Elektron-Users

REOvolt wrote:
There may be a slight change it does get implemented someday, somehow, who knows. But when they do I at least did my part (pun intended )

yes, nice work .. put in the big effort.

I do hope that HQ will at least consider making an option in Preferences to allow Patterns to remember Scenes ... this could be a really cool option and wouldn't mess with the current architecture of the device at all.

It might result in some wonky sound changes during a Pattern change,
but if a user was aware of how Patterns linked to Scenes could affect the sound during an immediate change, and willing to work with that, it could be particularly useful.

Would have been nice if they actualy communicated in some way, shape or form about it

previewlounge wrote:
REOvolt wrote:
There may be a slight change it does get implemented someday, somehow, who knows. But when they do I at least did my part (pun intended )

yes, nice work .. put in the big effort.

I do hope that HQ will at least consider making an option in Preferences to allow Patterns to remember Scenes ... this could be a really cool option and wouldn't mess with the current architecture of the device at all.

It might result in some wonky sound changes during a Pattern change,
but if a user was aware of how Patterns linked to Scenes could affect the sound during an immediate change, and willing to work with that, it could be particularly useful.

Maybe it got lost in the thread, but there is a workaround for this by placing a midi trig on the first step with a CC mapped to that scene. Feeding midi back with a feedback loop will make the OT do just what you would like with certain scenes locked to patterns.

yes, true .. cool workaround!
but for me it just starts to seem like more complication, extra buttons to press, and i am trying to make things as simple as possible with the studio..
down to just two devices, OT and the MD.

i might try it tho ... so this would require a lead from midi out to midi in for the OT ...
Octatrack's midi Through could then send the clock and transport to the Machinedrum...
hmm.. possible.

smokyfrog wrote:
Maybe it would be worth asking something more general in order to coax some information about what Elektron consider an ideal workflow? Not hard and fast rules, just an example or two from the designers' point of view could be really helpful.

I've often thought that there must be some inner consistency that I can't quite put my finger on to the OT design, some perfect and logical plan that, if I knew it, everything would just fall into place naturally.


After all this talk of change, tonight i had the best experience ever with Scene locks, P-locks, Trigless Trigs, the X-Fader, and creating scenes for fun and variety. subtle variety.

Something i noticed tonight ...
the default selection for side A's Scene is Scene 1.

side B is by default Scene 9.

so they (HQ) want us to use Scene's 1-8 for side A
Scenes 9-16 for side B.

HQ also wants us to use headphones as part of the music making process,
as evidenced by the device's Volume parameter directly controlling headphone volume.

umm.. that's all i got .. not much..

and one more thing... they want us to use one Bank for one tune. I think.

and they want us to use Scenes to spice up the mix, change things around a bit.
HQ wants us to create variety that is immediately accessible via the crossfader,
and lots of it. Many varieties, flavours, audio interactions to avoid repetitive looping round and on and on.




...

Ah yes, and the X-Fade parameters ... they want us to sometimes have tracks on the Left hand side of the display (tracks 1-4), with one or more of them set to XFade up when the crossfader is on the left, side A, so that would be Scenes 1-8.

conversely, i am guessing that HQ would like us to have one or more tracks on the Right hand side of the display (tracks 5-8) set to XFade up when the crossfader is all the way right to Side B, Scenes 9-16.

And having four Parts per Bank, HQ would like us to have a different Part on say patterns 1, 5, 9 and 13.

HQ would perhaps like to see us build tunes that perhaps do not use all of the available tracks on Pattern 1, but rather build up to a more full sound over Pattern 2, 3, 4 ... kind of a minimal to complex approach.

Yes, this is total guesswork on my behalf, but anyway after much thought (all of five minutes) that is what the OT is saying to me right now.

