Scenes

Scenes provide a way to save a variety of mixer settings, including fader levels, panning, routings, effect settings, and more. The VS-880/890 workstations allow you to have up to eight scenes per song. One important restriction is that scenes cannot be recalled while a song is playing back.

When you create a scene, the VS stores a snapshot of:

• Current track parameter settings, such as fader level, panning, EQ, V-Track, and effect assignments

• Current signal routings

• Current track status, such as whether the track is disabled, set for playback, or armed for recording

• Current effect parameter settings

• Current Master Block settings, such as master balance, master aux level, and master insert effect settings

What's Missing from Scenes

Scenes store a variety of mixer settings, but not all mixer settings. For example, none of the settings in the Effects Return Mixer are stored as part of a scene. In the Master Block, the Master Level setting is not stored within a scene. Within the track parameters, the MIX SW is not stored within a scene. Finally, many of the global settings in the SYSTEM menus are not stored within a scene.

To access one of the eight available scenes, press the SCENE button so that it is lit. The dedicated LOC buttons are now used as scene buttons. There are four LOC buttons , corresponding to scenes 1-4, and holding the SHIFT button and pressing the corresponding LOC button allows you to access scenes 5-8. To store a scene, press the corresponding LOC button so that it is lit. For example, to store the current settings and routings as SCENE 3, press the LOC 3/7 button. To recall a scene, press the corresponding LOC button, and the settings and routings stored within that scene will be instantly recalled. Remember, you can only recall scenes when the song is not playing.

To delete a scene, verify that the SCENE button is lit, then hold the CLEAR button and press the appropriate LOC button. Once a scene is stored, you cannot save new settings or routings within that scene. Rather, you must first delete the scene, then store the scene with the new settings or routings.

Scenes are useful for a variety of scenarios. In a previous chapter, I described how I've used scenes to quickly switch from recording a track to playing back that track within the mix. In our recording examples, we could have easily used scenes in much the same way. For example, when we were recording the lead guitar takes, we could have created a scene where the rhythm guitar, keyboard, percussion, and bass guitar tracks were in playback mode, and the lead guitar track was armed for recording. After the lead guitar was recorded, we could have created another scene in which all the tracks were in playback mode, and the level of the lead guitar was adjusted to fit within the current mix. When we wanted to record another take of the lead guitar, we could simply recall the first scene, change the V-Track setting, and record another take of the lead guitar part. If we didn't use scenes, we'd need to readjust levels, track status, and so on. Using scenes recalls all these things with the touch of a button.

Scenes are also handy when you are bouncing or mixing tracks. For example, if you wanted to bounce a number of background vocal tracks to a stereo pair of tracks, you could create a scene that includes the necessary settings and routings. After you perform the bounce, you can play back the new tracks, and if you don't like the results, you can undo the bounce, recall the scene, tweak the parameters as necessary, and perform the bounce again.

Scenes are also a great way to try out different mixes . Since scenes can store effect parameter settings, scenes can also be used to try out different effect settings across some or all tracks. For example, you could have one scene that is the dry mix, another scene that adds reverb to the vocal tracks, and another scene that inserts a compressor across the entire mix. We'll use a variety of scenes as we work through some examples in this chapter.