Phrasebox
v1.2.7

Phrasebox is a phrase arpeggiator that gives you control over playback like neverbefore. With its DAW-like piano roll you can create expressive, layered melodies
from simple MIDI chords, which aren't limited in timing and length like traditional
step arpeggiators.
The notes of the piano roll correspond to the pitch order of notes, with "special"notes (like the loudest or quietest notes played), which let you control exactly whichnotes you want to play. It also features a lock to key option so your transposed
notes are never out of key, and the included controller window lets you also send
MIDI CC data out to your instruments.
Phrasebox also features generation options, so you can generate unlimited uniquephrases at the click of a button.

venomodeInstalling Phrasebox
To install Phrasebox on Mac or Windows, simply run the installer and follow the
instructions. Once installed, Phrasebox will be ready to use the next time you open
your DAW.
To install the plugin on Linux, simply extract the files and run the install.sh script. In
your Terminal app, run the following commands:
cd ~/Downloads Change to your Downloads folder
mkdir tempinstaller Create a temporary folder to extract totar -C tempinstaller -zxvf PLUGIN.tar.gz Extract the bundle
bash tempinstaller/install.sh Run the installer script
rm -R tempinstaller/ Clean up the temp folder
Phrasebox requires the following system specifications. Please note, Ubuntu andMac versions are 64-bit only, and due to MIDI routing limitation, Phrasebox is notcompatible with Reason, Maschine, or VST3

Windows
Windows 7/8/10
32/64-bit VST/AAX Compatible
DAW

Ubuntu18.04+
64-bit VST Compatible DAW

Registering Phrasebox

Mac OSX
OSX 10.9+64-bit VST/VST3/AAX/AU
Compatible DAWThe plugin will run in demo mode until a licence is entered and the software isrestarted. In demo mode the plugin will not recall the state from a saved track, it will
timeout after 30 minutes, and the saving of presets is unavailable. After you havepurchased a licence, you will need to register the plugin, which will unlock the full,unrestricted version of the software. Any tracks you have saved with the demo
version will now recall correctly.
Click the padlock icon in the top bar area of the plugin window. A window will
display where you can enter your licence from the Venomode website user area.
After you have entered your licence, the full version will unlock the next time you
open your DAW. Ensure your licence exactly matches what is shown in thewebsite. For convenience, you can click your licence in the website to copy it toyour clipboard, and then paste it into the plugin. Your licence is the long string oftext containing your name, email, and unique code, separated by three colons (:::).

Using Phrasebox
Setting Up Phrasebox
Phrasebox is a MIDI processor, which takes a stream of MIDI notes from your
DAW, and creates a steam of MIDI data as an output. As such, you need to routethe output of the Phrasebox plugin to the input of your choice of instrument.
MIDI routing is different dependent on the DAW. For example, In Reaper and Bitwig
you can add Phrasebox and a VST instrument on the same track (in that order),and the notes will automatically pipe through. In other DAWs such as Ableton andCubase, you need to load your instrument and Phrasebox on separate channels,
and route the MIDI from one to the other.
You can see up-to-date examples of routing different DAWs in our FAQs
(https://venomode.com/faqs#phraseboxroute).

How It Works

You can view a full-size copy of the above image here
(https://venomode.com/images/Phrasebox/helpers/Mappings.png).
Phrasebox takes your MIDI chords, and maps each note onto a row in the pianoroll. The rows marked 1-8 are the notes of your chord, from lowest to highest in
pitch. In the example image above, we are playing a 3 note chord of C major, with
the notes C, E, and G. These 3 notes will be mapped to rows 1-3, with row 1 being
C, row 2 being E, and row 3 being G. Phrasebox then plays back the phrase in the
piano roll, using your notes for each row. As we are playing a 3 note chord, rows 48 will not produce any output.

In the example image above, we have set our phrase length to 8 steps, with aplayback speed of 1/16. The means that each step will play a 1/16th note, and thephrase lasts only half a bar. Phrasebox will loop the phrase in time with your DAW,
and as can be seen in the output, the phrase will play twice per bar.
Below is an example of a more complex chord sequence using the same phrase
pattern in Phrasebox. As you can see, Phrasebox detects the changes in chords,
and adjusts the playback to match.

You can view a full-size copy of the above image here
(https://venomode.com/images/Phrasebox/helpers/Mappings2.png).
You can also read a more in-depth guide at the Venomode website(https://venomode.com/news/how-to-use-phrasebox).

