User's Manual

7. Keyboard Settings

A. Octave

The octave up and down buttons (+ and - buttons) change the octave offset of the keyboard. Press both together to

reset the keyboard octave to its default.

Keyboard zones can have additional or independent octave applied. See the documentation on ‘Zones’ for details.

B. Transpose

Pressing Shift and the Octave Up or Octave Down buttons transpose the keyboard MIDI notes in semitones. Press

Shift and Octave Up and Octave Down buttons to reset the transpose. This can allow you to, for example, play only

white keys, but hear a major/minor scale with another root note.

Keyboard Zones can have additional or independent transposition applied. See the documentation on keyboard Zones

for details.

8. Tempo / Swing View

A. Set Tempo

When the SL MkIII is controlling tempo (i.e. not slaved to an external device’s tempo) it can be adjusted by doing the

following:

1. Press the Tempo button to enter the Tempo/Swing View.

2. The display will change to show Tempo (BPM) and Swing values.

3. Turn the leftmost rotary knob to change Tempo to integer values anywhere between 40 and 240 beats-per-

minute (BPM).

B. Display Clock Source

When the SL MkIII receives a valid MIDI clock (and MIDI Clock Rx setting is on), the tempo screen will update to show

‘External’. Note that the tempo value might uctuate at rst, but it will soon settle to a received clock value. Since the

keyboard is ‘slaved’ to an external clock, it is not possible to change the tempo using the above rotary control.

If the clock signal stops or is lost then the SL MkIII will revert to its internal tempo, and you can again use the rotary

knob to adjust tempo.

The clock source can only change while the Transport is stopped. If the Sequencer is running synced to an external

clock, and the clock signal stops or is lost, the display will show ‘Sync Lost’. The Sequencer will remain in the ‘Sync

Lost’ state until the Transport is stopped. After pushing Stop on the Transport, the Sequencer will revert to using exter-

nal clock if the external signal is available. Otherwise, it will use the internal clock.

C. Swing

The SL MkIII’s Swing function moves MIDI notes off their usually mathematically precise positions in an attempt at

achieving a more natural or human sound. The result is more ‘swing’ or ‘feel’. In other words, if your arpeggios or pat-

terns feel rigid, try adding some swing to them.

More precisely, swing works by pushing even-numbered beats of the swing sync rate closer to the odd-numbered

beats. For example, with a common beat pattern of ‘1-2-3-4-1’ etc., positive swing pushes beats ‘2’ and ‘4’ later in time

towards beats ‘3’ and ‘1’ (note: this ‘1’ is the start of the next measure). On the other hand, negative swing pushes

beats ‘2’ and ‘4’ forward in time towards beats ‘1’ and ‘3’ respectively.

You can adjust global swing from 20% to 80%. By default, swing is 50%, which applies no swing (i.e. no change in the

rhythm). Greater than 50% adds positive swing, and less than 50% results in negative swing.