or, if the ‘A’ is activated, activated meaning you will see the red bar underdeath the ‘A,’ when you push the midi note it will change to the sequencer page tied to that note. This page also has the Velocity, CC1 and CC2 sequencers for each of the note-tied 12 sequencers. The CC1 and CC2 are set in the blue panel on the right of the grid, where parameters for the currently viewed sequence are set. You can click on the label to set them to any CC value you want and there are also multiple algorithms set below where you can define how you want the CC sequencer to change the the CC values. There is also a little keyboard on the lower right to force all notes in the sequence to conform to any one of 72 available scales. Finally, there are a row and a half of ‘tabs’ at the bottom which define whether the sequencer will respond to some of the global settings/ and or the special ‘FX’ octave from C1 to B1. For example, you probably don’t want your drum sequences repitching, so you would deactivate ‘Repitch’ tab on your drum sequence.
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‘Multisequencer:’ when this is activated in the global menu, you activate different groups of keys … each tied to the selected underlying note-tied sequence. By pressing a single midi input key, you can start multiple sequences at once. By using different groupings on you octave of 12 midi notes, you can make arrangements. There are other useful parameters to repitch and rescale the entire group of sequncers tied to any specific multisequence key.
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‘Midi Mixer:’ this title is a little misleading, as it defaults to using the internal synths, but you can turn them off here, if you only want midi output. You here have 2 additional CC parameters, CC3 and CC4, which you can again assign to any CC parameter you wish for that synth voice. The CC functions of the internal synths are also labeled here, but the CCs are still simply standard. Here is also where you address the sound bank for the specific synths. ‘Number’ is for patch, ‘MSB’ determines instrument or drum kit and ‘LSB’ determines the specific bank. To turn of the internal synths, click the orange square to the left of each numbered synth so it greys out. You will now be sending pure midi on whatever midi channel you selected in the parameters of any specific sequencer … that panel on the right side of the grid.
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‘CC Mixer:’ this is an incredibly CC mixing matrix. You can chose from any 8 CC and then individually adjust their values across the 12 different sequences.
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‘Synths:’ is a page for retuning each synth. Here you also have the option to select midi thru and cc thru. This means that you can both send midi to your sound modules and use the internal synths of vortex at the same time … provided you didn’t turn of the ‘Internal’ sound of the synth on the ‘Midi Mixer’ page. This is also the page where you decide if you want a ‘Direct Out’ from that synth, instead of having it mixed through the main stereo out with the FX. If you select ‘Direct Out,’ each synth can be ‘tracked’ in Cubase, provided you open Vortex in the VST Rack and activate the outputs.
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‘FX:’ here is the FX engine for the master output. It has a lot of effect and modulation posibilities (3 programmable LFOs).
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‘Advanced:’ here is the most magic page of all where the programmable/ rescalable special octave resides. Pushing one of these keys will transpose all playing sequences by the selected transpose value and conform them to the selected scale. Using this, you can create diatonic chords by properly laying out your notes in a 3 sequencers for triads or 4 sequencer for tetrachords.
OK … you can see I’m wanting to persuade you that Vortex is far advanced over Thesys, the latter having only 4 sequencers and four synths and much less flexibility (like playing the individual synths and sending midi all at the same time!), as compared with the 12 synths, 24 multisequencers, multiple pitch and scale transformations as the sequence is playing, etc., etc.
Finally, right now it is still a lot cheaper.
As far as sync goes, I really am unclear what you mean? I know no reason either Thesys or other SugarBytes products wouldn’t sync.
I think there is a control to decide whether it syncs to Cubase (or any other) transport bar. You’ll have to look in the manual.
Como
Well that is a nice tutorial, I tried Vortex with it but there are still things that confuse me but not by much. It actually syncs much better that Thesys but I think it is because Thesys has a few default options that make it un"sync"able when loaded.
The problem with sync was that Thesys IS synched to the host but if you press play on Cubase it wont start unless you are sending it a note on message for what pattern to play. I actually had to google that and there were a bunch of people asking the same question, but it is not a functionality problem.
“Solution” to the “problem”: Using Thesys in Reaper - Sugar Bytes Forum - KVR Audio
As always, I may be very wrong about this, since I know none of these sequencers much and expected faster results.
I’d have to go with Thesys on this one but I am still playing with the Vortex Demo. =D