Applies to: Bass Station II, AFX Station
This article describes the various functions of the editor for the Bass Station II and AFX Station.
Components is a tool used to manage the firmware and templates on many of our products. You can download a standalone version when you register your Launchkey, or access our web-based version in browsers that support Web MIDI such as Chrome, Opera, and Microsoft Edge from this link: components.novationmusic.com.
If using a browser, you may need to allow the page access to your MIDI devices, as prompted when first loading the page:
You can make templates in the editor whether the Bass Station II is connected to Components or not. To see if the Bass Station II is connected, check the indicator in the top right which can be one of 3 colours.
Red: means that the device cannot be seen by Components.
If the device is in this state it could either mean the device is not connected, not powered, or you are using a browser which does not support Web MIDI
Yellow: means the device is connected and recognised, but is in the wrong state, in this case, it could mean the Bass Station II is in Bootloader mode. Pressing the Play button will let it start as normal. If not, please try reinstalling the firmware from the Firmware tab.
Green: The Bass Station II is connected and is ready to use.
In each case, you can click the connection icon in the top right to find out more.
In Components, you can manage the content stored on Bass Station II; the Patch Banks, AFX Mode Overlays, Startup Message and Tuning Tables.
Banks
The Banks down the right-hand side can be sent to Bass Station II. You can click each bank for more information:
You can also click “Expand” to see the full list of patches. If a Bass Station II is connected, you'll be able to click the speaker icon to hear the patch from the Bass Station II's audio outputs. Clicking this also loads the patch on the device (without wiping a stored patch) so you can give it a full demo on the device (and save it to the device, if desired).
If “Get Bank from Bass Station II” is selected, you'll see a message as Components receives the patches:
You'll then see a list of patches from the device, with the options to rename, preview, send, replace, download or clear the patch from the Bank.
Note that making changes here will not affect what is stored on the device until using the “Send to Bass Station II” button.
If you're logged in, you'll be able to Save your bank using the Save button next to this. This allows you to keep your banks for use later on.
You'll be able to drag patches from the left-hand side into this list of patches so that you can preview sounds or create a custom bank of presets from various banks.
AFX Mode
AFX Mode is the feature that allows a patch per key to be used, the patches themselves are pulled from Overlays. Components allow you to manage the 8 Overlay slots on your Bass Station II. You can read more about AFX Mode here.
As seen with banks, the first option will be to determine where to retrieve the Overlay bank from:
In this case, a new Overlay bank has been made. This means there are currently no patches stored on each key:
You can either drag a patch from the banks section down the left-hand side.
Once a patch is loaded into the Overlay, you'll be able to access several settings for the Overlay. These parameters aren't the only ones used in an Overlay, they're a selection of parameters that you'll likely want to vary across your Overlay.
If your Bass Station II is connected, you can use “Live Edit” to have your Overlay settings sent to the device in the selected Overlay slot. This is also an easy way to get the currently selected patch on the device into an Overlay: click an empty slot and change control in the editor on the right-hand side to put this patch into an Overlay slot:
For each slot, you can download or copy the Overlay contained.
The “Autostep” button can be used to trigger each of the 25 Overlay slots in order on the Bass Station II. You can set the tempo that they come out at. This is useful for sampling the sounds in the Overlay (note that an audio connection to the Bass Station II will be needed to hear this).
Startup Message
The Startup Message page is used to set the message displayed on the Bass Station II when it is first powered on.
Tuning Tables
The tuning tables on the Bass Station II allow the keyboard to be re-tuned outside of conventional Western tuning. The Bass Station II can store 8 different tuning tables.
You can upload a Tuning Table onto this page and set the reference pitch as needed to send to one of the tuning slots:
You can find a link to ready-made tuning tables from a third-party site on this page as well.