1. Piano Roll
The piano roll is where you control the pattern the arpeggiator is playing. Notes canbe added by clicking and dragging to the desired length. You can move notes bydragging them, and resize by dragging the left and right edges of the note. If you
hold shift while dragging, you can disable snapping. Holding ctrl/cmd and clicking
will delete the note. If you hold shift and click a note, you can add that note to theselection. If you hold shift and drag in an empty area, you can drag a box selection
over multiple notes.
The darker a note is, the lower the velocity, and they will appear more transparent
as the chance is lowered. An up or down arrow indicates the transposition applied
to the note, and its direction relative to the base note. Right-clicking in an empty
area brings up an additional menu with option such as copy, paste, and delete(more explined below).
Each row specifies which of the input notes are to be played. The numbers 1-8
represent the 8 lowest notes, with 1 being the lowest. The special note rows above
them select from the incoming MIDI based on certain rules:
All plays all the notes as a chord
High & Low play the highest and lowest notes in pitch

First & Last play the earliest and latest notes
Quiet/Loud play the quietest and loudest velocity-wise
Fixed plays a predefened note, set via a slider in the playback section
Random plays a random note from the incoming MIDI
Each column defines a 'step' based on the playback speed, for example, at 1/16
playback speed, each step will be 1/16th in length (a semiquaver).
In the right-click popup menu is an option called "Fill Row Pattern", featuring a
selection of different values. Each option features two numbers seperated by aslash. The first number is how many steps a note should be in length, and thesecond is how many steps there should be of silence. For example, the "1/0" option
will fill each step with notes, the "4/0" option will fill a row with notes that are 4 steps
long, and "4/4" will create notes that are 4 steps long, with 4 steps of silence
between them.
Each phrase can also have it's own colour assigned from in the right-click menu.
The piano roll features a couple of keyboard shortcuts - pressing the "a" key will
select all notes, and the "backspace" or "delete" key will remove any selected
notes. You can also move selected notes around with the arrows keys.
Each row can be sent to a separate MIDI channel. If you click the row's name, youwill get a popup that lets you choose a channel between 1 and 16. The default is tojust send all notes out of channel 1. This could be useful for multi-timbral phrases,or for controlling individual strings of a guitar instrument for example. Please Note:
not all DAWs support this feature. Some DAWs such as Ableton Live will
amalgamate all data to channel 1.
You can drag and drop a MIDI chord sequence onto the piano roll, and it will apply
the current phrase to your notes. A new MIDI clip will be created that can draggedout of Phrasebox into your DAW. Please Note: not all DAWs can drag and drop
directly into Phrasebox. You may need to first export a MIDI file to your computer,and drag the newly created file into Phrasebox.

2. Note Modifiers & Controller Envelopes
Below the piano roll are the note modifier and controller envelopes. Selecting abutton here will show the corresponding window.
(1) For the velocity, transpose, octave, and chance windows, you will see a verticalmarker for each note. You can drag the point of these to adjust the corresponding
value. Velocity has a range between 1 and 127, transpose can go up or down 24
semitones (2 octaves), and the octave can range between -4 and 4. The chancevalue determines how likely the note is to be played back. Set at full (100%), every
note will play back as expected, while at minimum (1%), that note will play 1 in 100
times on average. The chance value is calculated during playback, so with values
other than 100%, playback will be different every time.
(2) The 8 lower buttons show the controller envelopes. The first button is locked to
Pitch Bend, but the other 7 are freely assignable. Right click the button to select analternate controller number. If you double click a button while playback is stopped,
Phrasebox will send a MIDI CC value to the output. This is so you can use MIDI
Learn in your instrument. During playback, Phrasebox plays back all 8 of theseenvelopes in sync with the DAW. Envelopes with no points will have a faded colour.
Envelopes can be drawn by creating points. Points are created by clicking, anddragging to move. Any number of points can be created, and you can delete themwith a right click. Holding shift disables snapping.

3. Phrase Buttons
The 12 phrase buttons are different saved variations of your sequence. You can
toggle between phrases by clicking the buttons, or automating in your DAW. To
automate phrase changes, Phrasebox exposes a parameter called "Phrase" which
can be directly controlled from your DAW. Alternatively, you can use keyswitching(see keyswitching section). When you select a phrase, a new set of notes andcontroller envelopes are used. Other values such as the controller numbers,
number of steps, and playback speed stay constant. You can drag and drop one
phrase on to another to duplicate it. Phrases with no notes will have a faded colour.

