Digitone & Lock Trigs.. is the manual wrong?

Elektron Gear Digitone/Digitone Keys
#1

Hi all

Just working my way through the DN manual and it says this on p.28:

10.2.2 GRID RECORDING MODE
GRID RECORDING is a method of composing where you use the [TRIG] keys to add trigs.

  1. Press [TRACK 1–4] to select the track to which you want to add trigs. A green [TRACK] key light
    indicates the active track.
  2. Press [RECORD] to enter GRID RECORDING mode. The [RECORD] key lights up red to indicate that GRID RECORDING mode is active.
  3. Use the [TRIG] keys to place note trigs on the sequencer. The trigs note value is the value spec- i ed by the ROOT parameter in the TRIG PARAMETERS page. For more information, please see “11.2.1 ROOT” on page 39.
    To add a lock trig, press [FUNCTION] and [TRIG]. You can enter lock trigs on any sequencer step, including ones that contain note trigs.
    Press the [TRIG] key of any of the previously entered trigs if you wish to remove the trig. Press a [TRIG] key of a trig and hold it slightly longer to prepare the trig for editing, rather than removing it.

That step 3 is the one that concerns me - specifically “You can enter lock trigs on any sequencer step, including ones that contain note trigs.” This seems to imply you can have a lock trig on top of an existing note trig, but when I go to add a lock trig to a step where there already is a note trig, the note trig is instantly erased. The step turns yellow, no note is heard on playback.

The manual seems to suggest that two different trigs could live on the same step at once, which would actually be very useful for doing things like conditional filter changes on existing notes, etc, or all sorts of cool stuff.

This would suggest either the manual is wrong or I’m not doing this right. There doesn’t seem to be much room for confusion on the manual’s part though - it specifically says “You can enter lock trigs on any sequencer step, including ones that contain note trigs.” That seems pretty cut and dry to me…

Anyone know better please? Thanks!

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Note Trig & Lock Trig on same step with separate trig conditions?
#2

A lock trig is a trig without note value but with locked parameter values.

So technically any time you lock parameters to a trig that has a note value, you are adding a lock trig.

If you have a note value and parameters locked to a trig, technically you have created both on the same step.

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#3

Oh man. Just as I thought I was starting to get to grips with trigless trigs and all the p-locking terminology… ok, thanks for clarifying. That could definitely be worded more clearly in the manual though!

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#4

Please help me understand how the above answer satisfies your question? I literally just read the exact same section in the manual and I still do not grasp it.

I just made a note that read, “a lock trig is like a parameter lock on a trig other than a note trig” to put the concept in my own words. But then I read from the manual, “You can enter lock trigs on any sequencer step, including ones that contain note trigs.”

You mentioned that when you placed a lock trig on a note trig, it erased the note trig? Do I understand correctly that there is no reason to place a lock trig on top of a note trig? Just parameter lock it, which in other words is placing a lock trig on it?

#5

Yes

The manual is an over complicated way of saying trigs work with or without note data.

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#6

Sorry for the very late reply but the point of placing a separate lock trig is that you would then be able to place conditional cutoff effects, delay sends etc without also making the note conditional. If you wanted a delayed snare only every other time then this would be a useful and flexible way of doing that without creating a whole duplicate pattern and chaining them together.

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#7

It doesnt work that way though, if you place a lock trig on top of the note trig all parameters are passed through to the note trig, you would have to apply the lock trig to the next step if you want more than one result from a single note trigger.
The manual should have been changed allready imo, confusion is not uncommon and the general result is new users who have read the maual imagining the feature is far more usefull then reality, after all it says quite clearly what lock trigs are and then goes on to say they can be applied on top of note trigs, seems willfully misleading to me, unless of course there really is a situation where applying a lock trig on top of a note trig leads to a different result from p locking the note.

#8

Yes i know that - I was just replying to the ‘why would you want to do that rather than p-locking’ question, and my answer is to do interesting conditional locks on articulation or sends etc, without conditionally affecting the triggering of the note itself…

#9

How would you do that though?, there is only one set of parameters per step so if the lock is on top of the note anything you do to the lock will take the place of any conditions that exist allready, meaning no more variation than applying your desired articulations straight onto the note. Lock triggers only add function to note trigs when apllied to subsequent empty steps , on top they are just a different colour light.

#10

The manual suggests you can do it - it turns out you can’t, or at least not in the way the manual seems to suggest. The entire point of this thread was to ask if it could be done, so asking me how I would do it is unlikely to yield any useful information I’m afraid!

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#11

How about still using a p-lock with a note, but have the velocity locked to 0?

#12

Sorry, got the wrong end of the stick.

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#13

No problem, I was expressing bemusement / amusement rather than annoyance!

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#14

Ping @eangman

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#15

Yes, that was probably not the best wording on how to place Lock trigs. I had a look at it and made some changes here and there around the sequencer chapter. Now (in the above mentioned passage) there is only described how to add Note trigs in GRID RECORDING mode. The adding of Lock trigs is now in the parameter lock section instead.
Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

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