A marginal observation on 1st TRCs & microtiming

Elektron Gear
#1

I just noticed this by accident, it appears to apply to other boxes, so it’s a general ‘issue’ for this specific scenario - i’ll maybe ping someone in Elektron for comment, but thought it was maybe worth flying up as a potential pitfall - albeit one that can be rationalised as a quirk, rather than a bug, but perhaps one to get caught out with as i just was (by virtue of clumsy accidental dial twiddling)

The issue

The 1st Trig Condition (used on the FIRST TRIG) will never trigger if the microtiming is -ve (i.e. left of 0)

This is the case on the first and last devices to incorporate this, so appears to be as designed. Probably an edge use case

A normal Trig won’t play on the first pass if it is on the first step and also nudged left, but will on subsequent passes. But wrt the observed TRC case even though the 1st trig condition is effectively being ‘marked’ as ‘passed’ it hasn’t ever played - it’s just that its window of opportunity to do so has now gone

It could explain a headache for one of you in the future

as you were

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#2

But why would you want microtiming before zero?

#3

I very often move my first trig to the left to fix timing.

To me, this is normal/expected behaviour though… the track starts to play at zero on the first trig, so by moving it left, youre basically moving it to the end of the last trig on the bar before. I would be more bothered if the trig did play the first time around.

A way around this is to just make an empty pattern (of 1 or a few trigs) and play that before your pattern, that way the first trig will trigger if its moved to the left.

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#4

I often place high hats just a touch before kicks and snares because separating those transients sounds lush. If you’re working on some techno or something with a four to the floor kick and you time your hhs as I have described, that’s one example of where the behaviour @avantronica describes will occur. It doesn’t bother me particularly because I’m usually arranging the final track such that the kick and hat don’t start from the very beginning but it’s noticeable while working on a pattern. :slight_smile:

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#5

theoretically this makes Sense. The first bar starts on 1 so a note moved negatively on the first step is not part of that bar, but the one before (as mentioned with the workaround to use an empty one with that trigger on the last step). So looking this logically, the event is not part of Bar 1 but of bar 0.

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#6

A wise man once asked

If a trig is triggered but makes no sound, does the Elektron step sequencer ‘see’ it?

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#7

I guess you can always microtime the 1st trig on the right of the 16th step.

#8

It is triggered at the end of first pattern loop. It can be usefull. IIRC I used it to sync a looper from Syntakt.
ST tips & tricks - #134 by sezare56

Edit : @avantronica, sorry, I confused things, on Syntakt I have the same behavior you described. I think the 1ST should be played at the end of first pattern loop…

Maybe it coud be usefull to put it at the beginning, but you can put it at the end of the pattern, with +23 microtiming.

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#9

For the avoidance of further doubt - i’m not looking to find a solution - i’m merely documenting an observation of a particular anomaly/quirk wherein the Trig will never play - just in case it confuses anyone

it’s an interesting outcome - it reveals that the trig actually sounding/trigging is not the metric used to monitor the TRC event, it’s the ‘opportunity’ which is logged, not its completion … but as i said, it’s just an observation

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#10

In other words, the step is what counts, the note:on midi event is not.
In Elektron world, trig == step, not note:on?

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