4. Main Controls

The sidebar contains the various controls to modify playback and generation. The
two buttons at the top labeled "Playback" and "Generation" switch the display
between the playback and generation controls.

a. Playback Section
The playback section is where you control how Phrasebox plays back the phrase.
The Speed value selects how fast the sequence is played back relative to the host
tempo. For example, at 1/16 playback speed, each step in the piano roll will be
1/16th in length (a semiquaver).
The Lock To Key option allows you to make sure any notes are played back in thecorrect key. When enabled, any output will be transposed to match the key selectedfrom the menu, by clicking the key box. This means you can not only mash yourkeyboard and get great results, but your transposed note patterns will always work.
For example, if you use the transpose option on a note, you may find some MIDI
input is out of key. For example, your phrase plays a trill with a succession of notes,
where every other note is transposed up by 1. If your song is in C major, and you
play an E note, the trill will work (as 1 semitone above E is F), however, if you playin a C note, the trill will be out of key (as a semitone above C is C#, which is not on
the key of C). The lock to key option will then round the C# up to a D to fit thescale.
By design, the lock to key function attempts to scale up before down, so you
have certainty of how it works. Using the trill example above, if we were totranspose down instead of up, we would want to go down 2 semitones instead of 1.
If you play an E note, then transposing down by 1 would be D#, which would
attempt to round back up to E, resulting in the same note being played for every
note. Going down by 2 guarantees we will drop down a note in the scale.
If you have lock to key enabled when loading a preset, it will stay enabled with yourchosen key so the new phrase always matches your song. If you have lock to key
disabled when loading a preset, if will load whatever key and enablement are
stored in the preset. If you want to create your own preset, it's best to turn off
the lock to key function before saving for this reason. The factory presets all
have the lock disabled, so you can set a key and freely browse presets without the
key changing.
Steps - The number of steps of the piano roll to play. For example, 16 steps at 1/16
playback speed would be a full bar in 4/4.
Fixed - A fixed MIDI note that is used for the "Fixed" row of the piano roll.
Random Velocity & Chance - A random velocity value that is added or subtracted
from every note during playback. For example, at ±10, a note with an original
velocity of 100 would play back somewhere in the range 90-110. This is great foradding a bit of dynamic variation to playback. The chance slider affects theprobabilty of the velocity being modified.
Random Transpose & Chance - A random transpose value that is added or
subtracted from every note during playback. For example, at ±12, a note with an
original pitch of C4 would play back somewhere in the range C3-C5. The chanceslider affects the probabilty of the transpose being modified.
Random Octave & Chance - A random octave value that is added or subtracted
from every note during playback. The chance slider affects the probabilty of theoctave being modified.
Velocity Low & Velocity High - These are used to remap the range of velocities,
from 1-127, to whatever low and high are set. The values are scaled within thisrange, and you can even have low higher than high. This will have the effect ofreversing velocities, with quieter notes now being loud.
Swing - Adds a swing to the playback.
b. Note Generation
The generation window shows options for how the randomiser works.
Note Density - The amount of notes being generated. Higher values will result in
more notes.
Note Length - The length of notes, with higher values resulting in longer notes.
Velocity - A Range of velocity values. You can drag from either end of the blue bar
to adjust the start and end range.
Transpose - A range of transpose value. You can drag from either end of the blue
bar to adjust the start and end range. The chance slider adjusts how likely a note
will be transposed. At full, every note will be transposed, and at minimum, a note
has about a 1/100 chance of being transposed.
Octave - A range of octave value. You can drag from either end of the blue bar toadjust the start and end range. The chance slider adjusts how likely a note will betransposed an octave. At full, every note will be transposed an octave, and at
minimum, a note has about a 1/100 chance of being transposed.
Chance - A range of chance values. You can drag from either end of the blue bar
to adjust the start and end range.
Generation Rows - The number for rows to generate. For example, if you are only
playing in triads, you can select 3 rows to only have notes that will be played.
Use Special Notes - When selected, notes in the piano roll will use all notes,
including the special notes (Loud, Quiet etc.). When disabled, only the notes 1-8
are created.
The edit controllers button shows the generation options for the controllers.

c. Controller Generation
The controller generation window shows options for how the controller randomiser
works. There are 8 rows, with each row corresponding to which controller it
controls. The label will show the actual CC number.
Toggle - The toggle button before the controller name enables generation for thisCC. By default they are all turned off, and need enabling before generation occurs.
Range Slider - Sets the range of controller values that will be generated. You candrag from either end of the blue bar to adjust the start and end range.
Density - How many events are created. At full, it will create a random event foreach step.
The edit notes button shows the generation options for the notes.