And having an enjoyable play tonight with Scenes, observing - then learning - the eccentric yet logical way the Octatrack works with P-Locks and realtime parameter recording Trigless Trigs ... in relation to the all-important Scene Locks and the X-Fader ...

well, it all seems to be pointing towards one particular goal, and that is:

An improvisatory yet structured approach to creative electronic music making.
Busting out of the endless loop.
Also, accepting that sometimes, things change.
Sometimes you can get them back exactly as they were.
Sometimes they sound better. Or perhaps just a bittersweet memory.
And the balance is ever changing.

The X-Fader's position is an existential recognition of the balance.
Okay maybe that is going too far.

previewlounge wrote:
well, it all seems to be pointing towards one particular goal, and that is:

An improvisatory yet structured approach to creative electronic music making.
Busting out of the endless loop.
Also, accepting that sometimes, things change.
Sometimes you can get them back exactly as they were.
Sometimes they sound better. Or perhaps just a bittersweet memory.
And the balance is ever changing.

The X-Fader's position is an existential recognition of the balance.
Okay maybe that is going too far.
IMO, the biggest barrier to realizing this dream on the OT is not related to parts, but rather the inability to copy/paste/insert patterns on the fly. seems very limiting to me, especially since there's otherwise so much emphasis on doing everything without stopping the sequencer and you get so many patterns to stretch out on.

yes i know the resample mains/xfade trick, but it's clunky, eats a track, has to be planned for in advance, and doesn't really work if you're using the cue outs as an fx send.

it would be awesome if patterns could be copied and pasted at will like parts can.

i am thinking about just keeping 2 * two bars' worth of memory free on the Machinedrum Userwave, and just sampling to that (using the Octatrack's Out C/D).

Then using a Ctrl-8P on the Machinedrum to crossfade between them and do tricks while the OT is switching to wherever it needs to go or whatever it needs time to do.

Would need to be cautious about not creating a feedback loop (in particular, during a performance!), but this could be the way around things when performing live.

then the Machinedrum plays the two various samples through the input AB of the Octatrack...

and the OT gets to change pattern and paste a pattern in there,
or even change Bank or Project ...

the Octatrack inputs are going to hopefully keep streaming the Machinedrum during the change and if the settings are correct, it will be possible to then carefully mix the OT main volume back into the mix, after previewing things on headphones.

Well, I think that Jon's job title is to tell everyone "no" about every request as that's all I've ever got from them! Pretty sure that's his position.

-b

I agree about the cryptic replies from hq regarding requests... but in the end, we gotta work with what we got or else get/build something else.

I have a couple of ideas that I work to regarding parts...
Using slices mapped to scenes, one can quite easily build an entire track or at least a large section of within one pattern + one part. Imagine the track evolving from scene 1 thru to scene 16. Then its also fun to experiment with x-fading between non-consequential scenes (eg sc3-sc11). Then maybe start building another pattern with different trigs, trig locks & sample locks using the same part for variations if required. Easy to end up with 10 mins of music with lots of experimentation still possible before you even think of adding another part/pattern, though I figure its music style dependent there also.

And Previewlounge... regarding running your OT outputs C/D back into the MDUW.... I can thoroughly recommend it. I always have MD tks 15/16 assigned to ram play & record machines for the inputs on all my MD patterns with record and play trigs already placed. So at any time I can send out any track/s from OT to resample on the fly. Makes for easy / flexible transitions between songs. Also always have MD tks 13/14 set up the same way for internal MD resampling also.

For me the bigger issue than parts is the limited number of sample slots, which I tend to run out of before hitting the parts/banks limit, even when making frequent use of sample chained wav's. If Elektron wanted us to use a bank per song, with a total of 32 samples per bank (4 parts x 8 samples) x 16 banks = 512 samples. Yet why do we only have 256? I can understand with only 80mb total RAM that 128flex samples might be a suitable limit, but why not allow for 384 static slots rather than the current 128? Anyway thats slightly off topic but kind of relevant to the parts debate as they are tied so closely together.

Need more parts!

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