Directly playing specific pattern pages?

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Hi. New (and delighted) Octatrack owner here. Actually I guess this question applies to all Elektron gear, but it’s cropped up while I’ve been using the Octratrack, so I’ll ask it here. I haven’t been able to find an answer in the manual or by searching, or indeed by randomly pressing buttons.

Say I’m editing a 64-step pattern and I add a p-lock to step 64, on page four of the pattern. Is there a way to start playback from the beginning of page four? With a low BPM, it can be quite a wait to hear the results of that tweak, and then you have to go through it again if you want to make a change. I guess there are some potential issues with samples that have been triggered on one of the earlier pages, but it’d still be really helpful to play back a specific page and hear just its own trigs back without sitting through the whole thing.

The best workaround I have at the moment is to use a spare 16-step pattern slot to create and tweak a bar and then paste it into a specific page in a longer pattern, but that’s not ideal.

Maybe I just have manual fatigue and I’ve missed a simple option - that’d be great. If not I guess short patterns and chains are the way forward…

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#2

I’m not sure if a “real” option to do this exists. But I can think of a partial, albeit clumsy workaround. Put the pattern into arranger mode and set OFFSET to 49. Then set the next step in arranger to loop infinitely to make it repeat, otherwise it will stop at the end of the pattern. It should play the last “page” of the pattern repeatedly set up like this.

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#3

There are two workarounds. You’ve already found one. The other one is to use song/arranger mode and set it to play the bar in question. Not ideal, but it works.

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#4

Ah, that’s great. Thanks! It’s not often I have to venture into 64-step territory really, so this stuff should certainly get me through.

#5

Email Elektron support and put it in as a feature request. To be able to toggle page looping for the current page of steps would be awesome not only for arranging but could also open up some new performance options. Should be part of the standard Elektron sequencer, I reckon.

#6

I thought the page button + play would be a good way of implementing this, but when I tried it I was reminded that it actually clears the page. D’oh!

What might be nice is a mixer-like method of ‘muting’ pattern pages so they’re skipped during playback. This would let you ‘zoom in’ on a particular page for editing and also allow for pattern variation on the fly, but it could get messy where pages are inheriting (or supplying) partly-played samples.

On the Volcas - which are obviously a lot more straightforward that the OT in terms of what they’re putting out - you can loop several steps of a playing pattern by holding down the relevant steps, which is great. Perhaps on the OT you could have a mode where the 16 trigs represent the entire pattern at the appropriate scale - so with 64 steps page 1 would be trigs 1-4 (representing trigs 1, 5, 9 and 13 on page 1) and you could press any two trigs to create a temporary playback loop. So trigs 13 and 16 would loop page 4 of a 64-step pattern (or the final four steps of a 16-step pattern). Green lights could indicate the start of a page, giving you a quick overview of the full pattern. It wouldn’t really work with non-standard pattern lengths.

I think that makes sense, but I’m not entirely sure. So it sounds perfect for the OT.

More usefully, a button combo to lock playback to the currently selected page would certainly be a good addition, and a lot easier to implement and grasp…

#7

2 years later… somebody know how to do that ? thanks , im interested in know how to play a specific pattern page , for example part 3/4 . thanks you

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#8

Hello!

I’ve done a bit of research and can’t find much, same goes with the manual. Say I am working outside of the arranger and I have a pattern that is 4 bars long, but now I only want to use the second last 2 bars, what is the best way of isolating these 2 bars? The ways I have come accross so far seem a bit long winded (copy each pattern page for each track to a new pattern OR moving each tracks trigs with function + left or right). This would be much easier if there was an offset feature to the loop, like there is in the arranger. Is there such a function?

#10

No there are no options apart from those already discussed. Outside of using the arranger method, nudging patterns or using ‘page copy n paste’ to different page or pattern are the two other solutions.

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#11

yes, at least copy and paste pages is a bit quicker, though tbh I usually quickly shift the trigs while counting to 16 twice!! That way the whole pattern stays intact

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#12

Ok, thanks for clarity :slight_smile:

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#13

+1 for this feature, it’s a lot of time lost in the process of waiting the 4th page play or even doing the workarounds suggested. A simple ‘loop current page’ would be a great addition.

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#14

I love some of these ideas. Unfortunately the Elektron sequencer hasn’t seen many significant changes since the Machinedrum (the last being Trig Conditions)… a shame as there’s so much potential.

#15

Per-track workaround:

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#16

That would be freaking awesome