5. Options
Randomise Button (Dice Icon) - Icon "a"
The randomise button will generate a new phrase based on your settings whenclicked. If you right click, you can select what will be generated.
Everything - Everything is generated - notes, velocities, transposition, chances,and controllers
Notes and Modifiers Only - A new set of notes will be generated, along with newvelocities, transposition, and chances
Modifiers Only - Only velocities, transposition, and chances will be generated forexisting notes
Velocities Only - Only velocities will be generated for existing notes

Octaves Only - Only octaves will be generated for existing notes
Chances Only - Only velocities will be generated for existing notes
Controllers Only - Only controllers will be generated
Sync To DAW (Metronome Icon) - Icon "b"
When enabled, the phrase will play back in sync with the DAW, and is the default
behaviour. When disabled, the phrase will only start playing back when input isreceived. Releasing all the notes will stop the phrase playing and reset back to thebeginning.
Loop Freeform (Loop Icon) - Icon "c"Only applicable when not synced to DAW (see above). When enabled, the phrase
will repeat indefinately. When disabled, it will play in one-shot mode.
Latch (Switch Icon) - Icon "d"When enabled, notes will continue to play even after you release them. Playing a
new chord will note-off the old notes, and hold the new notes.
Fill Missing Notes - Icon "e"
As Phrasebox maps incoming notes to the piano roll rows, if you don't play in 8
notes, you can't use all 8 rows. Selecting this option will intelligently fill up to all 8
rows with notes above what you play in, allowing all rows to be used. If you rightclick the button, you can select the maximum number of notes to be filled.
Phrase Keyswitching - Icon "f"Enabling this allows you to use a keyswitch to change phrase numbers instead of
the parameter. Phrases are mapped from C upward, so Phrase number 1 is C,
phrase number 2 is C# etc. You can right click the the button to select which octave
to respond to.

6. Top Bar
The top bar is where you can manage the plugin. The middle section shows thecurrently selected preset, and if you open this list you can choose from all thefactory and user presets. Clicking on the left and right arrow icons manually cycles
to the previous or next preset. The save icon will open a window where you cansave the current state of the plugin as a custom preset. Enter your preset name inthis window and click save.
You can view this manual at any time by clicking the question mark button.
The padlock icon will open the registration window. Enter your name, email andserial number exactly as shown in your confirmation email and click "Register", orcopy they keyfile to your clipboard from the user area of the Venomode website andclick "Paste Keyfile". See the registering Phrasebox section for more info.
The cog icon will open a settings window where you can alter the GPU acceleration
settings, and GUI scale. The update icon is two arrows in a circle. This button will
activate when a new version is availble for download.
The included factory presets showcase a variety of different ways of using
Phrasebox. Each preset contains multiple phrases, usually variations or more
complex versions of the first phrase.
Bass - Basslines designed from the lowest note of the incoming MIDI
Chords - Patterns designed around playing full chords
Melodies - Melody lines designed to work with either a scale as input, or a chord
sequence
Mono - Phrases designed for only playing with 1 input note
Oneshot - Phrases that are only played once
Patterns - Patterns that are similar to traditional step-sequence arpeggiators
Piano - Full expressive piano parts, often using the hold pedal
Special - Patterns that use the special note modifiers, controllers, or plain weird
patterns
Triads - Patterns designed for three note chords

TermsPhrasebox and this manual are ©2022 Venomode.
No unauthorised copying, renting, hiring, distributing, lending, deconstructing, re-selling, or any otherunintended use.
The following is a legal agreement between you, the end user (USER), and Venomode.
The enclosed software program (the SOFTWARE) is licensed by Venomode for use only on the terms set
forth herein. Please read this license agreement. Installing the program indicates that you accept theseterms.
License of registered Software:
The full version of the SOFTWARE may be used only by the registered USER. It may not be copied anddistributed to other users. Venomode can take legal actions against users, who distribute Venomode
Software without permission.
License of unregistered Software:
The evaluation version of the SOFTWARE ("DEMO VERSION") may be used by the USER for evaluation
purposes. It may not be copied or distributed without prior written consent from Venomode.
Grant of License:
Venomode grants to you the right to install the SOFTWARE on any and all of the computers owned by the
USER, providing only one device is running the SOFTWARE at any time.
Copyright:
The SOFTWARE is owned by Venomode and is protected by UK copyright laws and international treaty
provisions. All data related to the SOFTWARE, including the manual, the installers and the serial numbers
are property of Venomode. You are not allowed to distribute or modify them without written permission.
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After a finished transfer the old user must remove this program completely from his computers. The olduser's license is withdrawn.
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