Nope, no clue how these work. But from what you’re describing, sounds like it might be interesting for you. However, I think you only have the per pad features you mention for one shots, not for the loops. Let me check tomorrow, but I think once the loop is in there, you can’t do much with it besides triggering and muting it, unless you move the recording to a one shot/slider/multi/granular track.
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In a nutshell I want to do the following:
Track 1 - Drumkit will contain Drum Sounds across 16 Pads
Track 2 - Sample Sliced over 16 Pads (Per Pad ADSR, FIlter, Delay, Drive, etc)
Track 3 - Sample Sliced over 16 Pads (Pitched down 4 Octaves) (Per Pad ADSR, FIlter, Delay, Drive, etc) - Playback at 1/4 Speed of overall BPM of Project.
Track 4 - Sample Sliced over 8 Pads (Slowed down to .5 Speed of original playback speed) (Per Pad ADSR, FIlter, Delay, Drive, etc)
Track 5 - Granular mayhem to be resampled into Looper
Track 6 - 16 Loops with control over ADSR, effect, filter per Loop Sound
Track 7 - At some Point this would be Midi Track to control OPxy
Track 8 - Sample Sliced of Master OutPut Resampling of all of the above
This is how it build things on all my Sample Based devices for the most part.
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Thanks for the info. Ok, but even if single cycle waves don’t work in every engine (yet), there seem to be a lot of possibilities to create some interesting sounds.
I remember when the DT1 was introduced, it had way less features than with the final firmware update. But it was already powerful and could be (ab)used in so many ways. I hope the Bento will evolve in a similar way.
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I’ve quickly checked, as far as I can tell you’d run into issues with the slicer. You can easily select a number of slices and chop them to taste, so they will be mapped to pads. But you can’t adjust settings for individual slices, all of the slices share the same settings like ADSR, LFO, FX etc.
You could however use the one shot machine for that. Each of the 16 slots has individual settings for the things you’ve mentioned. And they’re also played with the pads. You’d have to manually chop though, which is easy with the touch screen and zooming, but slightly more cumbersome than slicer. Release also is a bit weird: the sample keeps playing out after end point, so your end point has to take that into account (same for slicer).
Another issue you’d run into is pitching. I think you can only pitch down one octave via the pitch option. So you’d have to resample or use the loop function and adjust playback speed.
So @echo_opera, maybe you wait for the manual.
I have to correct myself about looping btw. The slicer has a dedicated loop setting. Slicer can’t play chromatically, but you could sample 16 consecutive notes of a single cycle, so you’d have 16 notes on the pads and you could pitch them for switching octaves. The multi machine also has a setting “loop mode” and “loop fade (%)”. So I guess it should work for single cycle waveforms with only one sample, and you can play that machine chromatically as well.
There seems to be a bug with FX on the granular machine. As far as I can tell, you can’t send the whole track to reverb or delay, but the oscillator is called “oscillator and FX” and shows reverb and delay sends. But those can’t be used. Do you have the same problem, @KnockKnock? There also seems to be a bug with longer notes, which both of us have when holding a pad. Could you check if it can play back longer notes via sequencer? If not, maybe it’s not a bug but an internal limit for note lengths, which would suck hard.
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I am getting the same behavior with the fx in granular. I haven’t been able to get back to it yet to check on the note length issue. That feels like a bug to me, but we’ll see.
@Azzarole: are you on the 1010 forum? We’ve definitely mentioned a couple of issues here that the 1010 folks should be aware of. Once I check those two issues again with the new FW, if they’re still there, I’ll post on them if no one else has yet.
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Heyhey, no I’m not on their forum and honestly am not that interested. I’ve only encountered these two bugs yet and assume they’ve already been posted. Thanks for letting 1010 know though!
I’ve finally had some time to get back to the Bento and make something from scratch with it. It’s really fun and there’s lots of things I prefer over DT (playing the pads, adjusting start/end points etc). Working with samples like drum slices and longer field recordings is really where it shines. The FX also sound really really good imo.
However there’s one thing that is terrible for my workflow: sequences seem to be connected to patches. Once you load a new patch, your MIDI notes are gone. I didn’t try if it’s the same if you just swap the sample of a multi or granular track though. But it’s these machines that you’d want to save sounds as patches, so this is really annoying.
@KnockKnock: Can you tell me how to use the chorus etc. FX? Like how I can send tracks to a chorus? I also don’t understand the mixer page at all and what the reverb and delay options there actually do. Maybe you can have to do something there to be able to use these FX on granular?
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Don’t know about Bento roadmap, but I think it already has everything you need in it if you’re willing to spend some time resampling and bouncing stuff around.
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I 'm waiting to see how the track inputs and live looping evolves. I like to loop something but then save it to a looping track to use later in the set/jam.
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Because somebody had asked (forgot who): The loops you record are saved into the folder of the project. They’re always named “REC1” etc. and I haven’t seen any option to change names yet.
I’ve started to built a template that will enable me to immediately get started. It’s crazy how many variations of my favorite drum sounds I have at my fingertips with just 2-3 tracks. I think this will make it more of a “just play in your variations” machine compared to the more program-ey way you make sequences on an Elektron.
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I’d definitely be interested in some more detail about your template, if you care to share?
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Sure, I’ve set it up like this:
- track 1, one shot: pad 1-8 contain a drum kit for quick sketching, track 9-16 are BDs I like.
- track 2, one shot: 4 variations analog SD, 4 variations FM SD, 4 variations RS, 4 variations CP
- track 3, slice: 8 slices CH, 8 slices OH
(all of these drum sounds are mostly made of sample chains I’ve made with my Elektron’s) - track 4, looper: empty, so I can record into it
- track 5, multi: stock patch of a sub bass
I think I’ll make more of these with other drum sounds and different instruments. Maybe I’ll make track 1 always BD variations, 2 SD, 3 RS and CP and 4 HH/CY. So I can always send these out to different outputs for mixing/FX.
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That sounds like a super productive setup! Nice
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I’m so tempted to buy this just to be there from day 1. But I don’t like touchscreens for editing steps. It’s either this or the M8. I had the mk1 M8 three times and just sold it as it’s too much work IMO. But I tried the mk2 and loved the form factor and with my LPP it might be worth it. I dunno. Wish I wasn’t needing car work and house repairs and travel to see my 88 year old mom. Life gets in the way of everything!
You can also select steps with the most left encoder. This is also safer because you delete or add steps by clicking them, and when a sequence is longer and busy, drawing a field to select gets tricky. But yes, selecting a step isn’t ideal right now. Like I’ve mentioned, I think it’s made to play in your step variations rather than selecting and plocking (which isn’t possible btw).
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My first little BARS on the Bento:
Having fun is the name of the game…
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Aaaah, welcome to the club 
! Let us know if you’ve found a way to rename loops or save patches for things like the 16 slots of a one shot machine. There are presets like that on the machine, but I see no option of saving the one’s I’ve built myself. Would make things so much faster!
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Thanks.
I’m fairly active on the 1010 forum with asks and questions…hopefully you’re there as well.
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Oh no, no, no. You ain’t going any other forums with this, no way. It’s nice here
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I kinda want one but can’t wrap my head around why one would choose this over a $500 SP-404 MkII that is an audio Swiss Army knife? The only things that jump out are the granular engine from the lemon drop and a fiddly touchscreen piano roll (that I never use on MPC if I can help it).