Now that I’ve had my Syntakt for a bit, the 4 modifiers have yet to be used.
Are they useful? I could think of other things I’d want like 4 mute groups.
Maybe it’s great, or maybe it’s like the “Touch Bar” on the MacBook Pros 
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I use the one for velocity a lot when creating patches and configuring the 4 modulation destinations for the velocity parameter. The other 3 modifiers I have yet to dig into.
The retrig modifier sounds a bit too mechanical without the velocity curves, and those have to be edited per step anyway, so I don’t see myself using this one very often. I’d rather do it the old way and configure retrigs in the step sequencer.
Modifiers 3 and 4 are cool on paper, but a bit limited in practice. You can’t stack them when recording, as they always trigger the machine on a track. Trigless modifiers would be much more usable, imho.
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I tried to do something creative with them but it crashed my Syntakt 
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No. Spent 20+ hours with syntakt and I cant find a way for them to be useful or anything less than a nuisance really. It never works the way I want it to, especially when recording. I wish they had spent their time on something else.
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I think if they can make them work like preset parameter values that you can stack and/or modify existing triggered steps, then it would be worth exploring.
Otherwise it’s just sort of gimmicky.
The one thing I haven’t tried is mapping a bunch of stuff to velocity and using the velocity modifier as a macro controller.
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Trigless modifiers would be the key
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I’m guessing they built the modifiers into the hardware and the current uses are just a place holder for future updates. If I could even just map them to modify delay/reverb parameters, I think they’d be very useful, not so much as is.
Purely speculation on my part, but it just seems to not be elektron’s approach to add useless features.
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While it’s not the most innovative feature, being able to record retrigs live rather than having to program them in is handy right? And being able to live record hats at different velocities on a machine that has no velocity sensitive pads is useful.
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its not the intended function by a long way, but when designing sounds, its handy to hold down retrigger and tweak away at the patch rather than hammering the Track Sound button 600x.
You can set the rate you want yourself of course across the 4 buttons.
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That’s the only way I’ve used it so far.
Live-recording hi-hat velocity this way doesn’t work for me at all. I just record and go back adjusting velocity in grid mode.
I was really hoping this to be some kind of performance feature, acting on seqencer playback (or even external audio). Well, maybe one day…
When I first saw the announcement of the Syntakt with these 4 performance oriented mod channels (retrig, velocity, mod A/B) I was excited and thought that it would add a layer of live performance tricks, a bit like the performance modifiers and channel of the OP-Z.
In the end, this is huge deception for me I can’t find any usage for them. I’m even starting to get annoyed at that strawberry light being on all the time with no way to turn it off, with a chance of triggering sounds by mistakes because of the last 4 keys.
My gripes:
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No way to sequence these mods in their own dedicated channels, my biggest issue. If we could sequence the mod trigs in their own 13-16 channels, now that could really add a whole new performance level, especially when playing with mutes. We could create sequenced fills and variations and just activate them when needed with mutes, now that would be useful. That’s also what I expected when I saw the announcement
And it would also make the lack of live quantization more acceptable. -
No live quantization: my second biggest issue here. Even when trying to be in perfect sync with current running pattern, triggering the mod buttons live never sound quite right. If it was quantized, it would be awesome to create live rolls with the retrig mod for example, but as it is it’s too risky and most often ends up sounding like a mess.
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No temporary cut of the running channel sequence when a mod trigger is used: triggering the mod buttons adds on top the track sequenced pattern (unless you mute it), ending up in a mess if you’re not perfectly tempo synced (which isn’t possible because of the lack of quantization)
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No trig-less mods: except for the retrig mod, it would have been awesome to have an option to disable the sound trigger when activating the mod but keep the mod being applied, like temporary p-locks on top of the running sequence. This would make these mods a bit more useful for live scenarios IMHO.
My disappointment is quite big regarding this, I fail to find any useful scenarios of mods for my usage, as I never use live record for my sequences (the only useful scenario I can think of).
What’s you take on these mod channels, do you find any use them in your performance workflow?
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So far, I felt like I didn’t need to sequence these mod channels. I mostly use them to put in fills, add a little bit of texture to reduce repetition etc.
edit: I agree with your point on live quantization. Though some off-grid fills also give a sense of groove sometimes
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Please don’t hesitate to take the time to redact your desires about mod keys and send it to feature-request@elektron.se
Take care that your suggestion fits the current UI/UX (and other boxes’) + front panel labels to maximize the chances your contribution actually ends up as a next firmware addition.
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@sinedied Yes. Please do. I would love to see these ideas become a reality
At least put them in the syntakt feature request thread
I also like @303abuser’s idea that they are sort of placeholders for future functionality
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Yes please do it! Because we’re too lazy to do it. 
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As others have said this is very much a placeholder. I came here to see if there was a bug reported but I don’t see anything.
Basically, on the manual it says that by pressing ‘Shift+down arrow’ you enter the edit mode for these Modifiers.
When setting it to filter, delay or reverb, nothing happens. Only when the retrigger is on it seems that something happens, however, I’d love to see these modifiers working without the retrigs to affect the ongoing sequence.
On top of this, I’d love that these modifiers could control all channels. Of course pressing ‘track+Mod A or B’ renders nothing.
I think these functions will be refined as we go forward. I’m really happy to see what Elektron comes up with for these.
That would be awesome if they worked like set values for “control all”. Then you could jump pitch -12 for all channels at a touch of a button (and 3 other pitches for the other buttons) That would make a cool performance option and might save the concept.
For me, after using my Syntakt a decent amount, I feel the modifiers are a miss. They could be cool, but as-is I don’t use them.
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I’ve played around with the retrig modifier quite a bit and it makes for a nice live performance tool. However I think if they made it an option to have those 4 modifiers or turn them into 4 standalone midi triggers, that would be great! Or even an option to turn them into 4 more digital tracks or 4 more analog tracks, but don’t see that happening.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CdzLGCDgpUe/
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That sounds like an awesome idea-- 4 memories for CTRL-ALL
I would use thatI do like the re-trig modifier for trying to lay an idea down quick… but i agree that without velocity curves it sounds a little too robotic. I’m very new to the elektron sequencer/workflow… might there be some way to pull that off with an LFO that starts on trigger?
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Let’s admit it, the Modifiers are…
- a waste
- a flop
- gimmicky
- the best innovation ever
- a great performance tool
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